Analysts urge regional leaders to safeguard diplomacy

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Caribbean an­a­lysts are urg­ing re­gion­al gov­ern­ments to safe­guard col­lec­tive diplo­ma­cy as the Unit­ed States to­day hosts the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit, fo­cused on hemi­spher­ic se­cu­ri­ty that in­cludes on­ly two lead­ers from the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com).

The sum­mit, which will be held in Do­ral, Flori­da, will bring to­geth­er lead­ers from sev­er­al Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, along with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Guyana Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali. The rest of the 15-mem­ber Cari­com bloc was not in­vit­ed.

The meet­ing has sparked de­bate in the Caribbean about whether the re­gion is en­ter­ing a new phase of geopo­lit­i­cal com­pe­ti­tion and whether bi­lat­er­al en­gage­ment with Wash­ing­ton could weak­en Cari­com’s col­lec­tive voice.

In an opin­ion piece ti­tled “The Shield and the Si­lence: What the Do­ral Sum­mit Re­veals About the Caribbean’s Po­si­tion in a Chang­ing Hemi­sphere,” Pro­fes­sor C Justin Robin­son, pro vice chan­cel­lor and prin­ci­pal of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Five Is­lands Cam­pus, warned that the sum­mit re­flects shift­ing pow­er dy­nam­ics in the hemi­sphere.

Robin­son ar­gued that the in­vi­ta­tion of on­ly two Cari­com lead­ers ef­fec­tive­ly sep­a­rates them from the re­gion’s col­lec­tive diplo­mat­ic frame­work.

“Two Cari­com lead­ers were, in ef­fect, ex­tract­ed from a re­gion­al fo­rum and of­fered seats at a dif­fer­ent ta­ble, one where the agen­da, the terms, and the host were all Amer­i­can,” he wrote.

He al­so not­ed that sev­er­al key pri­or­i­ties iden­ti­fied by Caribbean lead­ers—such as cli­mate fi­nance, repara­to­ry jus­tice and eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion—do not ap­pear to be part of the sum­mit’s agen­da.

“Cli­mate fi­nance is not on the Do­ral agen­da. The Bridgetown Ini­tia­tive is not on the Do­ral agen­da. Repara­to­ry jus­tice is not on the Do­ral agen­da. The CSME is not on the Do­ral agen­da,” Robin­son said.

“What is on the agen­da is what Wash­ing­ton wants to dis­cuss, counter-nar­cotics, mi­gra­tion, and the con­tain­ment of Chi­nese eco­nom­ic in­flu­ence.”

Robin­son warned that while T&T and Guyana face ur­gent na­tion­al chal­lenges, in­clud­ing crime and ter­ri­to­r­i­al ten­sions, fo­cus­ing sole­ly on im­me­di­ate con­cerns could weak­en long-term re­gion­al lever­age.

“For Trinidad, the agen­da is writ­ten night­ly in body bags. For Guyana, it is etched in­to the bor­der posts creep­ing west­ward,” he wrote.

“The tragedy, and it is a pro­found one, is that by chas­ing the ur­gent, they aban­don the lever­age that might se­cure the fu­ture.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les ques­tioned the pre­cise ob­jec­tive of the pro­posed se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tive.

“Well, I’m not sure where the Amer­i­cans are go­ing with this se­cu­ri­ty shield that they are cre­at­ing,” Gon­za­les said in an in­ter­view.

“I think they have se­lect­ed a group of coun­tries in the hemi­sphere that are sup­posed to be very close to the Unit­ed States. And they are try­ing to work out some kind of deal with them.”

He not­ed that T&T and Guyana ap­pear to have been specif­i­cal­ly cho­sen for the ini­tia­tive. How­ev­er, he said the struc­ture and scope of the ini­tia­tive re­main un­clear.

“I’m not sure ex­act­ly where they are go­ing with this se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tive. Is it go­ing to be a mil­i­tary kind of al­liance? Are they plan­ning to put mil­i­tary bases in these coun­tries or de­ploy more sol­diers on the shores of these coun­tries? Or op­er­ate their coast guard and naval ves­sels to­geth­er with these coun­tries and so on to at­tack drug traf­fick­ers and so on? That is not clear.”

He said more in­for­ma­tion is need­ed be­fore the ini­tia­tive can be ful­ly as­sessed. Gon­za­les al­so ac­knowl­edged spec­u­la­tion that the ini­tia­tive could be aimed at lim­it­ing Chi­na’s in­flu­ence in the re­gion.

“There’s an el­e­ment of that in there, be­cause there’s some spec­u­la­tion about the shield be­ing used to keep the Chi­nese out of these coun­tries.”

How­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed that com­plete­ly stop­ping Chi­nese in­vest­ment or trade would be dif­fi­cult.

“I doubt, for in­stance, that it may stop the Chi­nese in­vest­ments in oil in Trinidad. We have Chi­nese in­vest­ment in Trinidad. We have Chi­nese in­vest­ment here al­ready in our gas busi­ness, and the Chi­nese in­vestors go along with the Amer­i­can in­vestors,” Gon­za­les said.

Dur­ing Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal re­vealed that Gov­ern­ment has been hold­ing dis­cus­sions with the Chi­nese state-owned Chi­na Na­tion­al Off­shore Oil Cor­po­ra­tion (CNOOC) about po­ten­tial in­volve­ment in the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor. CNOOC cur­rent­ly par­tic­i­pates in ma­jor off­shore de­vel­op­ments in neigh­bour­ing Guyana along­side Exxon­Mo­bil, one of the largest US-based oil com­pa­nies.