At one time, a Caribbean na­tion stood at the front of a move­ment of small, de­vel­op­ing na­tions try­ing to as­sert their place in the world.

This "non-aligned" move­ment, with Cu­ba tak­ing the lead, stood in de­fi­ance of the great world pow­ers who, at the time, de­mand­ed al­le­giance to ei­ther the cap­i­tal­ist Amer­i­can mod­el of gov­er­nance or the so­cial­ist So­vi­et mod­el.

While the Cold War is over and the non-aligned move­ment has been rel­e­gat­ed to an in­ter­est­ing foot­note in his­to­ry, it ap­pears as though an­oth­er coali­tion of small na­tions is at­tempt­ing to voice its de­fi­ance of the in­flu­ence wield­ed by the pow­er­ful of the world. And again, it ap­pears as though a Caribbean na­tion is at­tempt­ing to take the lead in this move­ment.

Last month, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­dressed an as­sem­bly of the Unit­ed Na­tions. In her re­marks, she out­lined the con­cerns of small na­tions of the world when it comes to in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and how they in­ter­act with these small state play­ers.

The most no­table sub­jects of this ad­dress were the World Bank and the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) and how they in­ter­act with small and vul­ner­a­ble states.

The Prime Min­is­ter not­ed the per­ceived risks in­volved when these lend­ing in­sti­tu­tions do busi­ness with small states and of­fered praise for re­forms that have been made that ap­pear to re­flect a con­cern for small state loan re­cip­i­ents.

How­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar went on to add that "a gap still per­sists" and "the old ap­proach is not work­ing."

Small and de­vel­op­ing states con­tin­ue to strug­gle with the terms and con­di­tions that come with aid from these in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions. This is part­ly due to the fact that the terms and cri­te­ria are de­vel­oped by in­sti­tu­tions from large states in near iso­la­tion from the small­er states that they are in­tend­ed to be in­vest­ing in and de­vel­op­ing.

The Prime Min­is­ter not­ed many de­ci­sions re­gard­ing in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ics and fi­nance are made by G20 states and im­posed on small­er and de­vel­op­ing states with no re­gard to how those de­ci­sions will af­fect them. She laid out her ar­gu­ment as one of jus­tice de­nied to the many small states of the world.

To rem­e­dy this eco­nom­ic in­jus­tice, she called for the cre­ation of a "more in­clu­sive and con­sul­ta­tive mech­a­nism" with­in the IMF that would as­sure that small economies have a voice in in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nance. She called for fur­ther re­align­ment of the chairs of the IMF ex­ec­u­tive board to re­flect the con­cerns of small economies of the world.

This ad­dress be­fore the Unit­ed Na­tions was cou­pled with her vis­it to the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank in Wash­ing­ton where the Prime Min­is­ter raised the is­sue of the de­clin­ing num­ber of Caribbean na­tion­als with se­nior man­age­ment po­si­tions.

The Prime Min­is­ter is not the on­ly one who has raised the is­sue that fi­nanc­ing the gov­er­nance of small states re­quires dif­fer­ent think­ing and dif­fer­ent prac­tices than are typ­i­cal­ly de­mand­ed of these large, multi­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial firms.

Win­ston Dook­er­an, then min­is­ter of fi­nance, was ad­dress­ing a meet­ing of Eclac (Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean) in 2011 when he spoke of a "new diplo­ma­cy in in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs for small states."

He, too, called for a re­view of how small states and small economies are rep­re­sent­ed in in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

"Some of us have found our­selves in an ap­pendage re­la­tion­ship with a larg­er coun­try, which doesn't nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent a com­mon in­ter­est."

In an ef­fort to be the leader of the di­a­logue, Dook­er­an went on to sug­gest that all small economies should have a role in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process when it comes to these de­vel­op­ment loans that have such a dra­mat­ic ef­fect on the fu­ture of these small economies.

The ac­tivism of Trinida­di­an politi­cians is of note be­cause the na­tion is not re­liant up­on these in­sti­tu­tions for sur­vival.

While T&T de­sires for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment to help stim­u­late and grow the econ­o­my, the en­er­gy sec­tor pro­vides a sol­id eco­nom­ic foun­da­tion which negates the need that many small states have to ac­quire loans from in­sti­tu­tions like the IMF and World Bank sim­ply to pay their debts.

This ad­vo­ca­cy of some of T&T's lead­ing po­lit­i­cal fig­ures could be an at­tempt to lift the coun­try up as a leader amongst the small na­tions of the world. If the strat­e­gy works and the small states of the world were able to per­suade the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sec­tor to look at small state as­sis­tance dif­fer­ent­ly, it could be of great ben­e­fit to the many small na­tions that take on debt in an ef­fort to grow their economies.

Win­ning a David ver­sus Go­liath bat­tle of this na­ture would most as­sured­ly en­hance the pres­tige of T&T glob­al­ly, per­haps thrust­ing it in­to a glob­al­ly-re­spect­ed po­si­tion sim­i­lar to that held by Cu­ba some 40 years ago.

–MICHAEL W EDGHILL

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