The Coordination of Foreign Policy

• Author: Anthony J. Payne
• Profession: Professor of Politics, University of Sheffield, UK. He is the author of several books on Caribbean politics and international relations
• Pages: 175-191

The Coordination of Foreign Policy | 175

The co-ordination of foreign policy was the one area of integrative

activity embraced by CARICOM which had no place within the

structure of CARIFTA. Foreign policy is inevitably an integral part of

the general development strategy of small, structurally open economies

like those of the Commonwealth Caribbean. It has a considerable impact

upon the volume, quality and sources of aid, private investment, trade

and technical assistance. In an area which had devoted so much effort

to the promotion of economic integration, some attempt to coordinate

the foreign policy of the region’s governments was, if anything, overdue

when, in 1973, it was formally promulgated as one of the major objectives

of the new Caribbean Community. To this end, Article 17 of the

Community Treaty provided for the establishment of a Standing

Committee of Ministers responsible for Foreign Affairs and required it

to make recommendations to the governments of member states with a

view to bringing about ‘the fullest possible coordination of their foreign

policies within their respective competences’ (thereby confining

representation on the committee to the independent states of the region)

and adopting ‘as far as possible common positions in major international

issues’.1 These aims were not over-ambitious, but demanded in the first

instance that member states should have at least worked out amongst

themselves a common position on the question of association with the

EEC, on the appropriate relationship to have with the ‘wider’ Caribbean,

on the stance to adopt towards major international issues and, finally,

on the merits of shared diplomatic representation abroad. These four

CHAPTER seven

The Coordination of

Foreign Policy

176 | The Political History of CARICOM

‘issue-areas’ stood, therefore, as tests of the Commonwealth Caribbean’s

willingness to enter seriously the field of integration in foreign policy.

The EEC

For nearly two decades the EEC question had been the fulcrum upon

which the future of the Commonwealth Caribbean seemed to turn. With

just cause, the region’s leaders were fearful of the social, political and

economic disruption liable to result from failure to protect adequately

the markets of the ten or so West Indian products traditionally exported

to the United Kingdom under tariff preferences or other special

arrangements — if and when Britain joined the EEC. As we have seen,

this concern, which was shared in one way or another by all the territories,

worked consistently to unite the region and to give impetus to the

integration movement. The transmutation of CARIFTA into

CARICOM, for example, owed a lot to the successful conclusion to

which British negotiations were brought in 1972. It might be expected,

then, that, if there was one area in which the member states of the new

community would be able to co-ordinate their foreign policies, it would

be over the question of association with the EEC.

And so, indeed, it proved. Throughout the negotiations, the several

territories of the Caribbean Community adhered resolutely to the

original decision of the CARIFTA Council that the region should

negotiate with the enlarged EEC as a group. At the opening conference

in Brussels in July 1973, Ramphal, Guyana’s Foreign Minister, informed

the EEC that all the territories of the region had chosen ‘to sit together

at this table under the single label of the “Caribbean Countries”’, and

even though the Caribbean grouping was subsequently incorporated

within an African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) negotiating front, it

continued to behave as a united bloc amongst the ACP countries.2 A

senior member of the Secretariat staff reported that at the joint ACP–

EEC ministerial meeting held in Jamaica in July 1974, which in many

ways constituted a breakthrough in the negotiations, the region again

had one spokesman ... For the first time you could have relaxed

and said we were not likely to split the thing this time. We were