Sovereignty surrendered through borrowed rhetoric

THE EDITOR: The Prime Minister’s response to international concerns about Caribbean military operations reveals a troubling pattern: policy formation through foreign ventriloquism.

When Rubio dismisses CNN’s reporting on UK intelligence-sharing concerns as “fake news,” then immediately justifies the boat strikes that prompted those concerns, the contradiction resolves through assertion rather than evidence. Our Prime Minister doesn’t interrogate this dissonance. She amplifies it, reposting his remarks as if State Department talking points constitute TT’s foreign policy position.

This represents policy abdication masquerading as alignment. Three observations clarify the problem:

First, the categorical dismissal mechanism. Any scrutiny – from allied governments, international media, or domestic sources – gets labelled as conspiracy to “undermine ongoing efforts.” The UK raises legal concerns about strikes that have killed 75 people in Caribbean waters. France’s foreign minister cites violations of international law. The EU’s foreign affairs chief confirms these discussions occurred. Our government’s response? Call it fake news and question the motives of those raising concerns. This rhetorical strategy forecloses debate before substance can be examined.

Second, the abandonment of regional diplomatic positioning. The “zone of peace” concept represented decades of Caribbean consensus on managing great power competition in our waters. TT’s retreat from this framework happened without public consultation or parliamentary debate. We simply adopted Washington’s operational logic wholesale, as if our maritime approaches exist primarily as enforcement theatres rather than sovereign space requiring our protection and management.

Third, the narco-terrorism frame functions as a thought-terminating cliche. Label the threat sufficiently dangerous and all questions about proportionality, legality, or sovereignty become evidence of being “soft on crime.” This government has weaponised citizen anxiety about criminal violence to justify actions that, under different circumstances, would trigger mass protest. Extrajudicial killings in our maritime zones become acceptable because “narco-terrorists” forfeited any claim to due process.

Citizens face mounting pressures – crime, cost of living, economic uncertainty. We deserve more than performance politics and borrowed rhetoric. We deserve a government willing to ask hard questions about operations in our waters, even when those questions might displease powerful allies. We deserve leaders who recognise that Washington’s interests and TT’s interests sometimes diverge, and possess the courage to articulate that difference.

When your foreign policy consists of amplifying another nation’s secretary of state, you’re not exercising sovereignty – you’re administering someone else’s agenda. When international legal concerns get dismissed as media fabrication without examining their substance, you’re not protecting national interests – you’re protecting yourself from accountability.

Rubio claims no G7 allies raised concerns with him personally. French and EU officials confirm they did raise these issues. Someone’s account doesn’t align with documented facts. Our Prime Minister chose which version to believe based not on evidence, but on which narrative serves her political positioning.

This matters because sovereignty isn’t abstract principle – it’s the daily exercise of independent judgement about what serves our population. Every time we delegate that judgement to foreign officials, we diminish our capacity for self-determination. Every time we treat legitimate questions as sabotage, we erode the democratic accountability that separates governance from autocracy.

The exhaustion is palpable. You hear it when people discuss the government – that weighted silence before speaking. You see it in how quickly resignation replaces outrage. When everything becomes an existential threat requiring unquestioning support for any response, nothing remains subject to democratic oversight.

We’re not manufacturing grievances. We’re watching our government prioritise alignment with Washington over transparency with its own citizens. We’re watching 50 years of regional diplomatic work discarded for temporary swagger. We’re watching sovereignty disappear not through dramatic confrontation, but through reposts and borrowed talking points and the slow acceptance that our representatives speak for interests that aren’t ours.

If we don’t demand better – loudly, persistently, without apology – we’ll wake up one day and discover that independence became purely ceremonial while we were being told to trust the process.

This is governance by proxy. And we’re done pretending it isn’t.

MICHAEL E DHANNY

Diego Martin