Dr. Nand C. Bar­douille

More than 30 years have passed since the end of the decades-long U.S.-So­vi­et Cold War ri­val­ry, which took root short­ly fol­low­ing the end of World War II and with the ad­vent of the Tru­man Doc­trine. In that time, deep­en­ing U.S.-Chi­na and U.S.-Rus­sia ri­val­ries cast aside the Amer­i­can-cen­tric, post-Cold War unipo­lar mo­ment.

Both Chi­na and Rus­sia, char­ac­ter­ized by the U.S. De­part­ment of De­fense as Amer­i­ca's near-peer com­peti­tors, are in­tent on un­der­min­ing U.S. pri­ma­cy and what In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions (IR) schol­ars term the "in­ter­na­tion­al regimes" that Amer­i­ca un­der­writes.

Cog­nizant of the glob­al vi­sions of its prin­ci­pal ri­vals, which com­pete with its own vi­sion for glob­al dom­i­nance, the U.S. has long ex­er­cised its grand strat­e­gy. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, in­formed by its glob­al lead­er­ship as­pi­ra­tions and the at­ten­dant means for achiev­ing the same, Amer­i­can grand strat­e­gy fur­thers this su­per­pow­er's long-es­tab­lished na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties vis-à-vis its core se­cu­ri­ty im­per­a­tives. Notwith­stand­ing, Trump 2.0 has oth­er ideas as to how Amer­i­ca ought to reap hege­mon­ic div­i­dends.

With the re­turn of great pow­er pol­i­tics, which comes down to the pur­suit of rel­a­tive pow­er gains and bal­anc­ing, the small states of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) bloc are in­creas­ing­ly caught in the as­so­ci­at­ed se­cu­ri­ty com­pe­ti­tion back­wash.

On Ju­ly 6, a se­nior fig­ure with­in the re­gion­al group­ing sug­gest­ed as much. In an ad­dress to the open­ing of the Forty-ninth Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of CARI­COM, the Prime Min­is­ter of Ja­maica and new­ly-in­stalled chair­man of CARI­COM, An­drew Hol­ness, drew at­ten­tion to "the broad­er glob­al con­text."

This 'con­text' — which is diplo­mat­ic speak for glob­al in­se­cu­ri­ty à la the great pow­ers' geopo­lit­i­cal gam­bits and their rip­ple ef­fects in the re­gion — is a cen­tral chal­lenge for CARI­COM.

As it stands, his­to­ry shows that this is not the first time the Caribbean has faced such a re­al­i­ty. As the late IR schol­ar Fred Hal­l­i­day as­tute­ly ob­served in the ear­ly 1980s, the ef­fect of the Cold War "in the Caribbean in­volves a sus­tained chal­lenge to the post-colo­nial sys­tem cre­at­ed over re­cent decades."

The small is­land de­vel­op­ing states, or, SIDS of CARI­COM com­prise 14 sov­er­eign, post-colo­nial states, which are among the small­est and most vul­ner­a­ble of the 193 mem­ber states of the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN).

The An­glo­phone sub­set of those states, hav­ing gained its in­de­pen­dence from the 1960s to the 1980s, his­tor­i­cal­ly has come un­der the Unit­ed States' geopo­lit­i­cal gaze. In its on­go­ing strate­gic po­si­tion­ing, Chi­na is eye­ing the Caribbean as Amer­i­ca's so-called 'third bor­der'.

Both the Unit­ed States and Chi­na have com­mand­ed at­ten­tion from CARI­COM's po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate and for­eign pol­i­cy es­tab­lish­ment, high­light­ing cru­cial yet com­plex bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions. That is what comes with the ter­ri­to­ry in great pow­er pol­i­tics, which can be bruis­ing in terms of the for­eign pol­i­cy pres­sures brought to bear on small­er states.

To­day, draw­ing con­cern from CARI­COM lead­ers about the im­pli­ca­tions for their re­spec­tive coun­tries, great pow­er pol­i­tics have again be­come a source of angst for these states.

The Cards that CARI­COM has been Dealt

The CARI­COM chair­man — who host­ed the afore­men­tioned sum­mit in Ja­maica from 6-8 Ju­ly — paid close at­ten­tion to height­ened hos­til­i­ties in the Mid­dle East, the war in Ukraine that is now in its fourth year and less vis­i­ble con­flicts in Africa. Hol­ness, who took up the six-month chair­man­ship of the Com­mu­ni­ty on Ju­ly 1, un­der­scored that these widen­ing con­fla­gra­tions are in­dica­tive of "a more di­vid­ed and frag­ile world."

The con­junc­tion of these cir­cum­stances, which he said be­hoves the bloc's lead­er­ship to re­main stead­fast in "pre­serv­ing CARI­COM as a zone of peace," is spark­ing re­newed con­cern among CARI­COM lead­ers. To il­lus­trate this point, Hol­ness re­ferred to "en­er­gy prices, food in­se­cu­ri­ty, mi­gra­tion, and more."

CARI­COM lead­ers are unit­ed in their as­sess­ment of such ef­fects, ex­press­ing con­cerns that the arc of con­tem­po­rary in­ter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics and shift­ing (uni­lat­er­al­ist) dy­nam­ics there­in could yet prove to be in­im­i­cal in the long-term to their re­spec­tive states' in­ter­ests.

No less a per­son than CARI­COM Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Car­la Bar­nett telegraphed that, for months now, mind­ful of the im­pli­ca­tions aris­ing for CARI­COM mem­ber states, re­gion­al lead­ers have been grap­pling with "wor­ry­ing geopo­lit­i­cal is­sues."

Bar­nett made this ob­ser­va­tion ear­li­er this month, just days fol­low­ing the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum's warn­ing that the world is now con­front­ed by a high­ly com­plex geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion — whose im­pact is size­able and wide-rang­ing.

A few weeks ear­li­er, St. Kitts and Nevis' For­eign Min­is­ter Den­zil Dou­glas un­der­scored "The trou­bled and shift­ing geopo­lit­i­cal land­scape rep­re­sents an in­flec­tion point for CARI­COM that re­quires uni­ty of vi­sion and mis­sion." He made this point in his ca­pac­i­ty as chair­man of the Coun­cil for For­eign and Com­mu­ni­ty Re­la­tions (COF­COR) — a CARI­COM body that in­ter alia co­or­di­nates mem­ber states' for­eign poli­cies.

Among the many like­ly reper­cus­sions for CARI­COM mem­ber states that may stem from the pre­vail­ing geopo­lit­i­cal dy­nam­ics, giv­en the stakes, three stand out.

First, in jostling for po­si­tion and with a view to ful­fill­ing their strate­gic am­bi­tions in this new phase of what the Mu­nich Se­cu­ri­ty Re­port 2025 char­ac­ter­izes as the "mul­ti­po­lar­iza­tion of the in­ter­na­tion­al or­der," great pow­ers ap­par­ent­ly have no qualms about priv­i­leg­ing a 'might is right' out­look.

In this geopo­lit­i­cal mo­ment — long in the mak­ing — great pow­ers are ex­pos­ing their ap­par­ent in­tent to uni­lat­er­al­ly de­ter­mine which states are en­ti­tled to se­cu­ri­ty. (There are tra­di­tion­al and so-called crit­i­cal schools of thought on the con­cept of se­cu­ri­ty in the dis­ci­pline of IR; but the late Arnold Wolfers' en­dur­ing elu­ci­da­tion of se­cu­ri­ty is ger­mane for our pur­pos­es. For Wolfers, "Se­cu­ri­ty, in an ob­jec­tive sense, mea­sures the ab­sence of threats to ac­quired val­ues, in a sub­jec­tive sense, the ab­sence of fear that such val­ues will be at­tacked.")

Fac­ing the an­ar­chic, self-help in­ter­na­tion­al sys­tem as small states, this does not sit well with CARI­COM mem­ber states. In short, be it in the con­text of mil­i­tary threats or non-tra­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges, their small size puts them at a huge dis­ad­van­tage.

Sec­ond, with an eye to their se­cu­ri­ty, but al­so to the mul­ti­lat­er­al ori­en­ta­tion of their for­eign pol­i­cy suc­cess­es, it is to the strongest tra­di­tions of mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism, in­ter­na­tion­al or­ga­ni­za­tions and col­lec­tive se­cu­ri­ty in­sti­tu­tions that CARI­COM mem­ber states sub­scribe.

The far­ther from these in­ter­na­tion­al­ist tra­di­tions that the great pow­ers stray, in light of their role as the prin­ci­pal ac­tors in in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions, the greater the risk that this cen­tral pil­lar of CARI­COM mem­ber states' for­eign pol­i­cy ap­proach will like­ly be un­der­cut.

Third, the fore­go­ing rais­es trou­bling ques­tions about whether CARI­COM mem­ber states can thread the nee­dle be­tween their in­ter­ests and the pre­vail­ing struc­tur­al forces. The larg­er pic­ture is that in the great pow­er-re­lat­ed pow­er pol­i­tics re­dux, hawk­ish voic­es in Russ­ian, Amer­i­can and Chi­nese state­craft have won the (geopo­lit­i­cal) day.

The rea­son is plain: The in­ten­si­fy­ing se­cu­ri­ty com­pe­ti­tion be­tween the Unit­ed States and Chi­na, which has teamed up with Rus­sia, Iran and North Ko­rea to open­ly de­fy the U.S.-led lib­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al or­der (a.k.a. the rules-based in­ter­na­tion­al or­der).

Rus­sia's war on Ukraine is one such flash­point, and the 'CRINK ax­is' or 'the ax­is of up­heaval' — as it has come to be known in west­ern se­cu­ri­ty and for­eign pol­i­cy cir­cles — is a de­cid­ed­ly "an­ti-Amer­i­can bloc."

In 2022, Rus­sia — Chi­na's ju­nior part­ner — seized the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue the so-called spe­cial mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion in Ukraine and, through this con­flict, to es­ca­late its long-term con­fronta­tion with the West and the lat­ter's mil­i­tary al­liance, i.e. the North At­lantic Treaty Or­ga­ni­za­tion.

As just one of the era-defin­ing con­flicts that have left the UN in the dust on the man­tle of great pow­ers' rel­a­tive­ly vast pow­er ad­van­tage, the Ukraine war has hob­bled the world body's Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

This con­flict's in­tel­lec­tu­al au­thor and pri­ma­ry bel­liger­ent is not alone in demon­stra­bly be­ing more in­clined to end-run rules of the (mul­ti­lat­er­al) road, con­strain­ing the UN­SC's abil­i­ty to ex­e­cute its pri­ma­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in re­spect of the main­te­nance of in­ter­na­tion­al peace and se­cu­ri­ty.

This state of play in the present geopo­lit­i­cal mo­ment does not au­gur well for CARI­COM mem­ber states.

Why This Mo­ment Mat­ters

What this mo­ment re­veals is that great pow­ers are turn­ing up the in­ter­na­tion­al spot­light on and clos­ing ranks for the geopol­i­tics of spheres of in­flu­ence, whose im­print is con­spic­u­ous in his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant pe­ri­ods. The Napoleon­ic Wars, the so-called 'scram­ble for Africa', the mak­ing of World War I, the Yal­ta Con­fer­ence as a through­line in the Cold War, among oth­ers, come to mind.

Promi­nent IR schol­ar Gra­ham Al­li­son char­ac­ter­izes spheres of in­flu­ence as "the abil­i­ty of oth­er pow­ers to de­mand def­er­ence from oth­er states in their own re­gions or ex­ert pre­dom­i­nant con­trol there." With­in this frame­work, an in­ter­na­tion­al peck­ing or­der or in­ter­na­tion­al hi­er­ar­chy weighs heav­i­ly. Hi­er­ar­chy, ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al­ly renowned IR schol­ar David Lake, "is the ex­tent of the au­thor­i­ty ex­er­cised by the ruler over the ruled."

With all this in mind, the geopo­lit­i­cal state of af­fairs seem­ing­ly marks a sharp break from the rules-based in­ter­na­tion­al or­der.

With the rel­e­ga­tion of this or­der to play sec­ond fid­dle to those at the apex of the peck­ing or­der, small­er states stand to be the big losers. This is prin­ci­pal­ly be­cause among the ca­su­al­ties is the UN, which is the pri­ma­ry means of and ve­hi­cle for am­pli­fy­ing their voic­es. Es­sen­tial­ly, the world body af­fords them a seat and a say at the glob­al gov­er­nance-re­lat­ed ta­ble.

CARI­COM mem­ber states can ill af­ford less vis­i­bil­i­ty on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. In line with The Rose Hall De­c­la­ra­tion on 'Re­gion­al Gov­er­nance and In­te­grat­ed De­vel­op­ment', these states "work with­in the frame­work of the Unit­ed Na­tions to pro­mote mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism as the guid­ing prin­ci­ple of in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions."

What is more, and sig­nif­i­cant in its own right, an ex­ec­u­tive or­der that U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump signed ear­ly in his sec­ond tenure in the White House is geared to­wards up­end­ing a cen­tral plank of post-Sec­ond World War Amer­i­can in­ter­na­tion­al­ism. Along the way, Trump has reg­u­lar­ly hurled threats aimed at the sov­er­eign­ty of Amer­i­can part­ners and al­lies, hav­ing al­so or­ches­trat­ed a glob­al trade war.

Wash­ing­ton is al­so flex­ing its mus­cles in oth­er ways, in­clud­ing by ramp­ing up pres­sure on the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court (ICC) to jet­ti­son its ar­rest war­rants for crimes against hu­man­i­ty and war crimes tar­get­ing Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu and for­mer de­fense min­is­ter Yoav Gal­lant. The ICC's re­lat­ed probes in­to al­leged Is­raeli crimes per­pe­trat­ed in the Gaza Strip have al­so come un­der Wash­ing­ton's scruti­ny.

In high­light­ing the Gaza war, just last month, COF­COR de­cried "the bom­bard­ment and de­pri­va­tion of ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties." The Coun­cil al­so said that the con­flict "vi­o­lates in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an law."

In ref­er­ence to this con­flict, CARI­COM Heads of Gov­ern­ment not­ed "Re­lent­less mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing in­dis­crim­i­nate bom­bard­ment and di­rect at­tacks on aid-seek­ing civil­ians, fla­grant­ly vi­o­late in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an law."

They al­so lament­ed that their calls "for an im­me­di­ate, un­con­di­tion­al, and sus­tained cease­fire and unim­ped­ed hu­man­i­tar­i­an ac­cess … have large­ly gone un­heed­ed, lead­ing to a cri­sis of un­par­al­leled pro­por­tions."

The hard truth is that the UN Char­ter and mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism are fair game for in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers with the ca­pac­i­ty to wield a large stick, run­ning roughshod over the rules-based in­ter­na­tion­al or­der.

Just last month, UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res cau­tioned, "To­day, we see as­saults on the pur­pos­es and prin­ci­ples of the Char­ter of the Unit­ed Na­tions like nev­er be­fore."

Suf­fice to say, the CARI­COM bloc is fac­ing a mul­ti-pronged test to sus­tain its lot in the in­ter­na­tion­al sys­tem. Last month's Is­rael-Iran war, which rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant es­ca­la­tion of the decades-long Is­raeli-Iran­ian con­fronta­tion that in April and Oc­to­ber of 2024 came out from un­der the shad­ows, is just the lat­est such test.

Ne­tanyahu said of 'Op­er­a­tion Ris­ing Li­on', the moniker as­signed to his coun­try's most re­cent mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion against Iran, this mis­sion was es­sen­tial to "roll back the Iran­ian threat to Is­rael's very sur­vival."

It is note­wor­thy that a key tenet of in­ter­na­tion­al law is the pro­hi­bi­tion of the use of force per Ar­ti­cle 2(4) of the UN Char­ter; but there are ex­cep­tions. In this re­gard, self-de­fence looms large, as set out in Ar­ti­cle 51 of the UN Char­ter. Im­mi­nen­cy of at­tack is an im­por­tant lit­mus test, and le­gal ques­tions arise as to what con­sti­tutes self-de­fence.

That said, it is al­so worth not­ing that in­ter­na­tion­al law ex­perts are re­port­ed­ly di­vid­ed on whether the afore­said mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion on Iran was "with­in le­gal bounds."

In re­sponse to this ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, CARI­COM mem­ber states sent diplo­mat­ic sig­nals to a va­ri­ety of ac­tors in the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. Here­with, cit­ing yet an­oth­er mo­ment in his­to­ry fraught with dan­ger, I call at­ten­tion to some mes­sag­ing around this de­vel­op­ment that was re­layed in the pub­lic do­main.

Is­rael, Iran Ex­change Blows: A Caribbean Take

On June 13, im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing Is­rael's launch of a mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion against the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic, The Ba­hamas is­sued a pub­lic state­ment on what it termed the 'on­go­ing events in the Mid­dle East'. In call­ing for re­straint, this state­ment reads in part: "The Ba­hamas ex­press­es deep con­cern re­gard­ing the mil­i­tary es­ca­la­tion in the Mid­dle East."

Guyana, hav­ing con­vened UN­SC meet­ings last month on this cri­sis (by virtue of its pres­i­den­cy of the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil for the month of June), via its Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the UN Car­olyn Ro­drigues-Bir­kett in­di­cat­ed that it is "deeply con­cerned about the at­tack car­ried out by Is­rael against fa­cil­i­ties in Iran." (Guyana is cur­rent­ly a non-per­ma­nent Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil mem­ber, hav­ing now held that seat three times over.)

In al­so ap­peal­ing for re­straint, Ro­drigues-Bir­kett un­der­lined that "Is­rael's lat­est at­tack on Iran con­tra­venes the prin­ci­ples en­shrined in the Unit­ed Na­tions Char­ter." In holis­ti­cal­ly fram­ing the tit-for-tat strikes that en­sued, she placed em­pha­sis on the fol­low­ing: "At a par­tic­u­lar­ly volatile pe­ri­od in the re­gion, the at­tack risks ex­ac­er­bat­ing ex­ist­ing ten­sions in the Mid­dle East and es­ca­lat­ing the on­go­ing cri­sis." (An Is­rael-Iran cease-fire, bro­kered by Trump, came in­to ef­fect on June 24.)

That all stands in marked con­trast to Guyana's stance on Is­rael's airstrike on Iraq's Osir­ak nu­clear site in 1981, which then-Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Men­achem Be­gin jus­ti­fied "as es­sen­tial to pre­vent Iraq from de­vel­op­ing nu­clear weapons."

In of­fi­cial UN­SC records dat­ed 17 June 1981, Guyana's then-Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the UN Noel Sin­clair stat­ed his coun­try's "deep­est out­rage and in­dig­na­tion" up­on learn­ing "of the un­pro­voked at­tack by Is­raeli air­craft against the nu­clear re­ac­tor in­stal­la­tions of the Re­pub­lic of Iraq two Sun­days ago." He went on to char­ac­terise this Is­raeli mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion as "un­prece­dent­ed in its ar­ro­gance … clear­ly a grave vi­o­la­tion of the na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty, po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty of the State of Iraq."

Sin­clair con­clud­ed: "My del­e­ga­tion ve­he­ment­ly con­demns the re­cent Is­raeli act of ag­gres­sion [sic] against the Re­pub­lic of Iraq, and in­sists that the se­cu­ri­ty of the State of Is­rael can­not be built on a pol­i­cy that pro­motes in­se­cu­ri­ty and fear in its neigh­bours or in oth­er States of the re­gion."

Guyana, then, took a firm po­si­tion on Is­rael's at­tack on an Iraqi nu­clear re­ac­tor. So, too, did sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries. At the time, the UN­SC vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to "strong­ly con­demn" this at­tack, with the Unit­ed States re­port­ed­ly tak­ing the po­si­tion that "the at­tack un­der­cut Mid­dle East peace ef­forts."

The months-long un­cer­tain­ty for U.S.-CARI­COM re­la­tions in Trump 2.0, which I analysed in a re­cent ar­ti­cle for the Trinidad & To­ba­go Guardian, tells much of the sto­ry of why the bloc was not so out­spo­ken on the Is­rael-Iran war in ques­tion. Note should be tak­en that as a top-tier al­ly of the Unit­ed States, Is­rael's mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion re­ceived Wash­ing­ton's full back­ing.

On June 21, with the back­ing of a much-tout­ed Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, the U.S. di­rect­ly in­ter­vened in Is­rael's war against Iran, con­duct­ing airstrikes on Iran's three main nu­clear fa­cil­i­ties; name­ly, For­dow, Natanz and Is­fa­han.

In­struc­tive­ly, the E3 and the Eu­ro­pean Union went along with U.S. force. Rus­sia and Chi­na, among oth­ers, were crit­i­cal of the U.S. strikes on Iran.

In voic­ing their full-throat­ed con­cern over this turn of events, some point­ed to the "per­ilous turn in [the Mid­dle East] re­gion."

In ref­er­ence to the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary ac­tion in Iran on June 21, Guter­res paint­ed a wor­ri­some pic­ture of the state of in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions. In ad­di­tion, he in­di­cat­ed that he was "grave­ly alarmed by the use of force by the Unit­ed States against Iran."

Be­hind the scenes, the CARI­COM bloc like­ly aligned it­self with that view­point.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, along with Is­rael, the Unit­ed States re­ject­ed cen­sure at the UN­SC. This Coun­cil struck a dis­cor­dant tone in con­nec­tion with the twelve-day Is­rael-Iran war, then, not least be­cause of the in­volve­ment of one of its P5 mem­bers in the con­flict.

In stark con­trast, in re­sponse to Is­rael's at­tack on an Iraqi nu­clear re­ac­tor decades ago, the UN­SC adopt­ed Res­o­lu­tion 487 (1981).

The UN­SC-re­lat­ed out­come in re­spect of the Is­rael-Iran war un­der ref­er­ence is a sign of the times.

The Re­al­i­ty Go­ing For­ward

All told, as CARI­COM girds to bet­ter en­gage with this new geopo­lit­i­cal era, one of the most im­me­di­ate chal­lenges fac­ing the bloc's mem­ber states is the se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment. For this rea­son, these states must re­dou­ble their ef­forts to con­tribute to and ad­vance the cause of the so-called UN80 Ini­tia­tive.

In this view, they es­pe­cial­ly have a stake in UN­SC re­form. His­tor­i­cal­ly, as I con­tend in a pol­i­cy memo for the Stim­son Cen­ter, they have weighed in mean­ing­ful­ly in the push for such re­form. They must con­tin­ue apace, notwith­stand­ing the up­hill climb.

For CARI­COM mem­ber states that are a part of the L.69 Group of coun­tries, they ought to con­tin­ue to draw on their long-stand­ing in­volve­ment in this Group to move the nee­dle on the req­ui­site re­form.

If such progress were achieved, this would bring about im­por­tant, mul­ti­lat­er­al wins for those states. Con­sid­er that, as out­lined in one of its state­ments is­sued in Sep­tem­ber 2024, this Group plays an in­stru­men­tal role in wide-rang­ing, long-stand­ing ef­forts "to make the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil more rep­re­sen­ta­tive, trans­par­ent, ef­fi­cient, ef­fec­tive, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and ac­count­able."

Cru­cial­ly, as con­cern grows in CARI­COM about the fun­da­men­tal geopo­lit­i­cal shifts sketched in the fore­go­ing analy­sis, the bloc needs to con­tin­ue to stand on prin­ci­ple in de­fence of UN-an­chored mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism. In­deed, its mem­ber states have a his­to­ry of do­ing so.

No­tably, over two decades ago, at the height of the unipo­lar mo­ment, CARI­COM mem­ber states pub­licly pro­claimed their "pro­found con­cern" as re­gards Amer­i­ca's Iraq War and its wider con­se­quences.

More re­cent­ly, CARI­COM al­so adopt­ed and has ad­vanced a prin­ci­pled po­si­tion on Russ­ian ag­gres­sion in Ukraine. In re­sponse to Rus­sia's full-scale in­va­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022, pre­cip­i­tat­ing a war of ag­gres­sion, CARI­COM reg­is­tered its strong con­dem­na­tion.

At the time, the bloc con­veyed the fol­low­ing diplo­mat­ic stance: "The hos­til­i­ties against Ukraine go counter to the prin­ci­ples of re­spect for sov­er­eign­ty, ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty, non-in­ter­fer­ence in the in­ter­nal af­fairs of an­oth­er sov­er­eign state and the pro­hi­bi­tion on the threat or use of force, and the peace­ful res­o­lu­tion of dis­putes, which are the bedrock of this Com­mu­ni­ty."

In the pe­ri­od since, CARI­COM has kept its eye on the ball.

Most im­por­tant­ly, amid the grow­ing ri­val­ry of great pow­er pol­i­tics, the bloc must strength­en its ties to like-mind­ed states in what ought to be a con­cert­ed (col­lec­tive) and sus­tained ef­fort to breathe life in­to mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism. This turns on pur­su­ing a mul­ti­lat­er­al workaround to the geopol­i­tics-re­lat­ed sta­tus quo.

In this re­gard, the Sum­mit of the Fu­ture 2024 ini­tia­tive cov­ered a lot of ground. The as­so­ci­at­ed so-called 'Pact for the Fu­ture' pro­vides an im­por­tant im­pe­tus to ad­vance on the mul­ti­lat­er­al ethos, which is in­stru­men­tal in bring­ing about suc­cess­es in CARI­COM mem­ber states' re­spec­tive for­eign poli­cies.

In this way, along with the pre­vi­ous­ly iden­ti­fied co­op­er­a­tion-re­lat­ed im­per­a­tives, CARI­COM mem­ber states may be bet­ter able to se­cure their long-term se­cu­ri­ty and as­so­ci­at­ed in­ter­ests in the shad­ow of to­day's great pow­er pol­i­tics.

- Dr. Nand C. Bar­douille is the man­ag­er of The Diplo­mat­ic Acad­e­my of the Caribbean in the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (The UWI) St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.