Caribbean Community leaders head to the idyllic tourism paradise of St. Kitts this week for what is being billed as perhaps the most crucial regional summit before and after tensions associated with the 1983 American invasion of Grenada by the administration of then-President Ronald Reagan.
This time, Donald Trump is in the White House and he is sending Secretary of State Marco Rubio for talks from Tuesday to Thursday with the leaders amid simmering bewilderment in the region about why Washington is treating the Caribbean as a political and ideological adversary, forcing deportees on nations, suspending visa privileges for some nations, and pressuring states to accept U.S. military hardware on home soils, among other “undesirables.”
Conference officials said Rubio is expected to hold “closed door meetings” with the leaders on a number of issues, ranging from visa suspensions for Antiguans and Dominicans to pressure on governments to scale back relations with China, demands from Washington for the region to also cut back on the decades-old Cuban medical brigade program, and for the grouping to look more toward the U.S. Exim bank for loans rather than China’s.
The U.S. and other western nations have also been trying to force a minimization or cancellation of citizenship by investment or sale of “golden passports” and citizenship programs to foreigners, despite the fact that the Trump administration is doing the exact same thing. For example, the governments of St. Kitts, Antigua, St. Lucia, Dominica, and Grenada have this system and say it is one of their main sources for development finance outside of tourism because the banana and sugar export regimes to Europe have long collapsed, leaving a gaping revenue gap. In St. Vincent, which has a new government as of late last year, the cabinet says it will soon go this route; the previous administration had staunchly resisted this program.
As preparations heighten for the conference, every head of government except Montserrat will be attending the meeting. As if to underscore the importance of this summit, chair and Kittian Prime Minister Terrance Drew flew to nearly every member state in recent days, holding crucial talks with delegations headed to his Eastern Caribbean island nation.
Mark Kirton, a retired University of the West Indies professor and director of the Center of International and Border Studies, said this summit is “crucial for Caribbean unity, as we have to speak with one voice, to let Mr. Rubio know that we are speaking with one voice. Nobody is looking at our back. We are basically alone and we have to start by ensuring and understanding that there are convergences of interests and we need as Caribbean people to develop a new level of trust in leadership and speak with a united voice.”
He said that the region may also have to begin forging new linkages with nations like Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico that have shared or similar interests because there is much talk now about the “Monroe Doctrine and various levels of hegemony in the hemisphere.”
Kirton also said that the region should look at energy security in the form of an umbrella system to replace Venezuela’s Petro Caribbean concession oil shipments, using oil from Guyana and Suriname and capitalizing on refinery facilities in Trinidad, Jamaica, and Suriname.
This week’s visit will be Rubio’s second major in-house engagement with the leaders after his swing through Jamaica, Guyana, and Suriname last year, when he devoted much time and energy attacking the Cuban medical brigade program and pushing back on longstanding bilateral and multilateral relations with the Chinese.
At a recent meeting of Eastern Caribbean nations, Vincentian Prime Minister Goodwin argued on Friday that the region needs to stick to coordinated responses on key issues like security and deportees from the U.S. headed to the Caribbean. “We have been approached with respect to that (accepting deportees),” Goodwin said on a local radio program over the weekend. “We have been presented with a memorandum of understanding for us to review. Caricom and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean states were put together for a purpose and we need to use that in a way for us to seek and have common approaches to [theissues].”