But the more important issue arising is, whether there was an appropriate apparatus available in the Caricom governance institutional structure, with the mandate to pursue the elaboration of a political/policy strategy for the consideration of governments; for the CRNM was seen as strictly accepting mandates, rather than assisting in the innovation of strategy. The substitution for the West Indian Commission’s recommendation of a role for a Commission in respect of external relations strategizing, The establishment of a Prime Ministerial Committee on External Relations, in coordination with the Ministerial Councils on Trade and Economic and on Development and on Foreign Affairs, as a substitute for the West Indian Commission’s recommendation for a Commission encompassing an external relations responsibility, seems to have been too disparate a system for achieving the task.
As countries generally, and in our Hemisphere in particular, seek to develop and pursue strategies appropriate to the fluidity of international affairs and the changes in economic weights among countries – implying a degree of economic and political multipolarity, the need for a Caricom institutional concentration on continuous strategising in respect of the future location of the sub-region in the maelstrom of activities and alliances, seems to be evident. The challenge is already evident in the sphere of regional options being chosen by Caricom states in the economic sphere; and as David Granger has pointed out, the choices available for states in the sphere of Caribbean maritime relations are being treated on a national ad hoc basis, rather than in a context of developing a perception of the future geopolitics of the Caribbean.
So, as can already be gradually observed in the Region, non-Caricom perspectives on the geopolitical character of Caricom and the Caribbean Region in present-to-future circumstances, has the potential for affecting the arrangements of presently planned Caricom integration. And it is through this lens that we need to notice the EU’s apparent insistence during the EPA negotiations, that its own perspective of developments and economic permutations in the area meant that the REPA must be one inclusive of more than Caricom as we know it.
The Caricom Technical Working Group on Governance attempts in its Report (Managing Mature Regionalism) to describe the role of a Commission in this regard, as an articulator, facilitating the concensus-creation process in both the external arena, and within and among participating Caricom states. This would require the integration of the CRNM as a negotiating institution within the Caricom Commission institutional system proper, so that there can be an adequate articulation between the strategy-making and negotiation processes.
(2) Articulating and Facilitating Implementation of Structural Integration Activities
As the interest of Caricom states in the long-term maintenance of the metropolitan protection system wanes, countries can well have less and less of a natural or historical interest in the mode of regionalism that characterizes the Caricom system. The measure of the gains form integration can well be increasingly calculated in terms of actual returns in relation to offers of needed resources from alternative sources
It was necessary, for this point of view, that Caricom in approaching the REPA negotiations, have some projection of the types of public/private sector structural integration projects appropriate to the development perspectives of members states, and the economic spaces to which they should apply.
For such efforts – requiring extra-regional financial and investment interventions – an appropriate institution apparatus must be in existence, which can act as an initiator of dialogue, and explainer of regional perspectives, an effective and perceived legitimate channel of communication between the regional authorities and external agents, and an effective guarantor of commitments made by the regional political authorities. In effect, this means a Commission playing a role of communicator and interlocuteur valuable, pursuant to the medium term objectives of the Single Economy.
Secondly, in relations to the Single Economy, there must be an articulated relationship between a Commission as articulator of regional policy, and the framework and direction of negotiations for concluding “in principle” arrangements on the one hand, and an institution concerned with the evaluation of physical planning, negotiation financing and interfacing with investment (public /private) institutions.
In our context, and from the point of view of parsimony of regional institutional arrangements, this means that in the future, the Caribbean Development Bank must be seen formally, as an arm of the regional integration governance system (even while retaining its own institutional and legal integrity) with a continuing presence in certain geographical and extra-regional arenas.
I have observed elsewhere that, particularly larly from the point of view of the smaller countries of the Region, and in respect of the REPA then proposed, that the CDB as legitimiser of the appropriateness of regional projects designed to succeed declining economic activities was particular germane to their problems of finding new economic activity bases, of optimal economic scale. (That after all, was one of the original purposes of the CDB, clinching the adherence to the so-called Lesser Developed countries of the time to the regional integration movement).
For integration in this phase means, as implied in the Nassau Declaration so long ago, an effort of structural development-infrastructural reorganization in respect of new physical spaces felt and demonstrated to be necessary for new economies of scale, for cost-effective competition in the domestic and international arenas. And in this connection, we might recall the observation made by former Prime Minister Arthur in 2003 (when we were still calculating our responses to FTA proposals from both Europe and the United States) that “mere removal of restrictions on intra-regional trade in goods will hardly ever be a major stimulus to regional development since the scope for ‘tariff-induced’ growth, limited to regional transactions, is small and the driving force for development is not regional but international demand” .
This, it seems to me, should be the presumption from which we operate. And it should lead us to define the appropriate institutional approach implicit in it.
The relationship between our relatively small size and our relatively high per capita incomes, makes the task of explaining the vulnerability of our economies difficult, in the sense that external interlocutors are prone to believe that we have passed the test of “survivability” when compared with other developing countries.
Our efforts to reverse this perception – or at least to explain the long term implications of our situation of vulnerability – have therefore not been entirely successful. The two main instruments for this, in the last decade and a half – the Commonwealth Secretariat/World Bank Task Force, and the Barbados Declaration on Small Island Developing States – that would place the emphasis on the long term infrastructural effort need to reduce the effects of vulnerability – neither of these has had the force of institutional continuity in the international arena, and the legitimacy as agents of specific political authorities, to pursue the activities necessary.
It therefore seems to me, that the articulation of a nexus between a Commission and the CDB, under the direction of Caricom as the regional political authority, and in direct response and relation to the requirements of the Caribbean Single Economy priorities – priorities for regional structural/physical and human resource infrastructural reform – is necessary as part of the future governance system. (A close look at the problematique of air transportation in the Eastern Caribbean is apposite in this regard).
(3) Integration and Representation
It appears to me that there is a process (though not necessarily a deliberately guided process) of “miniaturisation” of Caricom visibility taking place in the Hemisphere of which we are a part – a reduction of our diplomatic space for manouevre.
This is partly because:
The priority that the United States has placed on the NAFTA/Mexico definition of an appropriate free trade area mechanism, seems to establish parameters limiting subsequent negotiation for free trade area relationships in the Hemisphere. Yet, as was made clear during the Mexican financial crisis of 1994, the salience which the US places on the “survivability” of Mexico is of an order far beyond that which characterizes its relationship with Caricom;
The alacrity with which the Central American states, and then the Dominican Republic have accepted the model, further legitimates it as an appropriate regional policy in the eyes of the US;
the priorities in international trade negotiation of middle/emerging powers like Brazil, which have placed constraints on our short-term planning/negotiation of revised preferential arrangements (in respect, to take one example, of Guyana’s objectives re a suitable preferential arrangement for its sugar exports);
The effects of the US-DR-CAFTA on the evolution of a successor arrangement to the CBTPA;
the placing of Caricom by the EU, from a long-term perspective, within a framework of its wider relationship with the Caribbean Basin countries as a whole, and, inevitably, its determination to match, from a competitiveness point of view, the US arrangements there;
the, let us call it, indeterminacy, in terms of longer-term diversity, of Cuba’s relationships with other Hemispheric countries, and a still-to-be articulated stance towards that country in terms of CSME integration/development priorities – as distinct form priorities relating to assistance from Cuba in respect of social development;
The emerging role of a Venezuelan government concerned with revising the terms and scope of regional integration, raising contentions within Caricom reminiscent of the period of the mid-1970’s;
The determination of the Dominican Republic to play roles simultaneously in multiple spheres of hemispheric integration appropriate to its own autonomously articulated direction;
The internationalization of the Haitian issue, the positioning of larger hemispheric states in the diplomacy and management of the issues relating to the country’s development, and the lack of a Caricom significant influence on outcomes in a Caricom member-state.
Our stance, from a collective Caricom perspective, a substantial emerging power, China, is hampered by our diverse recognition policies. While China itself is increasingly participating in regional integration activities in its own geo-economic sphere, and inevitably, developing perspectives on the utility of various modes of regional integration
This is a heavy agenda of issue to be simultaneously deliberated on, in respect of policy and strategy. The TWG’s proposals speak to the necessity for institutional continuity for coping with it, and thus with Caricom’s location in the Hemisphere in regard to the elaboration of its stances on the issues;
Our Regional negotiating Machinery was, established, as I have suggested earlier, on an ad hoc basis to deal with the specific emergencies of the REPA and FTAA negotiations, is not constructed to participate in the strategizing and decision-making on these issues.
The TWG, following on earlier proposals, suggests an alternative mode of articulating institutional arrangements that involves incorporation of the RNM, in dealing with this third arena of Caricom’s future preoccupations.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, we summarise as follows:
The dynamic character of our contemporary, relevant, international environment is increasingly determining the options available to us. The old relationships that have given us a certain significance and empathy in the North Atlantic political and economic arena have weakened, and, as the recent REPA negotiations, and the US policy of bypassing us in its free trade area pursuits in the Caribbean Basin have shown, are progressively unable/unwilling to support our perspectives;
A determination of certain Hemispheric states to play significant roles in the drawing of new regional diplomatic and economic maps is emerging, a situation complicated for Caricom by the implications of the stances of these states on international trade and other economic issues;
Our institutional presence/visibility in these dynamic environments, including demonstration of our ability to articulate collectively-determined responses based on the assurance of legal capabilities for ensuring implementation- effectiveness, does not yet have the credibility that is required;
A rearrangement of the institutional systems that play diverse role on our behalf, in international negotiations, is now necessary – implying an integrated governance system for effectiveness, as well as from the point of view of parsimony of institutional arrangements in a small region;
The notion of national sovereignty need not impede the development of such a system, once the spheres of its authority and that of its organs, are clearly articulated, and relationships legally circumscribed. The TWG indicates modalities to that end;
All countries and regions, large and small, are currently grappling with this issue. The issues and complexities involved in the Europeans’ response to the change in European continental geopolitics and the relationship between institutional reorganization and enlargement, is a case in point. We are not unique in terms of the institutional demands that regionalization, as an aspect of globalization, is placing on us.
Institute of International Relations
University of the West Indies
St Augustine
Trinidad & Tobago
24th January, 2008
