Tony Fras­er

CLR James once de­scribed Caribbean peo­ples as be­ing amongst the most mod­ern, they hav­ing been at the cen­tre of the 19th cen­tu­ry in­dus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion in Britain.

Over the last week, the Caribbean was again cen­tre stage to an evolv­ing in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment as the su­per pow­er of the 20th cen­tu­ry, the Unit­ed States, and the emerg­ing pow­er of the 21st cen­tu­ry, the Peo­ple's Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, came to Port-of-Spain and by ex­ten­sion the Caribbean (Eng­lish, Span­ish, French and Cre­ole-speak­ing) to un­der­take strate­gic geo-po­lit­i­cal jock­ey­ing for po­si­tions.

The US Vice Pres­i­dent, Joe Biden, es­sen­tial­ly said by his pres­ence, that the Caribbean con­tin­ues to be the Amer­i­can back­yard, even if at times oth­ers are al­lowed to pass through. On the oth­er side with a fair amount of qui­et ag­gres­sion, the emerg­ing pow­er came from the Far East to as­sert that "both Chi­na and Trinidad and To­ba­go be­long to the de­vel­op­ing world, we have sim­i­lar views on in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al is­sues and we hope to share views on the re­form of the in­ter­na­tion­al sys­tem and cli­mate change."

What is more, Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping made the point that "Chi­na al­ways looks on its re­la­tion­ship with the Caribbean from a strate­gic per­spec­tive and we are com­mit­ted to the build­ing of a com­pre­hen­sive and co-op­er­a­tive part­ner­ship." Fur­ther, he point­ed­ly sought to iden­ti­fy Chi­na as a de­vel­op­ing coun­try.

He did not elab­o­rate on Chi­na's "strate­gic per­spec­tive" in re­la­tion to the Caribbean but procur­ing raw ma­te­ri­als for its in­dus­trio-tech­no ma­chine would not be a bad guess. But even more sig­nif­i­cant is that part of the mis­sion of the Chi­nese Pres­i­dent was to gain vi­tal geo-po­lit­i­cal sup­port from Caribbean coun­tries in the West­ern Hemi­sphere, a re­gion once said to be off-lim­its to "for­eign" pow­ers.

As a means of ex­plain­ing his pres­ence in the re­gion, Vice Pres­i­dent Biden said: "I'm here be­cause Pres­i­dent Oba­ma want­ed me to have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to di­a­logue with all of you and be­cause our coun­try is deeply in­vest­ed and wants to be­come more deeply in­vest­ed in a part­ner­ship with all the na­tions of the Caribbean."

In his wake, the US vice pres­i­dent left the Trade and In­vest­ment Frame­work Agree­ment. The in­ten­tion of this agree­ment is to build on the Caribbean Basin Ini­tia­tive and to co-op­er­ate in se­cu­ri­ty, im­mi­gra­tion and oth­er mat­ters and to ex­tend con­tin­u­ing good­will to en­hance tra­di­tion­al hu­man and cul­tur­al re­la­tion­ships with the Caribbean on its Third Bor­der.

In the in­stance of Pres­i­dent Xi, it was de­cid­ed that in ad­di­tion to his stops in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca on his way to a sum­mit in Wash­ing­ton with Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, he could take along with him sup­port from Cari­com; per­haps as a means of im­press­ing his US coun­ter­part that Chi­na has friends in the Caribbean.

To en­sure that his vis­it was not one of well-in­ten­tioned promis­es, Pres­i­dent Xi left be­hind the com­mit­ment to pro­vide US$3 bil­lion in con­ces­sion­ary loans for in­fra­struc­ture and oth­er de­vel­op­ment works in the re­gion, and US$250 mil­lion to build a chil­dren's hos­pi­tal and sport sta­dia here in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Su­per pow­er geo-po­lit­i­cal ri­val­ry will play it­self out at a lev­el that Caribbean coun­tries have no ac­cess to and can do noth­ing about. The chal­lenge is for Cari­com, in the first in­stance, and the wider Caribbean with the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic giv­ing the re­gion­al group­ing some ex­ten­sion in­to what used to be called the Greater An­tilles, to find work­ing space to make use of its his­to­ry, its crit­i­cal ge­o­graph­ic space and the cross cur­rents of su­per-pow­er ma­noeu­vring.

All of this is need­ed if the re­gion is to cap­i­talise on this 21st cen­tu­ry pow­er re-align­ment.

The time is here for a Caribbean diplo­ma­cy of the 21st cen­tu­ry. Cari­com's po­lit­i­cal lead­ers of the late 20th cen­tu­ry did not come close to util­is­ing the mod­el left be­hind by Ram­phal, De­mas, Net­tle­ford and oth­ers in the Time for Ac­tion re­port. For an even less-com­mit­ted group of Caribbean pres­i­dents and prime min­is­ters, an at­tempt will have to be made to do where their pre­de­ces­sors talked.

To mount a new diplo­mat­ic ini­tia­tive, the lead­ers must be­gin at once the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my. They have to for­get the se­man­tics and equiv­o­ca­tion and plunge deeply in­to con­struct­ing the CSME.

Al­ready, 85 per cent of what is ex­port­ed in­to the US un­der the CBI is with­out tar­iffs. Un­der the CSME new prod­ucts and ser­vices must be de­vel­oped on a re­gion­al ba­sis to at­tract in­vest­ment and even­tu­al­ly to ex­port what is pro­duced un­der the new TIFA. US and Chi­nese in­vest­ments to pro­duce goods and ser­vices in an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket must be en­cour­aged.

Sure­ly Cari­com man­u­fac­tur­ers and gov­ern­ments stand a much bet­ter chance of hav­ing projects fund­ed by the de­vel­op­ment bank to be es­tab­lished by the BRICS (Brazil, Rus­sia, In­dia, Chi­na and South Africa) on the ba­sis of com­bined re­sources and pro­duc­tion at a re­gion­al lev­el rather than as in­di­vid­ual pro­duc­ers.

So if Cari­com gov­ern­ments, busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and peo­ple are to make use of the op­por­tu­ni­ties pro­vid­ed by this his­toric chang­ing of the in­ter­na­tion­al guard, they must be­gin by ful­fill­ing the out­stand­ing agen­da be­fore they can be­gin to build on it.