Permanent Allies or Permanent Interests?

• Author: Selwyn Ryan
• Profession: Professor
• Pages: 262-264

262 CSME: Genesis and Prognosis

A political wag once said that a nation state does not have permanent

friends, only permanent interests. One is struck by the apparent validity of

this aphorism as one observes the behaviour of Trinidad and Tobago and

Venezuela in respect of the controversy over the PetroCaribe accord which

Trinidad and Tobago refused to sign on the ground that it was not in Trinidad’s

economic interest to do so, the diplomatic friendship between Patrick Manning

and Hugo Chavez, notwithstanding.

Manning’s basic position is that Trinidad and Tobago is an oil producing

and oil exporting country which markets some 50,000 to 60,000 barrels

daily of what Petrotrin produces in the Caribbean. Manning understands

that Trinidad’s partners in CARICOM are under severe economic pressure

because of galloping oil prices, and that they would find Venezuela’s offer of

a US$50M soft-loan facility to finance projects as well as a subsidy on oil

imports to be very much in their interest. But there are short run gains and

long run gains, and also a CARICOM interest that has to be accommodated.

The offer being made by Chavez threatens Petrotrin’s market share in

the region, and Manning was obliged to remind his CARICOM colleagues

that Trinidad and Tobago had committed itself to making close to TT$1B

available to Caribbean countries annually to subsidise their oil imports, and

that it had in other ways made funds and facilities available to countries

such as Guyana to meet their debt obligations and other needs arising out of

environmental disasters. Were his CARICOM colleagues not playing “doggy

and bone” politics?

Manning’s complaints about the seeming ungratefulness of some

Caribbean countries remind me very much of the position Eric Williams

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0Professor Selwyn Ryan

PERMANENT ALLIES OR PERMANENT

INTERESTS?