These financially well-endowed bodies produce reports, hold conferences and organise events aimed at developing thinking on a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues. Although they argue that they do so for the greater good of society, the reality is that their role is to influence and help form policy.
Typically they also provide a temporary home for the senior policy staff-in-waiting for an incoming US administration or provide a location out of which those demitting office can operate. They range in their political persuasion from the far left through the centre to the far right but are for the most part associated informally with one or another of the two main US parties.
Thus the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) and the Hudson Institute function as a think tank for the Republicans and exercised considerable influence both before and during the administration of President George W Bush. While others such as Brookings or the small Center for a New American Security played and are playing a central role with the Obama administration.
In this context the sense in Washington is that that the Brookings Institute together with the Inter American Dialogue now have the greatest policy influence in relation to Latin America and the Caribbean.
Over the last months Brookings has produced a number of key reports on the hemisphere that echo in many important respects what the US President said on the campaign trail These include: The Obama Administration and the April 17/19 Summit of the Americas: Agenda for Change; Roadmap for Engagement with Cuba, U.S. Policy Toward a Cuba in Transition; and Re-Thinking U.S.-Latin American Relations: all of which are available through Brookings website.
However, up to now what has been lacking in this influential body is any specific thinking about a US policy approach to the Caribbean and the nations of Caricom in particular. With the April 17/19 Port of Spain summit of the Americas and the global recession in mind, Brookings together with the Organization of American States, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Manchester Trade brought together in Washington on March 24 a range of experts and policy-makers from the region.
The objective was to discuss issues of trade and finance, climate change and natural disasters, counter-narcotics and security issues and the impact that a changed US/Cuba relationship might have on the Caribbean region.
The event was primarily aimed at trying to develop some policy objectives that the Obama administration might consider, but it was also interesting for other reasons.
At the event there was the feeling that the Caribbean, and the anglophone part in particular, had largely been ignored when it came to policy formulation. There was a sense that the arrival of a new Democratic administration and the holding of a summit in Trinidad in which the US President would participate, offered an unique opportunity for Washington and those involved in developing policy to think in rather more detail about the region. There was a tangible sense that a new and more realistic relationship with the US was required based on partnership and listening but that this was likely to occur only in the areas the meeting addressed: trade and finance; climate change; security; and with respect to the impact of a changed US relationship with Cuba.
There was a clearly expressed concern that for the Caribbean to weather the global economic storm the drawing rights of the International Monetary Fund needed to be enlarged, there needed to be less stress on a deflationary approach and a change in the IMF policy of quota banding that discriminates against the Caribbean was required. This was coupled with concerns that global aid commitments were maintained.
Then, and as always seems to be the case at Caribbean conferences held overseas, a significant element of the exchanges between participants focused on how the region itself might address the problems it faced if it was to enjoy a better relationship with those outside. For this reason almost every speaker in a session on trade, finance and development spoke with passion about the need for the Caribbean to implement the decisions taken at a regional level if the region was to prosper. There was a strong sense conveyed, albeit in a kind of code by even the most senior speakers, that the Caribbean was still operating a system that was designed in the 1960s and had failed to update its institutions to address the way the world now was. External policies rather than the region itself were driving change.
In a session on climate change it became apparent that whether sea level change this century is either the one metre (approx 3.28 feet) forecast previously or the 59cm (approx 23 inches) now being forecast by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Caribbean will suffer more economically than many other parts of the world. The sense was that much of whatever money will be available for mitigation will go to the developed world and the Caribbean needed to engage the US administration on how global resources should be made available to regions such at the Caribbean that would suffer severe infrastructural damage.
On security, it became apparent that the global economic crisis would negatively affect the security of the region through increased demand for narcotics and a rise in what was described as entrepreneurial crime. If the US/Mexico Merida Initiative was successful this would displace transit routes to the Caribbean and there needed to be a much closer US dialogue on this issue. There was a need for the US to begin a debate about legalisation and to be much more sensitive about the movement of weapons, narcotics and deportees.
In most of these sessions there was a striking similarity in approach and emphasis between many US and Caribbean participants, albeit with raw nerves being touched from time to time; but in the most interesting session of all on Cuba and the Caribbean there seemed to be two very different viewpoints.
Space does not permit me to go into any detail but the US approach was largely to see huge economic advantage for Cuba and by extension the US of a change in US policy towards Havana. In contrast Caribbean participants were either silent or hostile to suggestions that this might occur at the expense of the Caribbean economy: a difference which suggested the urgent need for a Washington based body to begin to draw together interested parties to discuss the issue.
The conference did not involve to any great extent the Caribbean private sector or serving members of the US administration. Despite this it enabled for those who are sensitive to the region, it difficulties and concerns to better understand the parameters for future US policy towards the region.
Previous columns can be found at www.caribbean-council.org
