Coping with fiasco
Editorial
Stabroek News
April 16, 2003
In less than eight weeks, two meetings of Caricom Heads of Government summoned to deal with momentous issues, have on both occasions ended in seeming fiasco. First, meeting in Port-of-Spain in mid February, Heads of Government kicked sideways proposals for political unity and resorted to the appointment of a “sub-committee of themselves to consider the matter further”. Somewhat hilariously, they designated what was clearly a Prime Ministerial sub-committee a group of experts, a device doubtless intended to avoid commitment.
Then two weekends ago in Montego Bay, Jamaica a meeting of the Caricom Bureau to which all Caricom Heads had been invited, was attended by only three heads of government of Caricom’s fifteen. The meeting was reportedly summoned to consider a Caricom position in reaction to expressed US concerns, if not threats, about the Caricom states’ failure to support US action in Iraq. It will be recalled that the Port-of-Spain summit had issued a statement on Iraq in which they stressed “that any military action taken outside of a UN Security Council mandate would undermine the integrity of the UN and considerably weaken the multilateral system and its machinery for preserving peace and security”. It was expected that the Montego Bay meeting would have issued a follow up statement now that war was being waged and especially because Caricom States had failed in their efforts at the UN meeting to find a unified position and had consequently, except for Jamaica, made no statement. The “failed” Summit in Montego issued no statement. A statement was only issued out of Dominica on Monday.
The situation does not so much reflect a loss in commitment to the regional movement as the apparent unwillingness of Caricom leaders to come to grips with fundamental change in their international milieu.
The Bureau consists of the current Chairman of the Summit, Prime Minister Pierre Charles of Dominica, who chaired the Jamaica meeting, the immediate past Chairman, President Jagdeo who did not attend, Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, host and Chairman of the next summit together with Secretary General Edwin Carrington. The origins of the Bureau derived from the rejection by a majority of Heads of the recommendation of the West Indian Commission that Caricom be straightened institutionally by the creation of a Caricom Commission. This body would have been modelled on the European Commission which it is generally agreed is the “engine” of European integration. However as Vaughan Lewis noted it “was opposed not only by a majority of the political directorate but also by the technocratic leadership of the Caricom Secretariat who tended to see it as leading to the creation of a dual-headed constitutional arrangement with a blurred division of roles and labour”. To head off the proposal for a Commission the Caricom Heads established a Bureau. The Bureau arrangement as it exists elsewhere is essentially a mechanism which manages the affairs of a movement in between its major decision-making conferences. It has therefore always been difficult to see what is its utility in the small compass of the Caricom region, where there is easy communication and access.
There was a clear and urgent need for a Caricom statement, especially after the threats made by US Presidential Advisor for Latin America and the Caribbean Otto Reich in Barbados three weeks ago. In this connection Dr Vaughan Lewis, now Professor of International Relations at the Institute for International Relations at UWI, St Augustine, said in a BBC Caribbean report that such a Caricom statement might have pointed out that the Caricom position was identical with that of the two states closest to the USA, geographically and in other ways, namely Canada and Mexico.
Vaughan Lewis’s suggestion is of particular significance. It points to the fact that in the current international situation where the UN and the international law and norms on which Caricom diplomacy has usually relied are under challenge by the overarching power of the USA, Caricom small states may increasingly have to seek diplomatic leverage from the diplomatic practice and foreign policy alignments of powerful Latin American neighbours and Canada. Caricom diplomacy has traditionally looked beyond the region for support, in particular to Afro-Asia, the Non Aligned Movement, the African, Caribbean and Pacific group of countries (ACP) and so on. In future there may be need for greater focus on the OAS where as English speaking states located in the Caribbean/Latin American region they could play an “interpretive” role between the Latin States among whom they are located and the English speaking states to the North with whom they share institutions and language.
But to return to Mr Otto Reich. Having failed to secure senate approval for his nomination as an Assistant Secretary of State he was appointed by President Bush to the White House as a Presidential Advisor. His remarks in Barbados should not therefore be dismissed lightly. In the course of his remarks he drew attention to the existence in the Caribbean of a dictatorship namely Cuba. And it seems probable that given dominant US concerns Cuba could become a focal issue in the US/Caricom relationship. Thus it is useful to ponder how Caricom perspectives on Cuba differ from those of the US.
Cuba is geographically part of the plantation Caribbean and therefore shares much of the consequential heritage in social and economic structure with the Caricom states. Caricom peoples view Cuba as a kind of David standing up to a Goliath. Until recent years the region’s left leaning intellectuals found in Cuba a model on which to focus aspirations. When the four Caricom Heads of Government initiated diplomatic recognition of Cuba some 30 years ago they were responding to an important strand in West Indian feeling. The recognition was also an assertion of manhood, of sovereignty in the teeth of US displeasure. Over the years Cuba’s high achievement in health and education have deepened linkages with Caricom States who have benefited from the services of Cuban doctors and a wide range of training for Caricom nationals.
But from the US perspective, Cuba is unfinished business. It should be recalled that in the l970’s there were socialist regimes in Jamaica, Grenada and Guyana with similar tendencies in Dominica and next door in Suriname. US strategists perceived an arc of conspiracy strategy from Havana, through Kingston, Roseau, St. Georges, Georgetown to Paramaribo. There was in Caricom the now nearly forgotten assertion of ideological pluralism, a doctrine which contended that despite differences in ideology and hence differences in internal systems, all states could be committed members of Caricom - a doubtful contention. Girvan has pointed out that “the debt and adjustment crisis of the 1980s, the collapse of the socialist experiments in Jamaica, Grenada and Guyana and the end of the Cold war...were developments that paved the way for a regional consensus on the necessity of market oriented policy reforms...”. From the US perspective Cuba remains the sole source in the Caribbean of an unacceptable ideology. More recently it should be recalled there has been a US intervention in Haiti to get rid of a military dictatorship.
Reich’s remarks must be taken seriously, as the hawks in the Bush White House see the military victory in Iraq as having a significant demonstration effect and are speculating as to where next President Bush will focus.
It is also disturbing that for some time John R. Bolton, US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International security, has been asserting but without proof that Cuba has the resources for producing chemical and biological agents and has been assisting other states.
It has not helped that at this very time Cuba has arrested about 80 dissidents and after closed door trials from which diplomats and the media were excluded has handed down prison sentences ranging upwards to 28 years. In addition last week three Cubans who hijacked a ferry and attempted unsuccessfully to sail it to Florida were summarily tried and executed by firing squad. This brings to an end a long period of “tolerance” in which numerous states including Caricom states have been able to maintain unruffled relations with Havana.
It is not clear what is the motivation for the Cuban action which it must have foreseen would bring widespread condemnation and postpone large scale assistance from the EU which has just opened an office in Havana. It may be that it was felt that any uprising at this time might have provided too easy an occasion for external intervention.
Is Caricom capable of crafting the necessary carefully announced position and response if the situation in Cuba becomes an issue in Caricom’s relations with the superpower?
What is the way forward? Maintaining a common front in relation to the external world and speaking with one voice through the coordination of foreign policies must remain the essential basis for Caricom diplomacy but, as Stabroek News noted editorially on April 10, the arrangement is in need of overhaul. The following is advanced for consideration as Caricom seeks new approaches to its external relations.
Solidarity among very small states was never self-sufficient. It needed amplification through bodies such as the Non-Aligned Movement and the UN General Assembly, bodies now under challenge. Hence there is need for new amplifiers and sources of leverage may be, for example through deepening the linkages with the Rio Group of Latin American Foreign Ministers which has just met with the EU in Greece or with the UK through the Caricom/UK Forum, or directly with EU Foreign Ministers. At the very least, there should be an open line to Javier Solana, the EU Foreign Policy Chief. Some contact with the bodies mentioned above already exists; Foreign Minister Insanally represented Caricom at the just concluded meeting of the Rio Group in Greece. However the linkages should be deepened so that those bodies understand, adopt and support Caricom positions as the survival policies of vulnerable small states.
