The Week in Europe
By David Jessop
 

Who can be said to speak with authority for the Anglophone Caribbean? Why is the region’s leadership no longer able to exert leverage internationally or escape from the stasis that affects so much of its thinking?

 

These were the issues that lay largely unspoken at the heart of a conference in a country house in the English countryside last weekend. Those present were considering how security and prosperity might be achieved in the Caribbean. There was the usual recital of problems but few viable answers. The outlook was uniformly bleak despite the quiet economic progress presently being made in parts of the region.

 

In one of two outstanding presentations, an ex minister from the Caribbean noted that Europe and the world trading system were not creating a transition to the future, but a rupture with the past. The region had too narrow an industrial complex to survive. The world seemed intent on removing bananas, sugar and financial services from the Caribbean and the stability in which tourism can flourish. The end of the cold war had largely made the Caribbean irrelevant.  Its voice was not heard. It was in the ‘geography of nowhere’. Wholly absent was any form of social justice or recognition that small states could not be treated in the same way as larger emerging economies. “Could we”, he asked, “become failed states by 2025”.

 

In this sense the conference was not the usual talk shop. Rather it seemed to put a full stop at the end of the post-independence period, recognising that if the Caribbean was to ever achieve prosperity and security it would have to change the nature of its dialogue with the rest of the world. It needed to think strategically and have leaders akin to Michel Manley or Errol Barrow who could bring Caribbean authority to the world stage to change the rules of international trade and politics. 

 

Although not formally a speaker, it was Sir Shridath Ramphal who articulated what many wanted to say but could not find the words for. He noted in two short but vital interventions and to applause: “The Caribbean has to change the nature of the debate. It has to reintroduce morality into its dialogue with Europe and the wider world. It has to point to ethics and the relevance of history. We are being forced into reciprocity but there is no proportionality”. 

 

He noted too that the Caribbean’s failing was that it had signed up to the WTO’s strictures without any real analysis of the consequences and had subsequently engaged in trying to address the outcomes through intellectual argument that accepted its mercantilist premise. In Hong Kong the Caribbean may have to adopt spoiling tactics for, as he put it, the best of intentions. 

 

Another speaker, a European Parliamentarian and friend of the Caribbean also spoke out. She noted an alarming international assumption that problems in the Caribbean can be contained rather than treated in a developmental and holistic manner.

 

As you would expect, there was also much detailed discussion about bananas and sugar. Here the overwhelming sense was that in the long-term, niche markets for bananas or alternative uses for cane were the only viable way forward for a very few. The consensus seemed to be that the two industries were now history for much of the region. While there was a common acceptance that there had to be a measured transition for both with properly structured and sufficient EC support, the service sector represented the future. 

 

However, tourism could not alone or in all locations ensure prosperity. There was an unwillingness in the region’s governments to consider how to ensure the sector’s competitiveness, diversification and growth. This was reflected in the absence of any political approach that sought to join up the roles of ministers of tourism, security and trade so that tourism was given the same priority as industries in near to terminal decline.

 

There were harsh words about a Caricom that was largely seen as moribund and increasingly irrelevant. A regional authority with executive authority and the introduction of supra national laws were seen as ways forward. The political difficulties of achieving this were, however, well recognised and in private corridor discussion, the debate was about whether Caribbean Heads had the will or influence to be able to move the region forward from the models of the 1960s.

 

An interesting and new aspect of the conference was the growing awareness of the importance and paradoxically, the potentially divisive role of China and Venezuela’s involvement in the region. Brazil in contrast was seen as politically significant but only if it recognised that it aggressive economic approach was damaging to regional interests. India and South Africa’s interest was seen as nascent.

 

At the conference the old world was silent. A British Minister made a prepared speech but this apart, the senior officials from EU member states spoke of nothing other than energy. It seemed that they had consigned the Caribbean other than Trinidad to the margins of their thinking. For its part the European Commission participated but largely seemed to be gathering ideas for a new policy paper on its future relationship with the region, which it will publish early next year. 

 

As for the new world in the shape of the US it was simply absent, providing a wonderful metaphor for the policy vacuum it has created throughout the hemisphere as a result of its moral and ideological preoccupations and its all consuming focus on Iraq and terrorism.

 

Also notably missing was anyone from dynamic part of the region’s private sector. That is to say the large companies that are now investing, despite the difficulties involved, across the Caribbean and perhaps more importantly in Latin America and internationally. It seemed a measure of how far apart the private sector and its preoccupations have become from the concerns of government. 

 

Security in a Caribbean context and one of the conference's principal themes was recognised by all to be as much about development as the need to create the mechanisms and a properly funded and trained security system. In this context some senior participants noted that what in effect the region was being asked to do was guarantee at its own cost the security of the developed world. It was being required through the interdiction of narcotics and anti terrorism measures to defend the interests of the nationals of third nations. There was little recognition of the impact this had on budgets already under pressure as a result of the trade and other policies that the same nations were trying to enforce at the WTO.

 

The conference ended with more questions than answers. The overriding sense was that if no one was listening to the Caribbean, the moment had come when it must find ways with others to change the nature of the debate.

 

David Jessop is the Director of the Caribbean Council and can be contacted at [log in to unmask]

September 28th, 2005

 

 

 

 


		
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