The Long View

Middle ranking powers are emerging as important policy arbiters. They are seeking global outcomes that better respond to their own interests as China and the US become the dominant global economic actors, each offering competing approaches to development.

A week ago, the twenty-seventh UN conference on climate change (COP27) ended.

Just over a week ago and for the 30th year running the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of a resolution condemning Washington for its continuing embargo on Cuba.

‘Indian son rises over empire. History comes full circle in Britain’, read the headline on India’s NDTV early morning news bulletin, indicating the fascination there and across much of the world that the UK, a country still struggling to find a post imperial role, should choose someone of British Asian origin as its latest Prime Minister.

No one should be in doubt. A toxic economic mix consisting of a war in Europe, surging inflation, slowing Chinese growth, a probable global recession, and a decision to cut production to increase oil prices by OPEC-plus, the cartel which now includes Russia, threaten to set back Caribbean tourism recovery.

There is no sign that the war in Ukraine will end soon.

The late Queen Elizabeth was widely revered for her sense of duty, her wisdom, advice, and the continuity she provided.

Gervase Warner, the Chief Executive Officer of Massy Holdings, was direct.

In 2023, CARICOM will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. Plans are underway for what may be a year-long celebration.

Venezuela is hoping to resuscitate its PetroCaribe programme. Against a background of surging global oil prices, the country’s gradual economic recovery, political change in Latin America, and a carefully crafted dialogue with the US, Russia, China, and Iran, Caracas is seeking to reposition itself as a swing energy state.

The recently ended Summit of the Americas will likely be best remembered for the US decision not to invite Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, the chaotic unprepared way in which Washington tried to manage this, and the decision by some hemispheric leaders, most notably Mexico’s President, not to attend.

Could the threat of global food shortages finally unite CARICOM? Will it cause member states to act together, making real the CSME’s promise of effective regional cooperation and economic security?

After two lean years, Caribbean tourism is recovering. As travel restrictions are removed there is widespread optimism about the coming summer and winter season.

After a prolonged period in which Washington’s economic role and political influence in Latin America and the Caribbean has been unrivalled, fundamental questions are being asked about whether the development of institutions less dominated by the US, might better help shape the future of the hemisphere.

Earlier last  month at a conference on Caribbean security, Barbados’ Prime Minister, Mia Mottley, spoke about the consequences of the war in Ukraine and the now unavoidable impact it will have on the cost of food, energy, fertiliser, and transport.

For most, a passport denotes citizenship, belonging, certain rights, and residence.

Nothing better illustrates the divide that exists between today’s Caribbean and its past than two unfortunate images of Prince William and his wife Catherine in Jamaica; one standing atop a land rover after a military event, and the other having to greet children in Trench Town through a wire fence.

CARICOM Heads meeting in Belize could not have been clearer about the ‘perfect storm’ that is about to strike the Caribbean.

In June the Summit of the Americas will take place in Los Angeles.

Imagining a better future for the Caribbean is not hard, but delivering it is becoming infinitely more complex.