THE NATIONAL SECURITY THREATS POSED BY CARIBBEAN CITIZENSHIP BY INVESTMENT (CBI/CIP) TO THE EUROPEAN UNION ARE REAL AND ARE A VALID REASON TO INSIST ON TERMINATION BY 2028

While Saint Lucia's arrogant Minister of Investment ERNEST HILAIRE  makes angry statements, charging that the EU is not longer interested in CBIa reform, but only in termination, we hasten to explain why those programs are, in truth and in fact, a clear and present danger and national security risk to the democracies of the European Union. The desperate moves by the EC CBI and CIP states, attempting to change Europe's mind about  its 6/28 termination order, and their interest in sending a delegation to Brussels, to manipulate the European Commission's leadership, will fall flat; here's why. The EU faces an existential crisis, due to real concerns that Russia may test NATO's resolve in the coming years by invading one or more of its Members, after the war in Ukraine ends. 

Europe now knows that Russia has designs on returning the now democratically-elected states of Eastern Europe, who were, during the Cold War, either Soviet pawns, or neutral, to their prior status of effective control from Moscow. The construction of extensive new military forward bases and facilities, from Russia's small frontier with Norway, down through Finland and the Baltic states, south across all the countries that border western Russia, especially the Suwalki Gap, a vulnerable region which it is feared Russia will exploit in any future conflict with NATO.

All five of the Eastern Caribbean CBI passport-issuing states have played fast and loose with approval of applicants, since they began their respective economic citizenship programs, selling passports to know Russian organized crime members, PEPs and intelligence agents and spies. The inability of the EU to properly identify these individuals, many of whom work directly or indirectly for Moscow, is further complicated by a number of factors unique to Russia: The ability of individuals or CIU agencies to alter their true identities, made easier when transliterating names from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet; the payment of bribes to underpaid Caribbean government officials, and their autocratic and avaricious leaders; the lack sufficient personal identification data from official Russian sources; and intentional falsification of true identity, in exchange for illegal gratuities. That makes the Caribbean what we refer to as "Useful Idiots" for Moscow's designs on Europe.

All these issues allow Russian agents to penetrate the EU with impunity, to weaken the Member states through financial crime, espionage, false flag operations, the illicit purchase of dual-use good for military use, the acquisition of assets and local agents, and a host of other activities designed to weaken the EU, militarily, politically, economically and socially, in advance of a military campaign several years down the road. 

Europe doesn't need more Russian bad actors, employing their valued Caribbean visa-free entry with aliases,  running around its territory, and doing damage ahead of a war. For that reason alone, the 2028 termination date prudently set by the European Commission must remain set in stone, and all the Roosevelt Skerrits and Philip  J. Pierres who seek to stop it must be rebuffed and sent packing, when they show up in Brussels to change minds.