Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

Of even greater sig­nif­i­cance than it has been in the past, co­he­sion with­in the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) as the re­gion­al mem­ber states tan­gle with the Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent, Don­ald Trump and his agen­da, the fo­cus must be on se­cur­ing an in­tra-re­gion­al re­la­tion­ship based not on pa­tron­age, but one of mu­tu­al in­ter­ests and ben­e­fits.

None of the mem­ber states, nei­ther Guyana nor Trinidad and To­ba­go, should think of be­ing spe­cial­ly priv­i­leged, and in a po­si­tion to wring ad­vance ben­e­fits from the US Pres­i­dent com­pared to the oth­ers. In the cir­cum­stances of the present, the USA is cer­tain to want to have the co-op­er­a­tion of all the re­gion­al states, as it seeks to pull to­geth­er the hemi­sphere in­to its arc of in­flu­ence.

Cari­com as a unit has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to bar­gain for rec­i­p­ro­cal part­ner­ships.

An agree­ment which en­com­pass­es the in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive needs and as­pi­ra­tions of the mem­ber states of Cari­com will have far greater val­ue to the USA than some pref­er­en­tial arrange­ment with one or two of the states. In this con­text, it must not es­cape the at­ten­tion of all of the re­gion­al lead­ers that com­ing to­geth­er to gain ben­e­fits in trad­ing re­la­tion­ships with the USA will have far greater long-term and in­ter­ac­tive eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits for all 15 mem­ber states.

The re­al­i­ty must dawn on all the lead­ers that a grow­ing and de­vel­op­ing Cari­com will ul­ti­mate­ly re­sult in greater ben­e­fits to all, rather than one or two coun­tries re­ceiv­ing spe­cial favours from the USA. Such co­or­di­nat­ed arrange­ments spread over the re­gion are ex­act­ly what re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion was meant to be about. The fact that there re­main gaps be­tween as­pi­ra­tions and plan­ning is sure­ly a re­sult of the fail­ure of Cari­com mem­bers to co­or­di­nate their ef­forts.

Fur­ther open­ings in­to the US mar­ket, in­creased tech­no­log­i­cal as­sis­tance, and the con­struc­tion of a re­gion­al pro­duc­tion plat­form, all of which have been catered to and planned for with­in the con­text of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my, will re­dound to the ben­e­fit of all mem­ber states.

If the US were to wit­ness frag­men­ta­tion amongst mem­ber states seek­ing to jos­tle for spe­cial priv­i­lege at the ex­pense of oth­ers, alert USA ne­go­tia­tors would ex­ploit the con­flict.

Heads of Gov­ern­ment must al­so recog­nise and de­pend heav­i­ly on the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at with its long and suc­cess­ful his­to­ry of de­vel­op­ing the kind of com­mon ap­proach­es which have been ben­e­fi­cial to all mem­ber states. A tru­ly unit­ed Cari­com will al­so send sig­nals to the US Pres­i­dent that Cari­com states have to be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly and that there are those not open to ma­nip­u­la­tion in the in­ter­est of oth­ers.

Of crit­i­cal im­por­tance is the need to end the con­fronta­tion­al ap­proach and name-call­ing be­tween and among mem­ber states. In­cen­di­ary and spite­ful cross-bor­der rhetoric must give way to di­a­logue, plan­ning, and the shunt­ing aside of per­son­al­i­ties want­i­ng to shine at the ex­pense of the whole.

The in­ter­ests of the re­gion must be widened be­yond what was said to be the ma­jor ob­jec­tive of the USA, to counter drug-traf­fick­ing through the Caribbean Sea, which, as has been re­alised, amount­ed pri­mar­i­ly to the US transna­tion­als tak­ing charge of Venezuela’s oil and gas re­sources, with the US Pres­i­dent mak­ing the de­ci­sions.

Co­or­di­na­tion and har­mo­nious in­ter­ac­tion have to go be­yond strength­en­ing in­tra-Cari­com re­la­tions to T&T mend­ing fences with Venezuela.

Even with the OFAC li­cense in hand, T&T can­not en­ter in­to a re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela, spew­ing hos­tile rhetoric against the lead­ers of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic: “This at­ti­tude not on­ly com­pro­mis­es bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions, but al­so harms T&T’s own eco­nom­ic in­ter­ests by hin­der­ing the joint de­vel­op­ment of joint strate­gic projects of mu­tu­al ben­e­fit to both states,” states a com­mu­nique from Cara­cas. T&T can­not come in­to Venezuela’s “back­yard” con­tin­u­ing with deroga­to­ry state­ments against the Gov­ern­ment and its leader.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has to fix in her mind that even an op­er­a­tional OFAC li­cense can­not com­pen­sate for T&T’s open mar­ket for man­u­fac­tured goods to its Cari­com part­ners. More­over, a unit­ed and strong Cari­com will ex­pand the re­gion­al mar­ket for T&T’s man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts.

Yet an­oth­er area in which co­op­er­a­tion, civ­il diplo­ma­cy and re­gion­al in­ter­ests can re­turn val­ue will be in re­la­tion to Cu­ba. A co­or­di­nat­ed Cari­com ap­proach ad­vo­cat­ing for di­a­logue, com­pro­mise and the achieve­ment of mu­tu­al in­ter­ests be­tween the USA and Cu­ba will be far more fruit­ful than a di­vid­ed re­gion with in­di­vid­ual na­tions mak­ing hos­tile re­marks against Ha­vana.

Al­ready, there seems to be some­thing of a soft­en­ing of the hard­line ap­proach by Wash­ing­ton through hu­man­i­tar­i­an con­ces­sions to meet the needs of Cubans. There are, too, the ef­forts of Cana­da and Mex­i­co to sup­ply Cu­ba with oil. The stage of the game is set for diplo­ma­cy; fawn­ing over Pres­i­dent Trump has se­ri­ous lim­i­ta­tions.

The US Pres­i­dent is hooked on his de­sire to cre­ate peace be­tween and among na­tions for his in­di­vid­ual ben­e­fit – just maybe peace-mak­ing ef­forts in the Caribbean will as­sist and per­suade the No­bel Peace Prize Com­mit­tee to con­sid­er his work in the hemi­sphere as be­ing wor­thy of the val­ued com­men­da­tion – yes, a long shot.

If mem­ber states and in­di­vid­u­als are able to keep re­straint amongst lead­ers with­in ac­cept­able dif­fer­ences of opin­ions ex­pressed with­out ran­cour, there can be ben­e­fit.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er – free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and News Di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and St Au­gus­tine – In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.