Former Jamaica Prime Minister describes US military strikes in the region as “Dangerous and horrible”

Former Prime Minister of Jamaica, P.J. Patterson is describing the United States (US) drone attacks on vessels in Caribbean waters as “fundamentally dangerous and a horrible erosion of regional leaders’ commitment to sovereignty in the region”.

Since September, 2, 2025 US President, Donald Trump, has ordered military strikes on at least five boats in the Caribbean Sea, which his administration claims were carrying drugs to the US.

According to the US government’s account, the military has killed 27 people, with the most recent attack taking place on Tuesday, October 14, which the US government said killed six people.

Patterson, who served as Jamaica’s prime minister from 1992 to 2006, told The Gleaner the situation was not only frightening, but dangerous.

“At our very first meeting in 1972, in Chaguaramus, the four independent countries – Jamaica under Michael Manley, Barbados under Errol Barrow, Guyana under Forbes Burnham, and under the chairmanship of Eric Williams (then prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago) – declared the Caribbean to be a zone of peace.

“What we are witnessing is a fundamentally dangerous and horrible erosion of that firm commitment to assert our collective sovereignty in the area. It is a matter which compels the heads of governments in the Caribbean, as a matter of the greatest urgency, to be in consultations and seek to take a common position, hopefully in reaffirmation of that inviolable position.”

In a statement one day after the first strike, Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, voiced strong support for the US action.

“I, along with most of the country, am happy that the US naval deployment is having success in their mission. The pain and suffering the cartels have inflicted on our nation is immense. I have no sympathy for traffickers; the US military should kill them all, violently.”

However, speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in late September, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, appealed for dialogue to avoid a war between the US and Venezuela, while Prime Minister, Dr Ralph Gonsalves, described the foreign militarisation of the waters near Venezuela as “exceedingly troubling”.

The current CARICOM chairman is Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Dr Andrew Holness, but the regional grouping has so far not made public its position on the vexed issue.

Patterson would, however, not be drawn into forming an opinion on why CARICOM has chosen to remain silent.

Announcing the first of the strikes in early September, Trump said his forces had destroyed a vessel that left Venezuela and was operated by the Tren d Aragua cartel and carrying drugs bound for the US.

In the latest strike on Tuesday, The Guardian newspaper of Trinidad and Tobago reported that two Trinidadians were killed along with four Venezuelans. One of the Trinidad and Tobago nationals is said to be a 26 year-old male from a coastal community, and his grandmother was firm that he was not a drug trafficker.

When the US President announced the military strike on Tuesday, he said, without providing evidence that “ Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narco-terrorist networks, and was transiting along a known route for smuggling”. (Adopted from The Gleaner and The Trinidad Guardian)