David Jessop, Contributor

There is, to put it mildly, something very strange going on when the United States Secretary of State has to exhort the region's governments to mobilise its diaspora to lobby Congress in order that she can be better able to provide support on matters that concern the Caribbean.

Yet, this is just what happened when Caribbean foreign ministers met Condoleezza Rice in New York last Thursday.

The meeting of course covered many issues of importance in the United States/Caribbean relationship, yet the fact that lobbying was discussed is indicative of how difficult it now is to obtain administration time, to say nothing of eventual congressional approval for a U.S./CARICOM free trade agreement that the region hopes might be negotiated after the resuscitated U.S./CARICOM Trade and Investment Council meets on October 13.

This paradoxical situation, in which political friends of the region suggest that the Caribbean needs to do more lobbying, if they are to be able to exercise serious influence within their own governments, is now demonstrated regularly in Washington, Ottawa, and London.

In private conversations between British ministers and their Caribbean counterparts, the same appeals are made. Senior members of the British Government who are well disposed towards the Caribbean ask in private what it will take to encourage the Caribbean to develop a strong lobby in the British Parliament.

POLITICAL MOBILISATION

They do so because they want to have greater influence when trade policy issues affecting the region are discussed with their ministerial colleagues.

How this has come about reflects the failure of much of the Caribbean to react rapidly enough to the way in which the world has changed, the reorientation of strategic priorities in the three capitals and the lack of any concerted or well-resourced attempt to politically mobilise the Caribbean's diaspora.

A few weeks ago, I attended a lecture given by a senior but now retired member of the U.S. administration. He argued that Latin America and the Caribbean were no longer of any overriding strategic interest in Washington and that this situation would continue for the foreseeable future.

There was, he suggested, no regional issue that threatened the interests of the presidency or the U.S. people other, perhaps, than the exodus to Florida of hundreds of thousands of Cubans, if that nation became unstable.

The ending of the cold war had established new priorities for the presidency. These were now focused on strategic terrorism, nuclear proliferation and energy security. As a consequence, the hemisphere south of Mexico was less relevant and was effectively divided at the highest levels of the U.S. administration into constantly shifting cast of nations that, broadly speaking, were either prepared to accept the U.S. view of the world or who did not.

For this reason, there was unlikely to be any consistent high level focus on hemispheric issues. For this to happen, an issue would have to impact on a president's ability to be elected or re-elected or on those who fund the U.S. political process.

Much the same opinion can be expressed about the United Kingdom where foreign policy concerns are similar to those of the U.S.: although to be fair, there remains a predisposition towards those Caribbean nations that demonstrate they are prepared to look to the future rather than dwell on the economic issues of the past.

INERTIA AND STALEMATE

Despite this, for the most part, the Caribbean approach to foreign relations and foreign trade policy still operates on cold war principles. That is to say, the region still tries to achieve coalitions of interest on the basis of solidarity and implied strength. But the reality is that this approach has ever less utility. Unless the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries or the multitude of developing country interest groups that the World Trade Organisation has spawned have identical and deliverable real-time objectives, the most that such old-style alliances can achieve is inertia or stalemate.

One constant lesson

If there is one constant lesson to be learnt from the history of the post-cold war world, it is that well-thought-through and asymmetrical policies and strategies have enabled those nations or groups with a weaker hand to outmanoeuvre those that seem to possess all of the winning cards. While this has been best demonstrated in situations of political and military conflict from Vietnam, to the Irish Republican Army and Hezbollah, where low technology and unconventional armies have changed the balance of power, there is no reason why such approaches cannot be adapted to non-conflict situations.

For today's Caribbean, a far more potent force would seem to be the mobilisation on a national or common interest basis of coalitions that involve far more than sovereign interests. In the U.S. and Europe, positive outcomes are determined by the considered juxtaposition of positive media coverage, a mobilised diaspora and the support of business, non-governmental organisations, environmentalists, the Church and others.

In the U.K., there are signs that the next general election may be very close indeed. Although it is at most some three and a half years away, on key issues such as education and health care, the electorate is beginning to feel that an as yet untried opposition might be better able to manage the future.

At the same time, research shows that in some 20-35 marginal seats, the number of self-declared registered voters with Caribbean ties exceed the number of votes required to unseat the incumbent Member of Parliament. The figures suggest that this, allied with a national swing against Government, could determine the outcome of the next British general election.

Maximising Caribbean influence

While this vastly oversimplifies the issue, it takes little imagination to see that this could be used to maximise Caribbean influence on a wide range of issues from Britain and by extension the EU's trade policy and development assistance policy. It also suggests that there are a significant number of MPs who never speak on Caribbean issues who need to be reminded that they ought at the very least, take an interest in the fortunes of the region.

None of this is rocket science but it does demand resources, a coherent strategy that involves the full-time dedication of small group of ministers, officials, the private sector and organised labour, and a radically new approach to the exercise of foreign and foreign trade policy.

David Jessop is director of the Caribbean Council. Email: david.jessop@caribbean-council.org.