Sovereignty and the Search for Recognition

• Author: Ian Boxill
• Pages: 22-30

22 RECONCEPTUALIZING THE CARIBBEAN COMMUNITY

INTRODUCTION

The issue of sovereignty has always been at the forefront of discussions

on Caribbean development. In an article published in Social and Economic

Studies in 1999, I argued that sovereignty was an important issue for the

people of the region and that any attempt by US policy makers to suggest

that countries in this region should somehow become US protectorates ought

to be resisted. This article was in response to an invitation by a group of

regional academics to discuss the relevance of the concept of ‘sovereignty’

in the Caribbean. It was also a response to Elliot Abrams — senior fellow at

the Hudson Institute and former Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-

American Affairs during the Reagan administration — who published an

article entitled ‘The Shiprider Solution: Policing the Caribbean’ in the

American journal, The National Interest. According to Elliot Abrams,

CARICOM states were by themselves non-viable and the idea of sovereignty

for such states was all but ridiculous. I recall having a conversation with

the late William Demas, who was then attached to the ISER, now SALISES.

Incensed by the Abrams article, he called it nothing more than an attempt

at recolonization.

Like Demas, my objection to Abrams’s view was many-faceted, but the

most important basis for defending the idea of sovereignty lay in the notion

that it is about the need for recognition, that all human beings, either as

part of a larger ethnic group or as a nation-state or a collection of states,

under a federal arrangement, had one central objective — to be recognized

— that is to say, having their existence imposed on other people’s

consciousness. In that article I pointed out that sovereignty movements

among indigenous people across the world, were not going against the grain,

that is, the move towards blocs or ‘pooled’ sovereignty, but had to be seen in

the context of their own historical experiences. The quest for nation status

by Maoris in Aotearoa (New Zealand) or Papuans from the Indonesian

islands, or Hawaiians from the US was simply an extension of what the

SOVEREIGNTY AND THE SEARCHSOVEREIGNTY AND THE SEARCH

SOVEREIGNTY AND THE SEARCHSOVEREIGNTY AND THE SEARCH

SOVEREIGNTY AND THE SEARCH

FOR RECOGNITIONFOR RECOGNITION

FOR RECOGNITIONFOR RECOGNITION

FOR RECOGNITION

Ian Boxill

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