The Caribbean on the World Scene: Security Regimes, Instruments, and Actions

• Author: W. Andy Knight
• Pages: 435-461

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The Caribbean on the World Scene

The Caribbean on the

World Scene: Security Regimes,

Instruments, and Actions

W. Andy Knight

Introduction

It is evident from previous chapters that the Caribbean is still trying to

come to terms with the changes and evolution in security challenges to the

region since the end of the Cold War. Its leaders are desperately trying to find

ways to deal with a host of both traditional and non-traditional threats to

both their states and their peoples. Since the nature and scope of security

threats have broadened and deepened, it is imperative that Caribbean states

develop comprehensive and cooperative methods of addressing them.

This chapter calls for such a policy strategy to combat security threats to

the region, particularly since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the hemispheric

hegemonic power, the United States. That strategy necessarily includes:

creating and building on specific regional and international regimes; utilising

a combination of existing and new domestic, regional, and global mechanisms,

instruments or tools; and, pursuing appropriate actions in collaboration with

both state and non-state actors in the region and beyond. The essential

argument here is that given the vulnerabilities of Caribbean states (viz. small,

relatively weak states) to the negative fallout of globalisation and globalism

processes and to the increasing pressures from the region’s and global

hegemonic power, Caribbean leaders have no choice but to seek out and

work within broad regional and global multilateral institutions in pursuit of

their policies and goals. Such institutions provide at least some insulation

from the onslaught of real and serious threats to the Caribbean states’

sovereignty and to the human security of its peoples.

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Caribbean Security in the Age of Terror

The chapter begins by putting the Caribbean within the global context

of changing security conceptions and dynamics and the constraints brought

on by the imposition of US security policy in the region, particularly since

the end of the Cold War. It then identifies specific traditional and non-

traditional security problems and challenges to the region, including

transnational security threats coming from transnational corruption and

crime, money laundering, drug trafficking, migrant and immigration issues,

AIDS, environmental degradation, natural disasters and, more recently, global

terrorism. With respect to the latter issue, the chapter analyses some of the

impacts on the Caribbean as a region of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the US

and describes the official reaction of Caribbean states to this tragic event.

Finally, it examines specific regimes and instruments that together form a

framework for actions and potential actions of Caribbean states in response

to the security challenges in this age of complex interdependence and terror.

The Caribbean in the Global and Regional Contexts

Any discussion of the security plight of the Caribbean must be placed in

proper historical context. It is not possible here, given the constraints of time

and space, to provide a survey of the historical developments in the Caribbean

region of British, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch colonialism, post-

colonialism and independence, and US neo-imperialism and hegemonic

dominance during the Cold War era. In any event, such surveys are readily

available in other sources.1 Basically the focus here is on placing the Caribbean

within the context of post-Cold War global and regional history.

Franklin Knight and Colin Palmer made the case around the beginning

of the post-Cold War period that ‘since 1492, the Caribbean region has

oscillated between the centre and the periphery of international affairs:

Sometimes the victim of ‘benign neglect,’ other times the venue for the

flexing of the American military muscle to subdue legitimate local aspirations

or score points in an extra-regional geopolitical rivalry between the

superpowers, the international interest in the Caribbean intensifies and

wanes with predictable regularity. The local people cope with the changes

as best they can.2

Certainly the authors were astute in their observation. In the immediate

post-Cold War period, it appeared that the Caribbean would again become

the victim of neglect. After all, the focus of US foreign aid policy was on