On May 27 President Obama sent a new US national security strategy to Congress. The language it contains and his subsequent remarks not only represent a repudiation of the world view of his predecessor, but make clear that he and those who advise him have recognised that the world has changed and co-operation on a basis approaching that of equals is required with emerging powers.
This message – startling after a century in which the US had sought to become and remain the dominant world power – makes clear that the unipolar world that followed the Cold War has ended. It marks the starting point for a new US approach based on engagement and collective action, not just as in the past with allies in Europe, but by embracing economically vibrant nations in Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East.
“We are working” the document states, “to build deeper and more effective partnerships with other key centres of influence – including China, India, and Russia, as well as increasingly influential nations such as Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia – so that we can cooperate on issues of bilateral and global concern, with the recognition that power, in an interconnected world, is no longer a zero sum game.”
“We are expanding our outreach to emerging nations, particularly those that can be models of regional success and stability, from the Americas to Africa to Southeast Asia. And we will pursue engagement with hostile nations to test their intentions, give their governments the opportunity to change course, reach out to their people, and mobilize international coalitions,” it continues.
The fifty-two page report, which seeks a bi-partisan consensus but is rejected by many Republicans, argues that to achieve this the US must do more than focus on hard security. It must, it suggests, deploy in a co-ordinated and connected manner soft power with partners in the G20 and beyond on issues as diverse as trade, development assistance, education, training and a range of other options. The US it says, “must face the world as it is.”
This latter comment is language the Caribbean would do well to adopt. Although like Brazil it may differ sometimes radically with the US and others on the actual policies to be pursued, the preparedness of a nation as powerful as the US to recognise that it has no longer any option other than to reconsider its thinking and its past and accept that it must now share power if it is to create a better future for its own people, indicates a nation that is alive, strategically aware and moving on.
In contrast relatively few Caribbean nations have understood that other than for a domestic audience, continuing to express the ideas, experience and thinking that ultimately led the region to independence, has little utility on the world stage unless it is linked to a clear vision of the future, new forms of engagement, clear objectives and realism.
An illustration of the need for a new Caribbean narrative can be found in the comments of Caricom’s Chairman, Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerritt, as reported in the Caribbean electronic media.
Speaking during a lunch break at cricket on the Line and Length Network and following his return from meetings held in Washington to take forward President Obama’s Caribbean Basin Security Initiative, he was quoted as saying: “If anybody doesn’t have a very close relation with the US, the only person to blame is the US; in fact they removed themselves from the region; we didn’t tell them to go away, we keep telling them to come back…”
“There are a number of things during Reagan’s time that were in the region and they have cut it away so what we have been saying to them is that you got to engage us more.”
Mr Skerritt, like many political figures in cricketing nations who agree to lunch or tea break interviews, probably felt he was talking only to a domestic audience.
His remarks reflect a commonly shared regional view that fails to recognise the need for the terms of engagement with the US and Europe to change; that they have moved on and have little interest in the region. That is to say that rather than complain it is for the Caribbean to respond with vision, identifying new ways to join up its development requirements with the concerns of the US, Canada, Europe, Brazil, China and India about issues like the environment, economic integration, trade and security.
This does not require complete agreement with the thinking in Washington or the capitals of Europe, but it does require realism and a sense of proportion that does not conflate Caribbean sovereignty with power, or a belief that Washington should come to the Caribbean.
Nothing is easier than to assign arrogance or post-imperial desire to the actions of those beyond the region – it certainly exists – but for the most part the reality is mundane. Most in government and politics in North America and Europe could not care less about the region and are frustrated that when they do come to talk, that the level of engagement is often surrounded by overbearing formality and a failure to address detail.
It is more than possible for nations to change this and respond positively by developing their own narrative.
Cuba leaves no one unaware of its thinking. Guyana’s President has established clearly his nation’s objectives in the context of the environment, the rain forest and the importance of a dialogue with Brazil and the nations of the south. The Dominican Republic’s accelerating economic growth is seen positively, as is its desire for a rapid consolidation of its economic relationship with the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean; and some institutions like the East Caribbean Central Bank have by their actions achieved international respect.
If the Caribbean wants to be taken as seriously as it wishes to take itself, then it ought to explain better its place in the world, its needs and what it has to offer in return. It too must face the world as it is.
Previous columns can be found at www.caribbean-council.org
