Earlier this month the new British Secretary of State responsible for international development laid out the new coalition government’s policies on that issue. Earlier this week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon made reference to the need for new perspectives on aid towards the countries of Africa at the impending G20 meeting. And in recent times, as we have indicated in previous editorial, there seems to be increasing concern on the part of the Western powers about the attraction to the African continent of China in particular, but also India, by way of making investments particularly in the continent’s mineral resources, and making major commitments to developmental projects without attempting to tie down African governments to the ‘good governance’ reforms which Western countries have tended to require.

The UN Secretary General’s visit to Africa, the second of three intended excursions there in the month of June, in focusing on the issue of development, stressed the new approaches which include commitments to green growth, inclusive growth and the social requirements for growth, including intensive concentration on child care and maternal health. And the British Secretary of State’s recent speech on development concerned what he referred to as “a complex tapestry of trade, investment and enterprise, climate change, economic growth, debt relief, financial services, intellectual property and advancing new technologies” that require “pulling together the strands of development, defence and diplomacy,” through the establishment by the United Kingdom of a new National Security Council. In other words, Britain seeks to reinforce the link between economic growth and strategic and security circumstances and policies of developing countries.

We, living in the Caricom arena will be increasingly less surprised by the obvious shift of interest towards the fast-growing Asian countries on the part of the Western or North Atlantic powers, a shift influenced by the Asians’ now obvious, and obviously successful, insistence on striking out on new strategies of economic growth. Western countries have become well aware that the new economic strength of these countries permits them to make autonomous interventions in areas once deemed strategic investment preserves of the West. Along with these have come new, in particular Chinese, perspectives – different from those asserted by the West in the extent to which Asia’s new economic giant does not display excessive concern with the good governance considerations that have preoccupied the Western powers. The Western powers are now prone, in response, to emphasise the need for China to pay greater attention to human rights considerations in both Africa and Asia. But the Chinese pay little heed to this as they proceed to sign major mineral investments whether in the Congo, in Angola, in the Sudan or elsewhere.

As some Western states used to do in bygone times, the Chinese insist that “quiet diplomacy” and “non-interference in the internal affairs of countries” are more appropriate.

We in Caricom will also have observed the revived interest of both the United States and the European Union in the evolution of Latin America, as countries like Brazil and Venezuela, in their different ways, stretch out way beyond their continent to draw investments and seek markets in Asia and the Middle East. To this the American response has been twofold. On the one hand the US seeks to negate the complimentary diplomatic initiatives which a country like Brazil has made vis-à-vis the Iran nuclear weapons affair, and almost to suggest to Brazil that it has gone beyond its natural reach in making, with Turkey, a diplomatic intervention on that issue. On the other hand, as the Brazilians have sought to use the American (or Western)-created diplomatic instrument, the WTO, to reorganize the terms of trade and production in a way in which UNCTAD was unable to do, the US and the EU have been constrained to accept rulings that do not necessarily go in their favour.

In the case of Venezuela, the diverse initiatives taken by that country both in Latin America and way beyond towards the East and Russia, have largely, if not gladly, been accepted by the US. But we can probably attribute the revived American interest in Latin America and the Caribbean to the involvement of Venezuela nearer home, as well as to a certain perception that Brazil, in particular, is unlikely to be willing to act as an intermediary of the United States vis-à-vis Venezuela, as Brazil’s negative attitudes to the issue of American bases in Colombia, and pressures on Venezuela, have shown. Of course, the governments in both Brazil and Venezuela have indicated in their different ways, that they understand the material and consequent diplomatic revolutions occurring in global economic affairs, and their implications for global political relations. But both of these countries, in their different ways again, will be undertaking electoral processes in the near future, and they can expect the US to take an intense interest in their outcomes.

Where does that leave us? In respect of the United Kingdom, the Caribbean is now prone to take a somewhat pessimistic view of that countries willingness to pursue a sustained and substantial interest in this area. Britain’s relative lack of interest in facilitating any effort of mediation in respect  of the EPA negotiations with the EU, its largely negative attitude on immigration, its initial determination (now slightly amended) to stick to a new airline passenger tax obviously disadvantageous to the Caribbean,  has suggested declining preoccupation with Caricom, with one exception. This relates to the issue of security as it concerns the trade in narcotics and what, to the UK, would seem to be an increasingly weak Caribbean capability for dealing with the issue. Note the recent statement of the Development Secretary, that “we are pulling together the strands of development, defence and diplomacy.”

In large measure too, this latter seems to be the inspiration of US interest in our part of the world. They perceive us as unwilling to take the bull by the horns on the narcotics trade issue. They most likely perceive the problem to be related to our unwillingness, whether in Jamaica or in Guyana or elsewhere in the region, to facilitate their own efforts in dealing with the trans-Caribbean drug trade. They largely refuse to give much credence to our assertion that the issue of criminal deportees from their country poses substantial danger to political stability in Caricom and therefore to provide the needed assistance to cope with the problem. They see us as unwilling to taking new initiatives in trade diplomacy, no doubt sometimes wondering, even as they extend the Caribbean Basin Trade and Production Act, why we do not do like the Dominican Republic and take the bull by the horns indeed, and quickly follow the DR’s approach to US-Central American Free Trade. And finally, they probably also accept two views prevalent in some quarters in Caricom itself. The first, that we really do not seem to know where we are going in respect of regional integration, making commitments to the creation of a single economic space which we do not appear to believe in, in practice. And the second, that we wish to retain the exclusivity of Caricom, in the face of a changing Caribbean – a stance exemplified by our ambivalence to the DR’s insistence on, in effect, widening Caricom and giving it a new institutional structure and geopolitical balance.

In effect, the US would feel that we do not wish to strategically relocate Caricom even in the basin and in this hemisphere, undertaking an institutional reorganization in that respect. And that this is the case even as we would assert that our latest initiatives towards participation in a Latin American and Caribbean Community point to a definitive, new direction.