Our region finds itself at a crossroads today. We are confronted by that proverb of our Mexican brothers and sisters: we find ourselves too far from God and too close to the United States.

The US has, under Trump 2.0, been explicit in its intent to reboot naked imperialism. This is not to say that the US has ever not been imperialist. However, we cannot ignore that its recent rhetoric to whitewash the sins of empire, as seen by Marco Rubio’s speech to the Munich Security Conference on February 14, or the “Trump corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine spelt out in the US National Security Strategy in December, together mark a qualitative change in the threat the US poses to our region.

Nor is it all rhetoric. The US has backed up its threats with raw military power, most blatantly with its illegal invasion of Venezuela on January 3 and the blatant murders of Caribbean peoples in the Caribbean Sea — including the February murder of three St Lucian fishermen within the territorial waters of St Vincent. And now, as I write, with an illegal war of aggression against Iran, which will have serious consequences not just for that region but our own.

As if to underline the naked rebooting of imperial power, as Caricom met in St Kitts last week, the US docked the USS San Antonio near the conference at Port Zante — a not so subtle act of gunboat diplomacy. Mr Rubio himself addressed the Caricom meeting as the representative of empire.

All this is also taking place in the midst of a medieval siege of our Cuban cousins, creating an artificial humanitarian crisis there, one created solely by the US and as part of an attempt to effect naked regime change to force Cuba back to colonial status, subjugated to American power.

This is the situation our region finds itself in today, at a crossroads of returning to colonial subjugation and paying tribute to the new Rome or Babylon, or to act collectively to defend the region’s autonomy and as a zone of peace.

Which way for the region? Subjugation or freedom? Ultimately, those are the only options, regardless of how one spins it. Subjugation is still subjugation even if it doesn’t involve direct conquest and occupation. If our “leaders” agree to submit to US directives, what is the difference between that and direct occupation, other than the illusion of freedom, of “allowing” local administration that gives tribute to the empire?

We see that model in Venezuela after the US invasion and kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro — Venezuela remains nominally independent, but in practice it is dictated to by DC now; its natural resources are under US control and for US profits, not for the benefit of the Venezuelan people. The words of the Cuban poet José Marti remain true more than a century after his death — “To change masters is not to be free.”

I remain committed to an independent Bermuda within an independent Caricom, and for an independent Caribbean as a zone of peace. This hope remains undiminished. Nonetheless, one must look clearly at the crisis facing Caricom today, and it is clear that regional leadership lacks the political will — or even imagination — to oppose the neocolonial project of Trump 2.0.

In the face of the blatant illegality of January 3, the region’s leaders have tripped over themselves to submit to the empire. One imagines they have rationalised that if the US could so easily invade Caracas and abduct Maduro, then what defence does Basseterre, Kingston or Castries have? Or Hamilton for that matter, regardless of the Union Jack?

We have seen the US use economic blackmail on our cousins, threatening them with tariffs or visa restrictions (all while the imperial navy sails our seas, posing a not so subtle threat of violence) unless they submit to imperial diktat. Rather than engage in collective action and solidarity, one island after another has submitted, with some even humiliating themselves into accepting the role of wardens for US concentration camps.

Most embarrassing have been the actions of Terrence Drew, Prime Minister of St Kitts & Nevis, and chair of Caricom. Not only did Mr Drew accept detainees from the US, he also made it explicitly clear that no Haitians would be accepted, demonstrating the discrimination and prejudice towards Haitians that has haunted our region since Haiti first dared to defy White supremacy and colonial subjugation. How can we expect our regional leaders to stand up to empire when they cannot even stand up for our fellow Caribbean people?

And let us not forget the actions of Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago, who has actively betrayed the region’s commitment to a zone of peace, actively facilitated the illegal actions of the US empire, both in the murder of Caribbean people on the high seas and in the invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of Maduro.

And most recently, we see the silence of Godwin Friday, the Prime Minister of St Vincent & the Grenadines, in response to the US military killing Caribbean fishermen in his territorial waters. Andrew Holness, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, has similarly chosen to align with the US in abandoning the Cuban people.

The lesson we learn from this is that much of our regional leadership will not stand up for the region’s independence. They are content to submit in exchange for the right to continue to manage their countries as nominally independent but under the de facto control of the empire, just with them serving as the willing local administrators.

No doubt they will rationalise this as doing what they feel is best for their people, better to submit peacefully than face an invasion, occupation and abduction. Perhaps. To me it is still capitulation, it is surrender, it is to accept a master-slave relationship. It is a betrayal of the Caribbean quest for independence, a struggle begun in the resistance against the conquistadors, continued in the resistance against the enslavers and colonisers, and continued to national liberation struggles and the birth of Caricom as a regional organisation founded on solidarity and sovereignty.

Our region must be free. We must not backslide in our quest for liberation. We must not return to the plantation, whether the one holding the whip is a coloniser or one of our own holding the whip on behalf of the coloniser.

If our regional leadership will not stand up for our people and resist empire 2.0, then we are faced with the question of whether it is time for new regional leadership, or what other forms our collective resistance may take. May we be reminded of the words of José Marti — “Rights are to be taken, not requested; seized, not begged for.”

• Jonathan Starling is a socialist writer with an MSc in Ecological Economics from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning from Heriot-Watt University