With the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) having remained largely mum over the United States’ protracted embargo on Venezuela’s international oil exports, a circumstance that has crippled the country’s economy the Head of Government of one of the smaller territories in the region has publicly declared his administration’s opposition to the squeeze imposed on the export on oil exports from the South American nation.
While member countries of the region have, up until now, sought to steer clear of the issue, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Brown last week broke the region’s almost deafening silence, asserting that the retention of the sanctions on Venezuela’s oil exports is “hurting others within the region.”
It is, as much as anything else, rising energy prices that have prompted the Antiguan Prime Minister to openly make the point about the impact of Washington’s actions on other countries in the region. Pulling no punches and stepping out ahead of his CARICOM colleagues, the Antiguan Prime Minister bluntly declared that “there is something fundamentally wrong with American policies to Cuba and Venezuela.”
While Prime Minister Browne’s remark was clearly prompted by the fact that the region is facing the ‘squeeze’ of rising energy prices, there are some in the Caribbean, who having become steeped in infusing a pro-Washington line into their respective foreign policies who might well be inclined to see the Antiguan Prime Minister’s statement as reflective of a stepping out of his crease. Browne, however is making the argument that Washington’s crippling targeting of Venezuela’s oil industry is “not only hurting Cuba and Venezuela, but they are also hurting others within the region,” pointedly adding that the U.S. cannot dictate to Caribbean nations on their trade policies.
While CARICOM, in its public statements on the Washington/Caracas impasse has largely limited itself to urging enhanced relations between the two countries, Browne has taken what, contextually, can be regarded as a bold step of CARICOM engaging Caracas on high oil prices. Contextually, the Antiguan Prime Minister recalled the PetroCaribe, energy initiative launched in 2005 by the then Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to supply Venezuelan crude oil to countries in the Caribbean region at significantly discounted prices. Antigua was one of the regional beneficiaries of the PetroCaribe arrangement. Browne has reportedly said that the PetroCaribe initiative can be an important instrument in the region’s efforts to survive the soaring prices of oil.
“If Venezuela sends us a shipment of petrol, we will take it because people are suffering. You can’t tell me that the United States can have a carve-out for countries in Europe that are not as vulnerable so Venezuela can send them products in order to wipe out debt, but here in the Caribbean people are suffering, we can’t buy products from Venezuela,” Browne is quoted as saying.
Rather than frontally engage Washington on the issue the region, as a whole, appears prepared to assume a ‘wait and see’ posture against the backdrop of recent pronouncements in Washington that it might be prepared to loosen up the restrictions on Venezuela as a means of possibly “encouraging resumed negotiations between the US-backed opposition and the government of President Nicolás Maduro,” according to a Caribbean National Weekly report. Browne, however, appears to take the position that the Caribbean cannot afford to wait out what continues to be a protracted back-and-forth between Caracas and Washington on the issue of mending fences between the two countries to the extent where Venezuelan oil can begin to flow in the region again.
Animated discourses on the region’s ‘softly, softly’ posture towards Washington arose just weeks ago when CARICOM fell victim to an embarrassing public display of division over whether or not, as a collective, member countries should attend the Summit of the Americas in the United States after Washington had determined that Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua should not attend the meeting.
