Nand C. Bardouille | Why CARICOM’s diplomatic nadir lingers

A closely watched recent meeting of Caribbean Community (CARICOM) foreign ministers called for the bloc’s member states to lean into “unified action” in the face of what its Secretary-General Carla Barnett characterised as an “unpredictable global landscape”, underscoring the importance of a so-called “dual approach”.

In reference to what it states is the evolving geopolitical landscape, the meeting communique (in part) conveys the following: “Ministers asserted that safeguarding Caribbean sovereignty requires a dual approach including intensifying foreign policy coordination for greater convergence to navigate great power rivalries and accelerating the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) to ensure regional food and energy security.”

Driven largely by duelling perspectives on the ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine, pitting Trinidad and Tobago against virtually all its sister CARICOM states, their differences are deep ‌and significant. Thus, disagreements have also arisen over traditional approaches to and broad principles informing the conduct of such small states’ international relations. 

Whereas Trinidad and Tobago has forcefully backed the Donroe Doctrine, oil-rich Guyana has adopted a more nuanced stance. At the end of the day, its vital security needs and significant energy interests are deciding factors in respect of that positioning. 

Rather than bringing these states closer together, resultant foreign policy and security-related actions have fomented mistrust. Instructively, Trinidad and Tobago has seized on this moment to raise a host of bloc-level governance issues.

Caught in a now months-long diplomatic nadir, the regional grouping is eying a way forward. 

Yet, there is doubt in some quarters that the recently concluded Twenty-Ninth Meeting of the Council for Foreign and Community Relations or COFCOR – an organ of the Community comprising ministers with responsibility for the foreign affairs of member states – moved the needle. (Trinidad and Tobago, along with some other member states, were not represented at ministerial level at this meeting held on May 20-21 in Suriname.)  

STRATEGIC AUTONOMY: THE POST-COLONIAL CARIBBEAN STATE AS AN INTERNATIONAL ACTOR 

There should be little doubt that in the current geopolitical context, which also turns on renewed great-power competition, strategic autonomy is the watchword for CARICOM member states. (Strategic autonomy is the ability to act independently to uphold the national interest, exercising foreign and security policy with due regard to geopolitical dynamics.) 

In moments of diplomatic churn as regards the post-independence journey of the bloc’s 14 sovereign member states, strategic autonomy has been a recurrent foreign policy-related theme. Of note, with the exception of Haiti, those members gained their independence from the 1960s to the 1980s.

The Anglophone members previously fell under direct British colonial administration as plantation economies within the British Empire, which peaked during the period of Pax Britannica. When that international system gave way to Pax Americana, those mostly small islands had to once again navigate a shifting landscape of hegemony.    

Pursuant to the advent of the Monroe Doctrine, the US had long since come to think of the Caribbean as its “backyard”. Whereas this doctrine sought to push back against European hegemony in the region, though, the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine wielded a “big stick” to assert US primacy.

The following reflections of a then-senior US naval officer (titled: ‘The Caribbean – An American Lake’), published in 1941, capture well this point: “But with the acquisition of our new bases the picture changes and once more the opportunity is ours to make the Caribbean an American lake – not a closed sea, but an open highway with the United States Navy in charge of all the traffic lights on this particular corner of world trade.” 

The US attempted to harden its hegemonic grip in relation to the Caribbean as the Cold War got underway, leveraging its containment strategy. Washington’s advancement of US dominance regionally – including to secure the nearby Panama Canal – took the form of the expansion of naval and air bases, as well as the increased use of associated economic and diplomatic tools.  

It was the Cuban Revolution and wide-ranging Soviet backing of post-revolution Cuba that raised the stakes considerably for Washington. And as the island became a primary flashpoint in the Cold War, the Caribbean became perilously volatile in the 1960s.

There were decision-makers at the time within the Anglophone Caribbean territories in question first emerging from the colonial yoke that, given increasing strategic competition among great powers, sought to advance strategic autonomy and lend to regional stability. The father of post-independence Barbados is a standout, given his now well-known ‘Friends of All, Satellites of None’ foreign policy doctrine.    

In his speech on the occasion of the admission of Barbados to the United Nations (UN) on December 9, 1966, then-Prime Minister of Barbados Errol Barrow underscored:

We have devised the kind of foreign policy which is consistent with our national situation and which is also based on the current realities of international politics. We have no quarrels to pursue and we particularly insist that we do not regard any Member State as our natural opponent. We shall not involve ourselves in sterile ideological wranglings because we are exponents, not of the diplomacy of power, but of the diplomacy of peace and prosperity. We will not regard any great Power as necessarily right in a given dispute unless we are convinced of this, yet at the same time we will not view the great Powers with perennial suspicion merely on account of their size, their wealth, or their nuclear potential. We will be friends of all, satellites of none.

There are good reasons to believe that, regionally, this non-aligned foreign policy doctrine has wide resonance in principle. That said, the post-independence history of sovereign CARICOM member states’ international relations is such that differences in foreign policy-related approaches and a plurality of viewpoints have obtained. (Indeed, to the degree that they may be generative of differing interests, the bloc has an institutional apparatus in place to “establish measures to co-ordinate the foreign policies of the Member States of the Community”.)

But perhaps the most consequential issue is what the last few decades of the Cold War era revealed about those post-colonial Caribbean states. For them, this period of intense geopolitical, ideological and economic rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union posed a threat to their strategic autonomy, which is informed by such tenets as: (i) sovereignty and the sovereign equality of all states; (ii) non-interference in the internal affairs of states (with caveats); and (iii) respect for and adherence to international law, along with the UN Charter.

No surprise, then, that the great powers’ revival of a spheres of influence-based international order, coming at the expense of (once) US-led liberal internationalism, is being closely watched by contemporary Caribbean leaders.

They are also keenly aware that all this has worsened the strain on the processes of international cooperation and multilateralism. 

As the age of geopolitical fragmentation takes root, along with the world’s “multipolarisation”, global crises are multiplying and the UN is being unprecedentedly tested. This is a perilous moment for the global body – a cornerstone of the postwar international order. 

In a context where international organizations have an outsized place in their diplomatic playbook, amplifying their voices and safeguarding their interests on the international stage, this geopolitical moment is yet another threat to CARICOM member states’ strategic autonomy.  

But these states’ international politics-related regional identity and strategic posture, which have routinely portrayed them as sticklers for the enforcement of the rules-based international order, are now facing a challenge not just from without but from within. 

THE CHALLENGE FROM WITHIN THE REGIONAL FOLD

In this latter regard, we should recognize the role of Trinidad and Tobago’s strong foreign policy-related embrace of the ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine.

This doctrine has placed renewed US focus on the Western Hemisphere (see the US National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy (NDS)), opening the door to “a doctrinal shift: from development-centered security and influence competition toward a force-first model of hemispheric deterrence grounded in counter-criminal warfare.” 

The United States’ recent interventionist approach in the Caribbean comes to mind. Having emerged as the thorniest of issues in this delicate moment in intra-CARICOM relations, such interventionism is backed by Trinidad and Tobago.  

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar strongly rejects the long-standing regional framing of the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, aligning her country instead with the US logic of intervention. On this basis, Port of Spain has been “deepening cooperation with Washington to counter transnational crime, confront malign actors, and pursue mutually beneficial economic cooperation”.  

CARICOM member states do not harbour affection for Trinidad and Tobago’s foreign policy outlook in that regard. And virtually all are quietly lamenting how that founder CARICOM member’s unrestrained backing of ‘Operation Southern Spear’ and ‘Operation Absolute Resolve’ has deepened divisions over foreign policy – harming trust and unity.

In short, Persad-Bissessar and senior government officials have distanced Trinidad and Tobago from “the principle of maintaining the Caribbean Region as a Zone of Peace and the importance of dialogue and engagement towards the peaceful resolution of disputes and conflict”. 

For CARICOM, historically, the Zone of Peace concept has served as a foundational strategic autonomy-related matter per the bloc’s traditional emphasis on multilateral diplomacy and international cooperation. A departure from this approach carries grave risks, according to some foreign policy analysts, not least because it lends to the conceptual framing of maritime security. 

In this framing, for CARICOM member states, security encompasses traditional border defence with attention also given to human, economic and environmental security in respect of non-traditional threats. This regional thinking is reflected in the Caribbean Maritime Security Strategy and Implementation Plan, whose security-related logic does not hinge on militarization imperatives. (According to Washington, such US deployments in the Caribbean target drug-trafficking networks.)

Published in 2023, this document complements the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the significant extent to which such blue economy-minded small states are invested in that international legal framework. With an eye to securing their interests, CARICOM member states deem the UNCLOS to be an important diplomatic tool. Crucially, it upholds sovereign rights in relation to maritime jurisdictions (of note, Exclusive Economic Zones). It also empowers signatories to develop marine resources, manage fisheries and secure their borders.

The disruptive impacts of US military operations in the Caribbean, as media outlets have reported, “threaten the region’s fishing, shipping and tourism industries”. Along with some other regional leaders, Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley has not held back in calling attention to the deleterious effects of such operations. 

Many in the region have been left wondering whether Washington is minded of such implications, whose effects are especially felt in trade and commercial terms. As small island and low-lying coastal developing states, CARICOM member states are dependent on international maritime trade and supply chains. 

With regard to the UNCLOS, it provides legal cover for these states to resist any actions of (large) countries that may disrupt free navigation and disproportionately visit harm on them or otherwise interfere with the peaceful use of the high seas. Insofar as it furnishes the legal basis for international maritime rights and associated sovereign equality, UNCLOS also provides for CARICOM member states to call out the militarization of the high seas; thus, acting to hold up the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.  

However, this approach to regional security is at odds with the Trump administration’s “heavy-handed approach” to or strategy for the United States’ third border, which has found favour with Trinidad and Tobago. Notably, in explaining her government’s stance on this matter, Persad-Bissessar has called attention to the fact that “the country has suffered from the deteriorating security situation in nearby Venezuela that has resulted in increased drug trafficking, gang violence, and homicides in Trinidad and Tobago”.

IT’S TIME FOR A STRATEGIC AUTONOMY-RELATED REALITY CHECK

While COFCOR Chair Melvin Bouva’s recent exhortations for CARICOM member states to embrace “unified action … for navigating geopolitical uncertainty” are commendable, the reality is a growing divergence of foreign policy mindsets on strategic autonomy within the CARICOM bloc stands in the way of that charge.

Trump 2.0 will continue to test regional unity, which – to his credit – Bouva places a great deal of stock in. This test will likely play out especially in the realm of maritime security, considering that US homeland defence and economic security loom large in the NDS.

China’s relations with nine CARICOM member states, which have come to benefit from that country’s Belt and Road Initiative-backed projects, are also increasingly in Washington’s geopolitical crosshairs.

Shield of the Americas members Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago have already been roped into renewed Sino-US rivalry, most recently via an American-orchestrated joint statement condemning what has been characterized as targeted economic coercion by China pertaining to the alleged detention of Panama-flagged vessels.

It is also instructive that both Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago reserved their positions on a recently issued COFCOR statement on Cuba that, inter alia, “expresses its profound concern regarding the ongoing and intensifying economic, commercial, and financial measures imposed upon the Republic of Cuba.” The statement also reaffirmed “the need for the preservation of the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace”.

This statement comes against the backdrop of the Trump administration ratcheting up pressure on the Cuban government, saber-rattling and telegraphing military action to bring about regime change as regards the communist island. 

In the final analysis, amid shifting geopolitical dynamics, the bloc is experiencing significant internal disunity driven by diverging foreign policy positions among its member states in respect of strategic autonomy. CARICOM member states are divided over key foreign policy issues and the broader security architecture, particularly their response to and duelling perspectives on the Donroe Doctrine. 

While most states remain skeptical and cautious, upholding traditional multilateral principles based on the UN Charter to backstop their strategic autonomy efforts, Trinidad and Tobago instead controversially supports US actions – including military interventions – straining regional unity. 

The 51st Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM, scheduled for July 5-8, would do well to look (in part) at this strategic autonomy-related big picture. 

Regional leaders will have to come to terms with the fact that this geopolitical moment has remade CARICOM and that divergent qua competing strategic autonomy narratives within the regional fold also have a great deal to do with it.    

- Dr. Nand C. Bardouille, Ph.D., is the manager of The Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean in the Institute of International Relations at The University of the West Indies (The UWI) St. Augustine Campus, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. The views expressed here are his own. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com. ONLINE ONLY COMMENTARY.