Playing with fire

2026-03-25 - 00:45

Today, there are sufficient experiential rebuttals of the longstanding Latin maxim “si vis pacem, para bellum”—“if you want peace, prepare for war”—to conclude that the net impact of a combative predisposition, particularly if you are weak and small, can be as inimical as the very violence being avoided. This would probably not have been vociferously explored when the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) assembled in Havana, Cuba, in January 2014 and issued the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace. Maybe when the grouping met in Bogotá on Saturday, the war-for-peace dictum might have featured. I am not sure what official guidance, if any, was provided to our low-level representatives there. But such a thought—war’s complementary relationship with peace—would have certainly been in the background as this grouping of 33 sovereign states reiterated support for a Latin American/Caribbean Zone of Peace. Indeed, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar was a proud signatory to the initial declaration 12 years ago, which the CELAC summit asserted had been in harmony with the UN Charter – Articles 1, 2(4), and 2(7) pointing to peaceful relations; prohibition on force; and non-intervention. Maybe experts would also wish to cite the Treaty of Tlatelolco of 1967, to which Caribbean countries are party and which focuses on the movement and use of nuclear weapons in our waters. The same principles apply. But let’s focus for now on