Editorial | Reviewing diplomacy

This week’s review by Jamaica’s overseas diplomats and domestic-based policymakers provides an opportunity for a fundamental reorientation of the island’s foreign policy and diplomacy to meet what Kamina Johnson Smith rightly described as “shifting economic and geopolitical realities” in an unpredictable world.

For indeed, the old certainties of a US-led post-World War II, rules-based order, and driven by economic globalism and open trade, are on their last, unrecoverable legs. The replacement has not yet fully emerged. What, however, is clear, as this newspaper has been noting, is that it will be substantially shaped by security-aligned trading blocs, the demands of the climate crisis, and the pressures of new digital technologies, especially artificial intelligence (AI).

It will not be an easy environment for small, developing countries, but it is one to which Jamaica will have to adapt. In that context, an important early step of this week’s meeting must be an acknowledgement that Jamaica cannot navigate the new environment on its own – a fact that Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness essentially conceded in his recent speech in Panama, when he urged greater policy coordination by Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries on global issues.

Declarations alone, and limiting coordination to LAC, will not be sufficient. Given the geopolitical dynamics of the hemisphere, Jamaica must first work closely with its partners in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the regional integration movement with which it already has global partnerships. At the same time, CARICOM must pursue common interests with the countries of the Global South, especially natural allies in Africa and Asia.

Meanwhile, even as they assert their individual and collective sovereignty, the new global situation will demand skilled diplomacy by Jamaica and its CARICOM partners to preserve established and long-standing partnerships with the great powers.

NEED FOR DELICATE DIPLOMACY

The post-World War order has long been stressed. While it provided substantial predictability and offered a level of protection to small countries, it operated with neither fairness nor equity. Its systems were heavily weighted in the interest of the powerful.

But even the limited insulation enjoyed by small countries has been upended in the past year, since Donald Trump’s return as America’s president.

The mercurial Mr Trump has used high tariffs and access to the lucrative US market as geopolitical and economic cudgels. He has, in some cases, supplemented these tolls with America’s military might.

The upshot: increasing global fragmentation, with countries and regions seeking insulation through bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements, and the encouraging, especially in the case of the United States, of ‘friend-shoring’ arrangements.

Indeed, Mr Trump’s national security strategy, published in December, not only reasserts the Monroe Doctrine of US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, but specifically stressed that US alliances in the Americas, and the terms on which it provides aid, will be centred on countries in the region “winding down adversarial outside influence”. Which, of course, is code for China.

Again, there is the need for delicate diplomacy by Jamaica and the other countries of CARICOM. In recent decades, Beijing has been the primary source of investment and loans for Jamaica’s big infrastructure projects – as is the case with much of the region. But the island’s tourism-dependent economy gets over two-thirds of its visitors from the United States, which is also its major trading partner.

At the same time, Jamaica is at a geographically strategic location in the Americas, which provides it with advantages as a supply chain and potential ‘near-shoring’ hub for the hemisphere, including the United States.

Further, as The Gleaner has previously noted, Jamaica and CARICOM already have shared trade agreements with Britain, the European Union and Canada. In the case of Canada, CARICOM should seek to have this expanded into a full free trade, but with a development support component. Jamaica, which has the lead in CARICOM for trade negotiations, would have a pivotal role to play in this matter, which is why it must be on the agenda for this week’s meeting.

BUILD PARTNERSHIPS

The emerging trade and economic realignments will demand not only enhanced domestic capacity and productivity, but a diplomacy whose role includes helping to align national production with the due diligence and regulatory requirements of foreign markets.

Further, Mr Trump’s rejection of the climate crisis notwithstanding, it is clear that foreign policy, and its supporting diplomacy, has to be in tandem with the broad acceptance, including by US industry, of its reality. Decarbonised and green production will increasingly influence trade arrangement and access to global markets.

In that regard, Jamaica’s policymakers and diplomats have to be adept at making the case in global negotiations for low-cost financing for developing countries for climate adaptation and decarbonised production.

As this meeting seeks to fashion, as Foreign Minister Johnson Smith put it, “an aligned foreign policy”, the participants must also internalise what Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, said in Davos about the world’s middle powers: if they are not at the table together, they will be on the menu. Countries like Jamaica are small morsels.

So, Kingston has to build partnerships. First with CARICOM, and with potential partners in the Americas, as well as natural allies in Africa and Asia.

In the coming weeks, Jamaica’s envoys in Ottawa, Brasilia and Mexico City should be especially nimble, alert and resourceful. So, too, should be the high commissioner in Abuja, covering West Africa as well as his counterpart in Pretoria for southern Africa. A full mission in Nairobi may also be advisable. Additionally, the high commissioner in New Delhi should become especially aggressive in seeking to leverage Jamaica’s long-standing good relations with the world’s fourth-largest economy.