CARICOM to embark on new foreign policy

Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders  ended their summit in St Lucia  having agreed to  embark on a new foreign policy direction .

The policy would  see CARICOM forging deeper relations with countries other than its traditional allies in Europe and North America.

The countries CARICOM will  look  at strengthening  relations  include Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa and China.

CARICOM Chairman, Dr Kenny Anthony reportedly said the move is important given the  changes taking place in the global environment and their implications for the Community’s

The regional leaders,  also identified tourism, agriculture and construction as economic sectors that offered prospects for early resuscitation of economic growth.

By Sir Ronald Sanders
At the opening of the 33rd Conference of the 15-Nation Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM), the incoming Chairman, St Lucia’s Prime Minister, Kenny Anthony, called on governments of the region to “develop a common policy and programme for engagement with new and emerging global partners”.  The words “common policy” are especially significant, and it has to be assumed that he did not use them lightly.
As small, vulnerable countries, lacking in military capacity or economic clout, effective diplomacy is the best tool available to them.  And, while, from time to time, these small countries have scored impressive diplomatic victories in the international community, they have been most successful when they have adopted common policies and pursued them jointly.

The St Lucia Prime Minister was also careful in stating that the terms of engagement with new and emerging global partners “must be defined by our strategic interests”.  Again, it is assumed that by the use of the word “our” in this context, the Prime Minister meant the collective strategic interest of all CARICOM countries, and not just the interests of individual nations.  Where individual interests have been pursued in the past, only short term objectives have been served, and individual countries have found themselves subject to the dictates of external forces over the longer period.

While, even as a collective, the small size of CARICOM countries and their markets do not make them powerful, they are able to bargain more strongly together than they can individually.  That was the lesson of the Lomé and Cotonou agreements signed with the European Union (EU).  In negotiating those agreements, Caribbean countries worked in lock-step with the countries of Africa and the Pacific – something that it did not manage to achieve in the more recent negotiations with the EU for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).

Prime Minister Anthony expressed the hope that the CARICOM countries would dedicate their efforts “towards a dynamic and outward stance of engagement with third states, particularly with Africa, Latin America and other emerging economic regions”.  He was right to do so, for the two regions offer both diplomatic and economic opportunities if they are pursued in the context of an overall CARICOM plan.
He did not mention by name the most important region – Asia – where two large developing countries, China and India, have emerged as global economic players.  This may be because he is conscious that CARICOM countries have no “common policy” with regard to China and Taiwan, since five of them (including his own) are tied to Taiwan and nine to China (th