They registered their intense unease with the U.S. government’s war in Iraq and caused the resignation of Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who symbolized his government’s Iraq policy.

Caribbean governments are among those who were unhappy with the U.S. war in Iraq. They regarded it as lacking in UN Security Council support and indicative of a readiness by the U.S. government to behave as a bully.

Like many others around the world, Caribbean governments would have quietly welcomed the Republican Party’s defeat and Mr. Rumsfeld’s departure in the hope that U.S. foreign policy – particularly the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes and unilateral action – would be curbed in favour of greater consensus building in the UN Security Council.

In the same week that the George W. Bush administration received what the U.S. President himself described as a “thumping” in the U.S. mid-term elections, two other hemispheric events occurred which would underscore the importance of the U.S. re-thinking its relationship with its Latin American and Caribbean neighbours.

The first was the election of Daniel Ortega, a former Marxist revolutionary who fought U.S.-backed insurgents in the 1980s, as the President of Nicaragua. The second was yet another vote in the United Nations General Assembly calling for an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba.

Ortega won the presidency in Nicaragua in spite of interference by U.S. officials to try to thwart his victory.

Paul Trivelli, the U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and Republican Congressman Dan Burton warned the Nicaraguan people not to vote for Ortega. Burton went as far as to say that foreign aid would be cut off if Ortega was elected.

It should be noted that Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez also intervened in the Nicaraguan elections by offering cheap oil and strongly advocating Ortega’s election.

Since the results of the Nicaraguan election, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, is reported to have said that the United States would respect the decision of the Nicaraguan people and see what policies the government follows before making decisions about future relations.

Mr. Ortega would be hard pressed to institute policies that would legitimately offend the U.S. Since the 1990s, successive Nicaraguan governments have sold more than 300 state-owned enterprises, liberalized its markets and entered a free trade arrangement with other Central American nations and the U.S.

Not unlike Mr. Bush’s present dilemma in which the U.S. Congress is dominated by the opposition Democratic Party, Mr. Ortega’s National Assembly is divided between four parties – two of them conservatives - with which he must make compromises.

This is all to the good. Both the U.S. and Nicaraguan administrations will have to temper their ambitions and work within the constraints they face.

On Cuba, the United Nations General Assembly again voted by 183 to 4 for an end to the U.S. embargo.

But for the U.S., Cuba is a different kettle of fish. U.S. policy in Cuba is still too closely tied to the fortunes of both the Republican and Democratic parties in domestic elections for any radical change to take place soon. The votes of the anti-Castro, Cuban-American community and lobby remain influential.

Nonetheless, there can be no doubt in the minds of policy makers in the U.S. that the global community – and the Caribbean countries especially – want to see the normalisation of relations between the U.S. and Cuba.

But, while Caribbean countries may quietly rejoice over the legislative constraints that have been placed on the Bush administration’s foreign policies particularly in Iraq, there are policies of the Democratic Party which should give rise to concern within the region.

The Democrats will now head many of the important committees in the House and Senate. Many Democratic representatives are hostile to Free Trade Agreements, regarding them as threats to U.S. jobs. They are also opposed to outsourcing of services like call centres and back-room accountancy to countries that could provide such services much cheaper than within the U.S.

Recently, Republican representatives in the Senate inserted language in this year's State Department spending bill that would bar the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) from using the U.S. taxpayer contribution for "activities or projects ... designed to hinder the flow of capital and jobs from high-tax jurisdictions to low-tax jurisdictions or to infringe on the sovereign right of jurisdictions to determine their own domestic policies."

It will be recalled that the OECD’s ‘Harmful Tax Competition Initiative’ had the backing of President Bill Clinton’s Democratic Administration, and adversely affected the financial services sectors of several Caribbean countries.

Passage of this appropriations bill is pending Congressional approval, and it is left to be seen how a Congress, in which the Democratic Party has the majority, will vote.

Further, the Caribbean is yet to negotiate a Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. Caught in the failed negotiations for a Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA) and preoccupied with its current negotiations with the European Union (EU) over Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA), the Caribbean has not seriously focussed on a free trade arrangement with the U.S.

Now, time may be running out to get negotiations for such an agreement firmly under way with a U.S. administration favourably disposed to free trade.

So, while the time is propitious for the U.S. to begin to rethink its policies toward its close neighbours in Latin America and the Caribbean to make its relationship with them more sympathetic and secure, it is also in the interest of Caribbean countries to intensify their lobbying work in the U.S.