Border Controversies and their Implications for Stability and Security of the Caribbean Community

• Author: Ambassador Cedric Joseph
• Pages: 243-258

243

Border Controversies And Their Implications For Stability

Border Controversies And Their

Implications For Stability And Security

Of The Caribbean Community

99

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9Ambassador Cedric Joseph

It should have been a sound premise to regard the largely archipelagic

Community of English-speaking Caribbean states as constituting a grouping

spared of the encumbrances of boundary and territorial disputes among their

members. Moreover, a common history, people, culture and language that

define “an intrinsic geographical, economic and political unity”,1 should

have afforded protection from the traditional territorial disputes and rivalry

of coterminous land-based states.

Only the initial mainland Member States, Guyana and Belize, would

perforce have to grapple with that burden of imperial expansion and

decolonization in the substantial claims advanced against their respective

territories. The young island states of the Community would readily grasp

the implications of this challenge to the very existence of their colleague

mainland states, and to the general security of the Community at large.

They would deploy and sustain diplomacy commensurate to the task of

securing and maintaining the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Guyana

and Belize. It was no mean accomplishment of a Community foreign policy,

coordinated without the heavy hand of a coordinator, and remains a primal

landmark of Community achievement. The experience should have prepared

Member States for the future to deal with any threat of altercation over

borders among themselves in the eventual maritime expansion of their physical

insular features.

Mainland Guyana encountered territorial claims which had their origins

in the colonial era from both neighbours. This situation would intimately

involve the Community when Suriname acceded to membership of CARICOM

244 Interview, Border and Maritime Issues in CARICOM

in July 1995. No pre-conditions for membership were requested by the

Community regarding the territorial claims against Guyana. Indeed, none

was sought by Guyana despite intimations to inscribe some caveat by, at

least, one Member State. The admission of Suriname to the Community

would reveal an active phase of territorial conflict in CARICOM between

two Member States. It would also lead to the pursuit of “naval action” by a

CARICOM State against another when, in June 2000, Suriname despatched

a gunboat to eject the oil exploration rig of CGX Energy Inc., then under

licence to the Government of Guyana, conducting seismic surveys in the

waters of the exclusive economic zone claimed by Guyana and disputed by

Suriname.

This action presented CARICOM with a major issue, the first of its kind,

which exposed its conflict resolution machinery and capacity to scrutiny. At

their Conference in St Vincent and the Grenadines, July, 2000, Heads affirmed

the vital principle of settling the dispute by peaceful means in accordance

with the spirit of the Treaty of Chaguaramas and offered the good offices of

the Prime Minister of Jamaica. Intensive discussions followed between Prime

Minister P. J. Patterson and the Heads of Guyana and Suriname but they

failed to find accommodation that was acceptable to both parties.

Any thesis that a CARICOM Member State would not resort to an act of

aggression against another was shattered. The nature of friendly island states,

who did not aspire to regional prominence among themselves, seemed to

have assured this principle. Moreover, after the completion of the Panama

Canal, the Caribbean states, including the English-speaking members, had

assumed a strategic importance to the United States in securing the approaches

to the canal.2 Their protection from external adventurers during the colonial

period was guaranteed so long as they remained the possessions of friendly

European states. After the outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939 and

the fall of the Low Countries and France by the summer of 1940, however,

the United States became increasingly concerned with the capacity of the

United Kingdom to protect its colonies in the Caribbean and, second, to

secure those possessions of the European states that had fallen to Nazi

occupation. The result was the No-transfer policy endorsing the hegemony

of the United States in the Caribbean; ensuring that there was no change in

the status of the European possessions; and conceding the special relationship

of the Caribbean States with the Caribbean Sea.

In the early post war period, technological changes driven by the needs

of the recently concluded war, opened up a multiplicity of issues over the