The military engagement over China, and the subsequent manoeuvres in Taiwan, have given us some indication of George W Bush's approach to foreign policy. But it is ordinary Trinidadians who have had a direct and frightening taste of it.

Trinidad and Tobago has an army, but, viewed in relation to modern warfare, it might as well be a troop of Boy Scouts. It comprises a handful of guns, a helicopter or two, and a couple of coastguard vessels not fast enough to capture the speedboats plying cocaine from South America.

The Americans have had a base on Trinidad's north-west peninsula, at a place called Chaguaramas, since the Second World War. Demonstrations and agitation in the late 1950s saw off the soldiers, whose presence, it was generally felt, was not compatible with independence. The base itself, which now has modern satellite communications, was left behind. From time to time, a US warship would dock, but more for friendly diplomatic purposes than anything else. There are few military links between Trinidad and the United States. Officers are trained in the UK, which also sells arms to the country.

Trinidad's army has not always been stable. In 1970, there was general unrest on the island, including strikes, demonstrations and an insurrection aimed at the popular overthrow of the government. I was part of it. A state of emergency was called, suspending the rights of citizens. The prime minister ordered the army to step in. It refused, and only the intervention of the coastguard, led by a British officer, saved the day.

Since then, in moments of instability, there has always been a question mark over the army's loyalty. And recently, there has indeed been instability. The country is divided between Indians and Africans and, in nearby Guyana, racial violence followed the Indian-dominated party's election victory, dogged by allegations of electoral corruption. For weeks, there was no government in Guyana because the president refused to accept the prime minister's appointments to cabinet. Foreign investors made it clear that it was not a situation they were prepared to tolerate. The president finally relented.

All of this gives rise to deep currents of uncertainty. Early last year, I made a documentary in the Caribbean called Trouble in Paradise, and had cause to upset the Trinidadian regime by referring to the bouts of explosive violence that characterise day-to-day life. There has been a huge and steady migration to America and to England. Such is the scale of recent migration to the US that the schools have to recruit teachers from other parts of the Caribbean to maintain some kind of continuity. Parents from the Caribbean are abandoning their children by the hundreds in major cities of the United States.

Now Trinidad has experienced what amounts to a military invasion. Helicopter gunships; the most modern in military communications, installed at the Chaguaramas convention centre; military carriers transporting troops on manoeuvres; the commandeering of all rental cars on the island, of coastguard cutters and the rest - all this has not only surprised, but terrified the local population. Trinidad has within its territorial waters the largest deposits of natural gas in the Americas. International companies, led by BP Amoco, have invested billions of US dollars, and there is much more to come. And Bush is a tenant of the oil companies.

Next door, the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, has declared his anti-imperialism. He is a military man. He has seen Fidel Castro ten times since he came to power in 1998, and he has visited China. Chavez has offered Caribbean countries free oil, in an attempt to establish strong links along the chain of poverty-stricken islands. Better link up with me, he appears to be saying, than prolong a slavish dependence on America.

So you don't need to be a genius to work out the reasons for the American show of force. All the same, it came as a shock to the entire Caribbean. There was no discussion in the Trinidadian parliament, no national statement by the prime minister, Basdeo Panday. The Americans simply came, manoeuvred and went, Wild West-style.

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