Nand C. Bardouille | CARICOM and the new normal in international politics

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is grappling with a protracted period of regional tensions, tied to the new normal in international politics. In some respects, this moment is the bloc’s toughest test yet.

At a time when the unity of CARICOM is under growing strain, marked by a discernible shift in respect of interactional norms and diplomatic coherence pertaining to the foreign policy realm, St. Kitts and Nevis took up the mantle of Chair of the bloc.

Arguably, the impacts of that strain on the regional grouping have had a profound effect on how Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis Terrance Drew has approached his leadership role in CARICOM – on behalf of his country.

Drew is the Chairman of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM – for a six-month term that got underway this past January. As the bloc’s constituent treaty notes: “The Conference shall be the supreme Organ of the Community” .

In this framing, regional priorities are the rotating chairmanship’s main focus. Perhaps most consequentially, Drew is discharging his regional leadership responsibilities at a juncture when CARICOM member states are facing up to emergent geopolitical dynamics that have driven a wedge between them.

A WIDE (FOREIGN POLICY) GAP

CARICOM member states’ duelling perspectives on the high-stakes “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine became a consequential, foreign policy-related sticking point that placed the bloc in a months-long diplomatic rut.

This situation has weighed down the regional grouping, making its members’ efforts to cohesively contend with an international order that is undergoing a seismic change that much more difficult. (The international system last experienced change on such a scale at the Cold War’s end, which also precipitated the demise of bipolarity and ushered in the now erstwhile unipolar moment.)

While most CARICOM member states have responded to that Doctrine with suspicion and trepidation, some have offered full-throated support. The former subset of member states are standing their ground in respect of long-established CARICOM foreign policy-related principles, which hinge on the shared desire of such small states to respect processes of international cooperation and multilateralism.

In contrast, Trinidad and Tobago has controversially thrown its support behind Washington in respect of the spiralling US-Israeli war with Iran – which has been quelled by a tenuous cease-fire for now. Instructively, early on in that conflict, Barbados called for “restraint as Middle East tensions intensify”.

United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres has raised serious concerns about the conflict, too, as have many other stakeholders. Of note, legal experts have been sounding the alarm about what has transpired in the Middle East.

At the core of such concerns are breaches of the UN Charter – a document whose normative and legal standards are the traditional bedrock of the conduct of CARICOM member states’ international relations as small states. This is precisely why breaches of this Charter endanger these states in respect of the anarchic international system.

Few dynamics in this system undercut the UN Charter more than great powers behaving as if they have a license to do what they want without fear of the consequences.

This is why the US military campaign that, according to the US administration, sought to target illegal drug trafficking in the Caribbean by going after alleged “narco-trafficking” boats, raised so many eyebrows within the CARICOM fold. (All along, of course, Venezuela’s Maduro regime was in Washington’s crosshairs.)

Trinidad and Tobago did not share those concerns, unequivocally supporting the US military action that laid the groundwork for and resulted in the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.

The US administration has rewarded Port-of-Spain for its foreign policy positioning, deepening security cooperation. This was a priority area of the most recent bilateral engagement between Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio – convened on the margins of the Fiftieth Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM.

What also stands out is Trinidad and Tobago’s inclusion in the Shield of the Americas initiative. Indeed, Port-of-Spain is over the moon with its participation in the recently held Shield of the Americas summit. Guyana is the only other CARICOM member state that the US has included in this high-profile initiative.

With the two camps of CARICOM member states being far apart on key demands of the US, the status quo has fuelled mutual mistrust among members of the now five-plus-decade old grouping. It did not help that Washington operationalised the aforesaid Doctrine in invasive, heavy-handed security and foreign policy-related terms.

It is also the case that regional politics have focused intently on seeing the way forward, amidst widespread dissatisfaction with this difficult situation. Notably, upon the start of his term as CARICOM Chair, Drew sought to shift the situation in a positive direction. With an eye to preparing the ground for the success of the Fiftieth Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM, held under his chairmanship this past February, he piloted “a series of high-level engagements with regional leaders”.

Drew’s intent was to build goodwill among his fellow regional leaders, with a view to creating the conditions for them to all gather at this summit. In effect, those high-profile, face-to-face bilateral meetings held the promise of building “trust” and “shared purpose” in respect of the region’s leaders. He said as much.

Beyond ensuring that all CARICOM members’ respective leaders were at ‘the (summit) table’, Drew was also committed to having them primed for a productive exchange on key issues on the regional agenda.

Drew got his wish – at least in part. All his regional counterparts took part in the said summit; although, leaders of three of the bloc’s 14 sovereign member states departed early.

Consequently, closed-door deliberations that took the form of the leaders’ Retreat did not benefit from a full house.

The Retreat was a key component of the summit’s proceedings. This one-day, all-important session partly focused on geopolitical developments.

CARICOM member states did close ranks on some of the issues arising, which include Cuba policy. Their respective long-standing and wide-ranging bilateral relations with that Communist island have emerged as a diplomatic pressure point. In fact, several hold outs in the CARICOM fold have little choice but to accept Washington’s foreign policy line on how they should treat with Havana vis-à-vis facets of those relations.

One day prior to that leaders’ Retreat, and as part of the summit’s proceedings, Rubio met in-person with CARICOM leaders. One important take away from these talks is that they resulted in an agreement on a contemporary Cooperation Framework, which is now earnestly in the works.

These developments had a direct bearing on regional leaders’ subsequent consideration of geopolitical developments – a priority matter at the summit – warranting the issuance of the ‘Joint Statement on CARICOM’s Engagement with Secretary Rubio’.

THE PRE-EMINENCE OF THE ‘SOVEREIGNTY NARRATIVE’

Signals emanating from the summit in question also called attention to the limits of CARICOM-based regionalism, with member states reaffirming their pragmatic approach to integration.

It is important to note that, with a nod to the Rose Hall Declaration on ‘Regional Governance and Integrated Development’, Prime Minister of Jamaica Andrew Holness drove this point home at the formal start of that very summit.

Regarding regional governance, the so-called Rose Hall Declaration states (in part): “The reaffirmation that CARICOM is a Community of Sovereign States, and of Territories able and willing to exercise the rights and assume the obligations of membership of the Community, and that the deepening of regional integration will proceed in this political and juridical context.”

Put differently, and as Terri-Ann Gilbert-Roberts notes in a 2013 scholarly work, there is a “strong aversion among political elites to delegating authority to supranational institutions – a legacy of the Federal Experiment”.

In his address to the Opening Ceremony of the summit under reference, Holness underscored the following: “For decades, an idealised narrative around Caribbean integration, while well-intentioned, has framed perhaps unrealistic expectations within our respective populations. It has also perhaps unintentionally diminished the genuine strengths of our existing arrangement, an association of independent states bound not by uniformity, but by shared purpose, mutual regard, and a deep history of collaboration.”

Yet it is equally important to recognise the tremendous achievements of a cohesively functioning CARICOM, as advanced (in large part) by regional summitry. Such summitry has long played a key role in member states’ broader efforts to coordinate with each other and partners, enabling dialogue that has paid off in spades over several decades.

Meetings of this kind are crucial for strengthening bilateral and multilateral ties and contributing to diplomatic solutions, now more than ever.

Holness himself seemed to signal as much, conveying the following perspective at the opening of the Fiftieth Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM: “We meet at a time when the speed of global change is outpacing the speed of regional coordination.”

This summit, per its communiqué, represents an important win for St. Kitts and Nevis and CARICOM as a whole.

UNITY HOPES SUFFER ANOTHER BLOW

Yet what brought opportunity for coordination at a time of sharp tensions that are the cause of a foreign policy-related rift in CARICOM has also created yet another point of contention: The much-publicised controversy that has arisen surrounding the reappointment of the Secretary-General of CARICOM during the leaders’ Retreat.

This controversy has been brewing ever since Drew’s initial statement – issued on March 25th – regarding the reappointment of incumbent Secretary-General of CARICOM Carla Barnett for a second term of office beginning in August 2026.

The impasse runs deeper than procedural concerns over the reappointment of the Secretary-General and attendant matters, with CARICOM’s governance and operations having also come under the spotlight.

The headlines create the impression that there is little sign yet that a resolution is imminent.

The parties out-front on the matter have apparently doubled down on their respective positions, which have only hardened. In this regard, the latest missives (as of this writing) penned by Trinidad and Tobago Foreign Minister Sean Sobers (dated April 9th) and Drew (dated April 11th) come to mind. Although dispatched via diplomatic channels, the correspondence in question is now in the public domain.

While some political leaders are clashing publicly, others in the CARICOM fold are walking a tightrope on this issue.

High-level diplomatic efforts to see a way forward on what has become a significant bone of contention – with the potential to stymie CARICOM regionalism – will no doubt continue.

RISING TO THE CHALLENGE

And yet, CARICOM has not a moment to lose in effectively marshalling member states to contend with the resurgence of great-power politics. This spheres of influence-related development carries serious risks, which undercut a cornerstone of the postwar international order: multilateral cooperation.

These dynamics of contemporary international politics continue to turn the screws on CARICOM – and fast.

We are already seeing a key consequence of this turn of events: A new reality now shapes CARICOM diplomacy – already under strain from the aforementioned foreign policy-related rift in the bloc.

In short, the shift within the grouping in respect of interactional norms and diplomatic coherence pertaining to the foreign policy realm exposes seemingly deep divisions in relation to worldviews.

History shows that such moments do not augur well for the bloc. One could draw a historical parallel with the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, which stoked tensions within and had far-reaching impacts on the region.

Clearly, key foreign policy-related setbacks within today’s CARICOM fit a longer pattern. Even so, their ever-widening rifts ought not to become a fixture in the scheme of things either.

While there was much-needed discussion at the summit under reference about geopolitical developments, along with a nod to the rationale qua nature of the bloc itself, CARICOM needs to work through how it can better rise to the challenge of navigating the return of great-power politics.

In years ahead, the new normal in international politics will likely continue to undermine the UN Charter.

The stakes are high for such small states in this moment, and all concerned need to take a long, hard look at the issues arising.

- Dr Nand C. Bardouille, Ph.D., is the manager of The Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean in the Institute of International Relations at The University of the West Indies (The UWI) St. Augustine Campus, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. The views expressed here are his own. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com