Wes­ley Gib­bings

A lead­ing Caribbean in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert and re­tired diplo­mat is sug­gest­ing that Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) coun­tries are not suf­fi­cient­ly tak­ing ad­van­tage of their nu­mer­i­cal strength on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

One prob­lem, says Rudy In­sanal­ly, for­mer for­eign min­is­ter of Guyana, is that very of­ten small states "are too con­cerned with keep­ing up with the Jone­ses and do­ing things like how X and Y are do­ing it, when we ought to be think­ing for our­selves." In­sanal­ly, who has served in mul­ti­ple high-lev­el po­si­tions with­in the Unit­ed Na­tions sys­tem, spoke on the is­sue at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) when he launched his lat­est book: Mul­ti­lat­er­al Diplo­ma­cy for Small States: The Art of Let­ting Oth­ers Have Your Way.

In­sanal­ly feels the 15-mem­ber re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tion very of­ten for­gets that "small states have nu­mer­i­cal strength which gives them the ad­van­tage" when in­ter­na­tion­al de­ci­sions are be­ing made.

In­sanal­ly did not men­tion it, but there are re­ports that the Cari­com bloc with­in the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) may well blow the re­gion's chances of hold­ing the top po­si­tion with­in the hemi­spher­ic body with the ap­par­ent with­draw­al of sup­port for OAS As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Al­bert Ramdin, by his own coun­try, Suri­name, and ap­par­ent jock­ey­ing for po­si­tion by oth­er Cari­com diplo­mats. In In­sanal­ly's view, Cari­com coun­tries "rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant vot­ing bloc which, if wise­ly utilised, can bring them valu­able po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic re­turns.

"The gov­ern­ments of small states need to be more imag­i­na­tive in in­vent­ing a for­eign pol­i­cy and diplo­ma­cy to bet­ter serve their in­ter­ests and cir­cum­stances," the vet­er­an diplo­mat said. He be­moaned the fact that "usu­al­ly we are re­act­ing to some­thing that's pre­sent­ed by the de­vel­oped coun­tries in­stead of hav­ing some­thing in our own back pock­ets."

"It is al­ways more dif­fi­cult to get your way if you are re­spond­ing to some­thing than if you took the trou­ble of putting it for­ward your­self," In­sanal­ly added.The high­ly-dec­o­rat­ed In­sanal­ly is hold­er of Guyana's Gold­en Ar­row of Achieve­ment, Cacique Crown of Ho­n­our and, in 1973, was award­ed Venezuela's Or­der of the Lib­er­a­tor (Gran Cor­don). In 2009, he was con­ferred with Japan's Or­der of the Ris­ing Sun.