By Daniel Burgin
This week, security professionals from across the region and around the globe, including members from our very own Police Force, gather in Trinidad and Tobago to participate in the annual United States-hosted TradeWinds Exercise. TradeWinds is a valuable opportunity that brings militaries and police forces from smaller, less-resourced nations together with experienced personnel from the U.S. military, including special operations units. During the exercise, our young men and women rappel from helicopters, learn to use advanced weaponry like shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenade systems, and absorb key security concepts. When they return to their respective countries, though, the reality is sobering. These men and women are thrown back into a reality where equipment is outdated and limited, and where further opportunities for application of the techniques they were exposed to are primarily nonexistent. The momentum, energy, and promise of TradeWinds fade into the background of chronic underinvestment and disconnected national security planning.
To be clear, our policemen are eager, capable, and ready to learn. The fact of the matter is, a lot of planning goes into the TradeWinds Exercises as well as other events that our regional forces participate in, but it’s not enough. Despite organizations like the Regional Security System (RSS) and CARICOM IMPACS, there is a lack of cohesion and collective thought when it comes to challenging regional crime issues. While drug trafficking and weapons smuggling, two of the region’s largest security threats, have taken the focus of many of these bodies, the eruption of the La Soufriere volcano, and even more recently Hurricane Beryl, show us how overlooking other very real security threats like natural disasters and national emergencies can lead to huge destruction of property and even the loss of life. Climate change and food insecurity are destroying infrastructure, displacing communities, and crippling national economies. And these are not one-off events; the frequency and severity of such disasters will only grow. The effects we see in rising economic pressures, increasing crime, and persistent corruption painfully show that our current security architecture is not just inadequate. It’s outdated.
Service members should not have to wait for an opportunity like TradeWinds to engage with regional partners on impactful security-related issues. In fact, on a regular basis, foreign services should be exchanging techniques, personnel, and various equipment to develop cohesion and interoperability both tactically and procedurally. We need sustained partnerships, not just annual photo-ops. Some might argue that these collaborations already exist. Yes, they do—but not nearly to the scale or depth they should. True security cooperation in the Caribbean must be constant, intentional, and holistic.
We must acknowledge not just the threats we fear, but the realities we live with every day. In smaller island states like ours, the threat profile is different, as the focus is more on internal security than external threats, which TradeWinds primarily focuses on. Last month marked Child Abuse Prevention Month. Yet outside of a few commendable efforts from the Ministry of National Mobilisation, the national response was subdued. Child abuse and violence against women remain one of the biggest issues that plague our Caribbean civilization and remain undocumented and underreported, including the frequent cases of missing young people. In 2024, the Child Protection Division reported 241 cases of abuse, 43% of which were neglect, 37% of which were sexual abuse, and 17% of which were physical abuse. Again, that is what was reported!
I’m not saying at all that exercises like TradeWinds aren’t important; they are absolutely essential. In fact, they are paramount for visualizing the capabilities we as a region have with the talent and potential that already exists right in our own backyard. These exercises allow our young officers to train alongside some of the most elite and experienced professionals in the field. That exposure is energizing, empowering, and necessary. I would just caution that in treating exercises like TradeWinds as isolated events rather than as part of a continuous developmental strategy, we run the risk of squandering the very talent we aim to cultivate. In effect, lighting a fire, only to let it burn out. By fixating too heavily on large-scale, externally driven exercises, we risk overlooking the very issues that affect our people every single day, particularly the most vulnerable among us. We need to focus on what affects us now and be able to plan effectively for the future. Security is about more than defending borders or disrupting transnational threats. It is about protecting children from abuse, addressing domestic violence, curbing gang activity, and building a safe society, on the community level. If we fail to change, we risk reducing powerful exercises like TradeWinds to little more than an annual spectacle—impressive in the moment, but quickly forgotten. We owe our people more than that.
