One of the mistakes we make in assessing the value of the CARICOM project is to regard socio-cultural solidarity as its sole asset.
Such cohesion matters, certainly. It
underpins regional integration everywhere, providing a foundation for
collective action. But integration aimed at common development requires far
more. It demands practical cooperation, particularly among small states
confronting entrenched vulnerabilities and limited room for manoeuvre.
Despite occasional delusional
pronouncements from some Caribbean capitals, if CARICOM did not exist today we
would have had to conjure it out of a mangled mess.
Former CARICOM Assistant Secretary General
Joseph Cox more or less makes that case in his latest Caribbean Financial
Dispatch editorial, adding that operational effectiveness can hugely determine
whether integration succeeds or fails.
He frames his analysis around challenges
that both member states and the regional bureaucracy appear increasingly
ill-equipped to manage, foremost among them being the need for urgent recognition
of the imbalance between small Caribbean states and global power and the
required remedies.
We are hardly unique in confronting this.
Regional organisations worldwide are acknowledging the necessity of greater
transparency and institutional resilience while recognising that short-term
national politics cannot substitute for coherent long-term regional strategy.
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| CARICOM's 15 Full Members |
Very often, CARICOM has, with some
justification, been criticised as bureaucratic, excessively ponderous and slow
on implementation. Cox examines these shortcomings from the perspective of
someone who served at a senior level within the system.
Yet institutions should not be judged
solely by their imperfections, but also by the circumstances that produced them
and the challenges they were created to address.
Much of the early literature on such
matters portrayed CARICOM mainly as an expression of Caribbean idealism.
Equally persuasive, though, is the view that it emerged as an instrument of
Caribbean survival.
Former CARICOM Deputy Secretary General
Professor Kenneth Hall sought to establish this when he led a series of
publications and multimedia initiatives - some of which I was professionally
associated with - under the banner “Integrate or Perish.”
He appeared to believe that the phrase
captured the Community's essential purpose - even as many preferred more
romantic narratives of Caribbean unity rooted in shared indigenous identities.
The publication of Integrate or Perish
(2000) was followed by The Caribbean Community Beyond Survival (2001), which
assembled reflections from many of the region's leading thinkers. Together they
argued essentially that integration was not simply desirable, but
indispensable.
Cox advances that argument. He suggests
that this survival project has quietly lost diplomatic and political capital
because member states have come to expect progressively less from it.
Increasingly, governments are responding to
common external pressures through national rather than regional strategies,
effectively discounting the value of collective action.
If that diagnosis is correct, it represents
far more than an institutional problem. It is a strategic miscalculation that
extends well beyond the Caribbean Court of Justice's forthcoming consideration
of issues surrounding the reappointment of the CARICOM Secretary General.
The uncomfortable truth is that the
external pressures confronting Caribbean societies have become more integrated
than Caribbean policymaking itself.
Whether the challenge is geo-political
conflict, correspondent banking, anti-money laundering standards, climate
finance, food security, maritime transport or a just transition away from
fossil fuels, no Caribbean country possesses sufficient economic or diplomatic
weight to shape these developments alone.
None of us.
The mathematics of international affairs
have not become kinder to small states. They have become far less forgiving.
This is where T&T occasionally risks
misunderstanding its own place within the Community. Decades of relative
prosperity - now under considerable strain - have sometimes fostered the
illusion that national interests can be pursued independently of our Caribbean
neighbours.
Yet our manufacturers depend on regional
markets. Our security increasingly relies on intelligence cooperation (some of
which is currently farmed out overseas). Our energy future is shaped by global
environmental policy. Our food security is inseparable from regional supply
chains and transport networks.
Our fortunes are becoming more, not less,
interdependent. Expanded relations may complement but certainly not replace the
core. Why do we have to learn this the hard way? Even CARICOM sceptic, former
Jamaica PM Bruce Golding has recently been sounding an alarm on the subject.
External pressures rarely remain confined
to their original targets. They spread, deepen and multiply. Caribbean
solidarity must do the same. Not as an expression of nostalgia, but as an
exercise in survival.
