Would the Caribbean people be wrong if they indicated a feeling, as the year 2007 has come to an end, that all is not well with our regional foreign policy-making? And if so, would they, in fact, be taking their cue from our leaders?
We ask this because it does not seem difficult to conclude that, in spite of the plaudits which some of our Heads of State/Government handed themselves after the signing of the Regional Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union, we were not asked to see the REPA as the start of a new direction for our countries, and a new beginning for EU-Caribbean relations. How different, for those who can remember, was the feeling of our Governments after we signed the Lome Convention in 1975. Then, there was a sense of a new beginning in EU-Caribbean relations – that Caribbean diplomacy, in both its political and technocratic guises, had scored something of a triumph, and that our diplomacy had placed itself firmly in a new, and hopefully productive relationship not only with Europe, but particularly with our African and Pacific partners.
An initial hint of uncertainty about the result of the negotiation came in the statement attributed to an unidentified Head, that from a Caricom perspective, “convenience” had triumphed over “principle” in achieving the deal that we had reached. The intimation seems to be that we wanted to do better, that we needed to do better, but the best that we achieved is something of a disappointment. And now President Jagdeo appears to have confirmed this sentiment in his recent Press Conference.
Some may, in response to this perception, indicate that what has happened, and the agreement arrived at, is no more than a rude lesson in the realism of international diplomacy, reflecting the relative lack of significance of the Caribbean in current international economic relations. After all, it can be claimed, in the early 1970s the Caribbean was a reservoir of the strategic material of bauxite, and there was still a sense in the United Kingdom, that our sugar was an important commodity for their market. Today, neither of these commodities has the significance that they once had, either for our economies or for those of the British metropole.
But it seems to us that to go this route would be to go the way of escapism. Our governments have been well aware for some time of the changing status of the Caricom in international relations generally; particularly after the Cold War came to an end, and our so-called “strategic” significance in the US-Soviet Union competition was substantially reduced. The narcotics issue, important as it is, does not have, for the United States, the significance that the Cold War security issue had; and there is no doubt that the US believes that in the new dispensation, we are firmly committed to them on the terrorism issue. And indeed, the country perhaps most affected by the ending of the Cold War, Cuba, has demonstrated that with will and clear purpose, a dignified survival is possible in spite of all that had been predicted about her future status after the collapse of the Soviet Union
We take a different view. For it seems to us that our Governments have misread the external perceptions about ourselves over these last many years; and that those perceptions point to a negative assessment about our will to do what is required in order to adjust to the new external environment that we face.
Our governments and diplomats have complained, especially during the latter part of the negotiations, of the brusqueness and general unwillingness to be receptive, of the European diplomats conducting their side of the negotiations. But it has become clear, if it wasn’t already, that European diplomacy feels that we have been unwilling to make the mental and institutional adjustments necessary to cope with the present circumstances. To them, for example, we have been hesitating and hesitating about how to relate to the Dominican Republic – specifically about whether the relationship between that country and ourselves should be a much more institutionally integrated one – as was signalled long ago with inclusion of the DR in Cariforum. But the EU has been signalling to us for some time that in their general approach to South and Central America, a certain diplomatic cohesion within the smaller countries of the area is the negotiating base with which they would wish to deal.
If we have had an objection to this perception of “closer regionalism” we have not indicated any alternative. And in the negotiations we found ourselves placed in the position of the EU suggesting a direct negotiation with the DR, well knowing that whatever they arrived at with the representatives of that country would have a significant effect on us.
It seems hard for us to accept that the so-called privileged relationship that we have had with Europe, and particularly with the British, has come to an end, in its material sense, yes, but more importantly in its psychological sense. The spectacle of our Governments, as a last resort, appealing to the British Prime Minister to influence the course of the negotiations, was surely a throwback to the past. It was reminiscent of the Jamaican Trade Minister Robert Lightbourne’s assertion, when Britain first sought membership of the European Community, that the Caribbean needed “bankable assurances” for the protection of its agricultural commodities. Yet we knew that the EU hardline position (as we perceived it) was led by one of the closest allies, and former member of the Cabinet, of the British Labour Government.
Similarly, we have continued to complain that the EU diplomatic strategy on a successor agreement to the Lome/Cotonou Conventions, negated the prime (from our point of view) institutional achievement of those Conventions – a collective ACP negotiating base, as represented after the first Lome, in the establishment of the ACP Secretariat. But can it really be said that we have, over the last twenty years or so, taken any steps to sustain a collective ACP strategy in the face of changing circumstances? And would it have been possible for us to do so? Have our Heads of Government, in their many statements at Caricom meetings, really intimated that, given our relatively small size as a region, the pursuit of the collective inter-regional strategy was a crucial issue? And if so has our diplomatic representation in Africa been reflective of this perception?
If the answer to all these questions is in the negative, then can we reasonably expect that the Europeans would have taken seriously our protestations about the demise of the ACP as the negotiating base for the post-Lome dispensation.
There is much to be said too, about our continuing protestations about the European neglect of an appropriate “development dimension” in the negotiations towards the REPA. But can we really say that we have done the detailed work, in terms of regional requirements, to make our proposals for a development dimension credible or negotiable?
No doubt too the EU would have closely watched, over the last fifteen years since the report of the West Indian Commission on the reorganization of Caricom as an institution, the progress that we have made in responding to its recommendations. They will have noted that we keep pleading “sovereignty” every time that we come up against the necessity to take regionally-applicable decisions, and particularly in respect of the implementation of such decisions.
Our latest formula has been that we are a “Community of Sovereign states” and that, in effect, this precludes certain modes of decision-implementation. But the designation which we have given ourselves is precisely the designation which the EU has of itself for a generation. But they do not believe that they can use the sovereignty issue as an excuse for not doing what requires to be done in an era in which the globalization v.regionalism debate is a central determinant of contemporary international relations. They insist that the road to regional decision
-making is hard, but must be pursued – that is evident in the jurisprudence of the EU. They expect that we will take the same position, and whether we believe it or not, they have been closely watching our Governments’ dancing over the report of the Caricom Technical Working Group on Governance, which the Governments themselves set up, and whose recommendations they have accepted in principle.
In summary, the contemporary EU-Caricom relationship is simply indicative of the uncertainty with which many other significant Governments and their institutions in today’s world perceive our current modes of behaviour and decision-making in international relations. Such perceptions constitute nothing less than a substantial uncertainty in our external environment, influencing the decision-making of the external world to ourselves.
