Caribbean Diplomacy Towards New International Actors in the Caribbean Basin

• Author: Dr. Diana Thorburn
• Pages: 102-112

102 CARICOM Options: Towards Full Integration Into the World Economy

The physical presence of a South African military jet filled with arms

headed toward Haiti in February 2004, but grounded in Jamaica because its

intended recipient, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was no longer there,

provided a delicious and ironic symbol of how much things have changed in

Caribbean diplomacy and its external political relations. The event

represented a stunning reversal of thirty years ago, when in the midst of the

Cold War Cuban military planes touched down in Jamaica heading from the

Caribbean towards Southern Africa. Those Cuban forces and materiel not

only reached their intended destination but enjoyed tremendous and surprising

success as they turned the Angolan civil war around, defeating US-backed

mercenaries and apartheid-era South African elite troops, and ensuring the

victory of the MPLAan event that has since been credited with sparking the

embers of apartheid resistance that eventually brought that racist system

down.

That twist of historical precedence comes in the midst of other intriguing

developments in the changing diplomatic and political arena in which the

Caribbean now finds itself. Indeed Haiti could be seen to provide the fulcrum

for what appears to be a wave of new international political dynamics in the

region. Among these are:

1) The purported role of France in Aristide's leaving Haiti, and the

immediate post-Aristide settlement, representing what appears to be the first

time France has played an active political role in the independent Caribbean

since its failure to quell the Haitian revolution 200 years ago.

CARIBBEAN DIPLOMACY

TOWARDS NEW INTERNATIONAL

ACTORS IN THE CARIBBEAN

BASIN

Dr. Diana Thorburn

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