In a matter of days the US President, George Bush, will begin a state visit to the United Kingdom. When first considered two years ago, his stay as a guest of Queen Elizabeth II was far less controversial than it is now proving to be. At that time, there was in Britain public sympathy with both the US Administration and the US people over the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York.
Since then popular sentiment has changed as far as the US Administration is concerned. The US invaded Iraq with the active support of the United Kingdom but without the backing of the United Nations.
A swift and relatively easy military campaign enabled conservatives in the US administration to set aside a considered State Department plan for reconstruction in favour of ideas they had developed with a small group of Iraqi exiles. The result was in part, the chaotic and lawless scenes in and around Baghdad after the war and the subsequent and dramatic deterioration in the internal security situation in some parts of Iraq.
For the most part what little support there was among the British people for the US Administration has evaporated. The consequences of a policy of taking pre-emptive action based on doubtful intelligence have become apparent. No weapons of mass destruction have been found. The Government's actions have been laid bare to public gaze as result of the enquiry into the dubious circumstances surrounding the death of a Government scientist.
The result is that there is little popular support for the President's visit to the UK and the probability of demonstrations and widespread dislocation.
Saddam Hussein and his tyrannical regime may have gone, but in his place there is instability and danger in the low intensity war that is now developing. Iraq is not Vietnam, but the consequences should not be underestimated if the US, for reasons of domestic politics, decides over-rapidly to withdraw or hand power without the support of the UN, to an unready Iraqi administration.
Iraqis opposed to the occupation, aided by the alienating tactics of the US military and a sense of failing US commitment are creating dangerous alliances. There is evidence that those associated with al Qaeda are being drawn in to fight the US. They hope they can engineer a US withdrawal, a consequently unstable Iraqi administration and a civil war between the various groups within Iraq. This they believe will generate a fundamentalist-led revolution that might eventually take with it Saudi Arabia, its oil reserves and create a confrontation with the West.
This may all seem a long way from the concerns of the Caribbean but what happens in Iraq will have consequences for energy supplies, aid, international relationships, economic viability, regional security and cohesion.
Although no longer enunciated publicly there is still a sense of dismay among many Caribbean Governments that the United States with the support of Britain ignored the United Nations.
This feeling is particularly acute in the case of the United Kingdom. Britain's decision to support US pre-emptive actions in Iraq outside of the United Nations has damaged the region's confidence in Britain's attitude to multilateralism. There is a sense, unjustified but no less real, that Britain's moral conviction about the war enabled the US Administration to extend its power in a manner that could be repeated elsewhere.
To be fair the UK argues forcefully that there was enough cover for the invasion in the original UN resolution and that France's pronouncement to the effect that it would veto any further resolution meant that there was no other course of action. Moreover, London says with justification that without its modifying influence, the White House would have acted without any reference at all to the multilateral system, changing dangerously the power structure of the world.
The Caribbean position is that only the international rule of law can ensure sovereignty and integrity. It accepts that multilateral decision-making through the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation even if unpalatable is what will best protect small states against others that are wealthy and powerful.
Behind all of this there is a fear rarely enunciated publicly. That is an innate political and economic concern about the power of the United States born of the region's history and common experience before and during the colonial period. The region worries about the lack of respect in Washington for the sovereignty of the region. It is concerned about the inability of much of the US Administration to understand why the Caribbean has such a strong attachment to independence of action and democracy or places the rule of law above the pursuit of power.
Caribbean politicians suggest that this manifests itself in the region in many ways. They argue that Washington places the pursuit of homeland security on its third border above Caribbean security and is willing to discriminate and possibly divide the region if it is in its interests to do so.
They note it is moving towards an energy policy that will reorient its international focus towards supplies from regions of low conflict and has become more conditional in the terms it offers the region in trade negotiation and development assistance.
The consequences of trying to maintain an occupying force in Iraq become more apparent as each day passes. Less obvious is the effect it may have on the Caribbean. If the US withdraws from Iraq too rapidly and the internal situation deteriorates in that nation, there may be for the Caribbean unexpected costs and difficulties ahead.