Probing Security Challenge and Change in the Caribbean

• Author: Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith
• Profession: Professor of Political Science and Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at York College of The City University of New York
• Pages: 1-51

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Probing Security Challenge and Change

Probing Security Challenge and

Change in the Caribbean

Ivelaw L. Griffith*

We need to start afresh, to relax in our gardens, emulate [Isaac] Newton

and ponder the scene around us, allowing ourselves to be puzzled by

those recurring patterns that seem self-evident but that somehow have

never been adequately explained.

James N. Rosenau1

It is almost no longer controversial to say that traditional conceptions of

security were (and in many minds still are) too narrowly founded. That

advance does not, however, mean that consensus exists on what a more

broadly constructed conception should look like.

Barry Buzan2

Introduction

The wisdom of the observation by academic luminary James Rosenau

extends beyond the arenas of international politics and foreign policy where

the observation was first made. The remark is valuable for scholars in security

studies as well and, indeed, for scholars in virtually every social science

field. Rosenau’s observation has added value when one is dealing with an

area of inquiry with significant real world policy implications and where the

changing dynamics of domestic and international politics have so affected

the terms of intellectual engagement that rethinking of core concepts and

central assumptions is not merely desirable but necessary.

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Caribbean Security in the Age of Terror

The redefinition of security as a core concept to which Barry Buzan

refers followed the end of the Cold War, which witnessed the altering of

power relations between, among, and within states in significant ways. Many

security scholars began to do precisely what Rosenau had suggested a decade

earlier – revisit concepts and theories, reexamine threats and vulnerabilities,

review puzzles and patterns, and re-estimate the utility of and necessity for

extant strategies. As if the post-Cold War ferment were not enough, along

came the events of September 11, 2001, referred to hereafter as 9/11, making

terrorism central to the security, foreign policy, and other discourse by

statesmen and scholars, and renewing the salience of Rosenau’s remarks. It

seems hardly disputable that ‘we live in the shadow of September 11,’ as

Barbados Prime Minister Owen Arthur suggests.3 Terrorism itself is not new

in the international or regional arena, of course. However, the dynamics of

9/11 are so powerful and potentially far-reaching for the Caribbean that it is

important to examine the contemporary security scene in the context of 9/11

dynamics.

This chapter makes a modest attempt at doing this. Mine is the view

that probing the security realities of the contemporary Caribbean against the

backdrop of Rosenau’s advice requires raising, although perhaps not

completely settling, two central questions. First, what is an appropriate

conceptual framework against which to examine Caribbean security realities?

Second, in the context of that framework, what are some of the main security

challenges facing the region? Obviously, these are not the only questions

that may be raised. Another pertinent one is: What are some relevant strategies

to cope with the challenges confronting states in the region? (See Chapter

21.) As might also be expected, dealing with these questions entails responding

to subsidiary ones. For instance, answering the first question necessitates

addressing at least two subsidiary ones: What do we mean by security? When

does a national challenge become a security matter?

Pondering an Appropriate Framework

Two preliminary observations are warranted before proceeding to the

first question. First, as might be expected, this is not the first attempt to

develop a framework or an approach to Caribbean security, or to apply a

universal one to the region.4 However, this effort differs from previous ones

in some notable ways. One, it adopts the back to basics mode advocated in

the Rosenau epigraph. Two, its ambit extends beyond United States-Caribbean

security relationships, or geopolitics, although it does not discount the value

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Probing Security Challenge and Change

of focusing on these. Three, it aims to construct a holistic schema and not a

partial or segmented one, and to do so in the context of twenty-first century

realities.

For instance, although Robert Pastor’s whirlpool approach is valuable

and has relevance to the security area, it is (a) an approach for interpreting

United States-Caribbean dynamics, and (b) not designed purely with security

in mind. Similarly, Anthony Maingot’s application of interdependence theory

pays considerable attention to security matters, but his approach is intended

essentially to explain and interpret United States-Caribbean realities writ

large. James Rosenau’s application of Fragmegration to the region is presented

in a book on Caribbean security and it has elements relevant to the security

area, but the work is essentially an analysis of the Caribbean in the vicissitudes

of international politics.

Much the same could be said about Eddie Greene’s schema, although

Greene provides more local-regional analysis and application than Rosenau

does. Leslie Manigat focuses mainly on geopolitics and ideology, while the

approach by Andrés Serbin centres largely on geopolitics. Knight and Persaud

deal with a regional-international architecture for security governance, and

Tyrone Ferguson’s framework, although comprehensive, focuses essentially

on management modalities and coping strategies. My own earlier pursuit

revolves around four factors – perception, capabilities, geopolitics, and

ideology – the last of which has lost its salience, thereby reducing, although

not eliminating, the explanatory utility of the overall framework.

The second observation is that this schema is not being presented as the

framework for examining security in the Caribbean. It is offered as an

appropriate one for doing so, and as a point of departure from existing ones.

Moreover, it comes in the context of post-Cold War and Age of Terror realities

that previous scholars did not capture because their conceptual designs did

not warrant or necessitate such, or because they could not do so, given the

timing of developments. Beyond this, the framework is intended to have

applicability beyond the Caribbean.

Adoption of the back to basics approach requires attention to several

issues as we approach the first question and the subsidiary questions that

flow from it. Further, as is the case with the elaboration of any credible

framework, design of this framework requires attention to its central building

blocks, some of which are issues of structure, concept, and paradigm.