I'm John Batch with my good colleague, Evan Ellis, U.S. Army War College, and we're looking at

the moving story of Venezuela, Machado to Oslo, for a Nobel Peace Prize. The U.S. military

intervening in some fashion in the shadow fleet by taking over a sanctioned oil tanker in international

waters off the coast of Venezuela.

At the same time, there are voices and eyes all through the Caribbean watching this.

Some of them are lawless.

That would be Haiti.

Others are in between lawless and frightened.

Professor, how does the region hear this?

John, the region has a variety of different reactions

for a number of different reasons,

in part the relationship with the United States,

in part with her own concerns.

Probably the two parts of the Caribbean

most supportive of current U.S. military deployments and actions against Venezuela

have been the Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago.

In the case of the Dominican Republic, the government of Luis Abinator has long been a staunch

U.S. supporter on a range of different issues.

And it's really part of a broader policy by the Abinator government,

something that I discussed with the Dominican colleagues when I was there last week, that,

you know, seeking to position the Dominican Republic is more relevant, having more, more influence

within the Caribbean and the region more broadly. Historically, the Dominican Republic has been

...