Ian Boyne
IT IS clear that CARICOM leaders who met over the last few days to discuss the affairs of the region are deeply conscious of the pivotal role that external factors and the global economy play, especially in small Caribbean states.
The opening ceremony of the 24th regular meeting of CARICOM Heads of Government held, perhaps inappropriately, at the posh Ritz-Carlton Hotel, gave every indication that our Caribbean leaders are acutely aware of the role they need to play in this globalised era and of the issues which should occupy their minds. If anyone felt that small size necessarily equates with small minds, then the speeches at the opening ceremony would have sharply rebuffed that view.
Indeed, two of the most riveting, pointed and relevant speeches were given by the heads of two nations with very small populations, Pierre Charles of Dominica and Said Musa of Belize. Prime Minister Charles was clear about the constraining force of the global economy and the need for CARICOM leaders to unite to mitigate the threats of a unipolar world. He focused attention on the critical trade negotiations taking place at the global level.
Musa made the point that "this meeting occurs at a time marked by heightened uncertainty on the international stage. The increasing resort to unilateralism by the powerful players on the world's stage is testing the very fabric of Caribbean cohesiveness."
He noted that concepts which Belize had been pushing for over a decade were now being accepted by international organisations. "We were voices crying in the wilderness, deemed heretics to the religion of free trade fundamentalism, but we persisted," he told the opening ceremony of the CARICOM summit. Special and differential treatment was now being pushed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and a broad-based global agenda going beyond narrow free trade concerns was also being advocated, Prime Minister Musa noted.
Quoting from a new UNDP study, Making Global Trade Work for People, Musa noted, "It urges that WTO rules, made more flexible and development-oriented, should provide parameters for regional negotiations." He urged his CARICOM colleagues to not just passively allow the supranational institutions like the World Trade Organisation to determine our agenda, but that "CARICOM urgently reassess the sequencing of its economic negotiations by first ensuring acceptable arrangements in the WTO."
Our own Prime Minister P.J. Patterson was also eloquent and forceful in highlighting the exogenous factors weighing on the Caribbean's development prospects. He said: "Our mission must aim to ensure that the rules and the pace of implementation in multilateral, hemispheric and inter-regional trade agreements take full account of the goals and disabilities peculiar to small developing economies. Specifically, special and differential treatment provisions must be crafted to facilitate structural adjustment and the promotion of the development of small, developing countries, in particular the small island developing states."
Patterson observed correctly that "today's world is unfriendly to multilateralism and in critical respects inimical to the development of countries like ours. It is harder for small states to be heard above the din. It is harder for us to assert our interests with any prospect of respect for them. If regional integration was hitherto an option, it is now an absolute imperative."
Patterson also made reference to the CARICOM summit taking place at a "critical time" of the emergence of "a unipolar force within the global village".
GLOBALISATION AND CARICOM
The CARICOM leaders, by their pronouncements at the opening summit of their 24th regular meeting, have served notice on the international community and the global élite that they have every intention and the requisite sophistication to challenge the intellectual and philosophical hegemony of the West. And there is some indication that the powerful are at least listening.
In an exclusive interview with U.S. trade representative, Robert Zoellick, he made it clear that the U.S. was not opposed to the concept of special and differential treatment for developing countries. In a private, relaxed and cordial chat which we had, the Harvard-educated and highly-respected U.S. Trade Representative, said the U.S. did not want to pressure CARICOM to adopt a timetable for free trade which the group was not comfortable with. Zoellick even went as far as to say that if CARICOM did not want to be a part of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement which the U.S. is pushing, then that's okay with the U.S., "though the Caribbean would miss out on many opportunities within the FTAA".
In the interview conducted later, he spoke respectfully of Jamaica's trade negotiators Richard Bernal, head of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM) and Anthony Hylton, former Foreign Trade Minister. Zoellick did not portray the picture of an arrogant representative of a hydro-power, but spoke in a conciliatory manner, stressing the benefits of free trade and the U.S. efforts to support capacity building in the Caribbean to prepare the region for the FTAA, and the challenges of global free trade.
The Caribbean has the requisite intellectual and negotiating prowess to press its agenda forcefully to the West, and because Zoellick and those who have power in the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO are being challenged also by powerful intellectual forces in the West, they are not likely to resist all our demands. The Caribbean has no military might, economic power or geopolitical muscle but it has intellectual weight. We can compete with the best in the globe in the realm of ideas.
There is no one in the global development and trade dialogue who can tower over our own Sir Shridath Ramphal, for example. We have some of the best and the brightest and we must use our competitive strengths in the intellectual arena to launch salvos against the hegemonic forces.
THE SPIRIT OF MANLEY
The CARICOM summit which ended yesterday had echoes of Michael Manley throughout. He has been the Caribbean's finest, most articulate and intellectually compelling advocate on the global scene of the interests of the developing world. In his time, he was never fully appreciated for his farsightedness, and his brilliance in understanding how the interests of the entire developing world hinged on urgent reforms in the global architecture.
When CARICOM states were largely engrossed in their own parochial concerns or embroiled in Cold War issues, Manley in Jamaica was devoting much attention to foreign affairs.
As a result, he earned the wrath of narrow-minded Philistines in Jamaica and outside who felt that he should stop wasting time on those issues and instead concentrate on Jamaica's problems. But Manley understood in a way in which few did that Jamaica's problems could not be addressed unless there were fundamental reforms at the global level.
True, as I have criticised him in these columns and as the intellectual giant Lloyd Best, his arch-critic, has said, Manley was too naive in underestimating the opposition to his policies at home. To a large extent, he is to be blamed for not paying enough attention to sound macroeconomic management, a negligence which ended up hurting and setting back the interests of the very poor whom he was valiantly fighting for.
But history has absolved Michael Manley. Today it is the common sense in development studies that the global economy and the transnationalisation of the world are the decisive factors in national economic development, though the action of individual states is still critically important.
In other words, without crucial reforms in the international multilateral institutions, particularly the WTO, World Bank and the IMF, the development prospects of states will be severely constrained. But with all the reforms in the world, if states are inefficient, corrupt or reckless and there are many examples of this in the developing world these reforms will be of no benefit to the masses in these
countries.
THE POWER OF IDEAS
This brings me to the balance which was struck at this CARICOM conference and which leads me to give high marks to the recently concluded summit.
Prime Minister Patterson emphasised that CARICOM must benefit the ordinary person in the region and that people's well-being must be positively affected by integration. "The people of the Caribbean have invested their trust in us. They are now demanding a dividend from the edifice of integration-tangible results which improve their well-being."
Belizean Prime Minister Musa was also poignant on this point. All the reforms which were being called for at the global and hemispheric level, he noted, will lead to nothing "if it is only a few who can benefit from these opportunities. The main goal of development must be to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy an expanded range of choices and forge a better quality of life for themselves their families ad their communities."
Barbados' Owen Arthur concentrated his address on what the Caribbean Single Market and Economy should mean to ordinary Caribbean citizens.
CARICOM invited as part of its special 30th anniversary celebrations, two of the finest leaders of thought in the developing world from two different continents: Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and the socialist Ricardo Lagos Escobar of Chile. I had the distinct honour to speak with both of them. I found both of them to be intellectually stimulating. At a time when we do not have Michael Manley on the world scene, these men are among those best placed to represent our hope of pressing the case for the developing world in this post-Cold War, unipolar world of free trade fundamentalists and Washington Consensus devotees. I will comment more fully next week on these leaders' vision, but suffice it to say, they are both strong advocates of the necessity of the developing world forging common positions to confront a world that is not being shaped in our interests.
We cannot underplay the force of ideas. In this era of globalisation, where borders have become irrelevant and where information-intensity rather than material-intensity is what drives the global economy, the developing world has the best prospects of driving home its views powerfully in the important corridors of power.
As the Robert Zoellick noted: "... We in the US have a vested interest in the Caribbean doing well economically for we do a lot of business and trade with you." The futures of the Americas are bound up together. Indeed, the future of the global village is dependent on co-operation, not conflict and on our pulling together rather than pulling apart. When CARICOM was formed in 1973, Jamaica had a person who would prove to be an intellectual powerhouse on the global scene. A man ahead of his time. A man who still lives today. His spirit was evident to me and ever-present in Montego Bay.
* Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist.
E-mail: ianboyne@yahoo.com.
