The Trump 2.0 era demands CARICOM leverages maximum benefit the union can offer. It is obvious Trump’s focus is on prioritizing national interest above the building of traditional alliances preferred by his predecessors. The reality is that our region is of minuscule geopolitical importance to the USA. Hopefully Caribbean leaders will recall the negative impression caused when Trump invited a select few to Mar-a-Lago in 2019. How did we benefit from presenting a disunited front?
.@POTUS and I look forward to welcoming the leaders of Commonwealth of The Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, the Republic of Haiti, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia to Mar-a-Lago tomorrow afternoon!
— Melania Trump 45 Archived (@FLOTUS45) March 22, 2019
There is the saying “God helps those who help themselves” which emphasises that success comes in large measure from putting in self-effort. If ever there was a time for Caribbean leaders to unite it must be now. If the blogmaster was Mottley a request for a meeting to strategize with the Heads of Governments (HoGs) would have been dispatched long before January 20, 2025.
Although the region is small there is potential to do a better job maximising on our limited resources be it oil, fishing and other food items, facilities sharing to reduce cost etc. The focus has to be implementing strategies to navigate a turbulent Trump dispensation. It is called being proactive.
We have to sensibly pursue foreign policy approaches with other large countries to mitigate Trump’s unpredictable foreign affairs policy.
Our regional private sector has a role to play by developing non traditional markets and generally adopting a more aggressive posture to driving economic development in the region.
The ‘we gatherin’ initiative by the Barbados government has attracted criticism in some quarters but it presents an opportunity to repurpose the initiative. At the moment it is perceived as nothing more than a bram on steroids.
The blogmaster is sadly aware our regional institutions struggle to execute mandates with few exceptions like the Caribbean Development Bank, University of the West Indies, Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) and a couple others. There was a time West Indies Cricket and LIAT (1974) would have been included – see CARICOM institutions. However, sometimes all it takes is for a single event to trigger a level of cooperation among actors who were previously disinterested to do so. Are we there yet?
There a BU contributor who has branded the term ‘will the real leaders please stand up’. If ever there was a time for leaders in our region to stand up-should they exist- the time is now.
Another BU commenter @williamskinner remains optimistic that we should stay the course with the regional project Caricom. United we stand divided we fall.
We are simply saying that there is nothing in these global movements that we should take for granted without first making it abundantly clear that we will not become satellites of any .
We are remaining standfast that imperialism is not the preserve of any one global entity. Here and there we get a few crumbs from the table but there is nothing globally that presents the Caribbean as a global player and this is because, as you have stated , the simple fact that we have failed to make the transition from how we see ourselves culturally and intellectually.
In order to correct our overcome our current weaknesses we need new vibrant leadership at all levels. We refuse to be mentally distracted because the transition to true and sustained statehood, is taking longer than we hoped. Once we get rid of petty leadership and present a radical united front in these emerging economic/trade groups, we would avoid further exploitation.
Unfortunately, we seem to believe that being under one yoke of imperialism is essentially different if we change the players. This is a totally unrealistic position to take, taking into consideration, our historical journey.
We note how some new emerging leadership in Africa is returning to the completion of the transition to true economic and cultural freedom. We also note that both once reactionary and progressive thinkers in the region are now calling for the completion of the Federation project , which was supposed to be the foundation of the new Caribbean United State.
-William Skinner
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