Foreword

• Author: Kenneth O. Hall
• Profession: Pro Vice Chancellor and Principal University of the West Indies, Mona
• Pages: 19-20

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Fore wo rd

This book is partly the result of a collaborative effort involving Florida

International University, the Jamaica Defence Force, and the University of

the West Indies, Mona (Office of the Principal and the Sir Arthur Lewis

Institute of Social and Economic Studies) in which a conference was held at

the University of the West Indies, Mona in February in conjunction with the

2003 Research Day. The book fills a void in the literature on security in the

Caribbean in the period after the terrorist attacks on the United States on

September 11, 2001. As Professor Ivelaw Griffith, the project leader, has so

cogently argued, those events ushered in ‘the age of terror’.

Specifically, the volume is intended to address four related matters:

1. Survey the contemporary security arena in both the traditional and

non-traditional security areas.

2. Explore the actual and potential impact and implications of the

September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in regional, hemispheric and global

contexts.

3. Assess the responses to those events by Caribbean states and non-state

actors such as business and non-governmental organisations.

4. Examine the institutional and operational terrorism response capacity

of security agencies in the region in the age of terror.

The contribution of this work to the literature on security in the

Caribbean derives principally from the perspectives of the authors who address

security issues in broad, comprehensive and inclusive terms. Thus, in parts I,

II and III of the book the authors probe differing conceptions and contentions

about security, the traditional security issues such as territorial disputes,

crime, corruption and violence as well as the non-traditional security issues

such as drugs, economic vulnerability, the environmental challenge and HIV/

AIDS.

These issues are then placed within regional and international contexts

in light of the actual and potential impact of September 11 on the Caribbean.

Attention is paid to United States-Caribbean relations, Caribbean-European

relations, regionalism in the greater Caribbean, the economic and trade impact

of September 11, and the impact of September 11 on the migration relations

between the Caribbean and the United States. In parts V and VI of the book

authors coming from a variety of perspectives address issues such as the state

and civil society responses to September 11, the anti-terrorism capacity of