Obama said he was not interested in ‘perpetual’ or ‘endless war’. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Projects such as Venezuela’s PetroCaribe are popular in the Caribbean, leading to the first visit of a U.S President to Jamaica since the Cold War. On Wednesday, President Barack Obama visited Jamaica with the heads of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), before heading over to Summit of the Americas which will be held in Panama from April 9 – 10. While Obama will try and cast himself as a “progressive” President that is charting a new path in the region, particularly in regards to the ongoing diplomatic thawing with Cuba, without a doubt it will be his March 9 Executive Order, in which he declared Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat to U.S. national security and foreign policy” that will overshadow much of the Summit.
The timing of Obama’s visit to Jamaica also coincides with the release of a crushing report by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research which revealed how the International Monetary Fund’s austerity program is literally suffocating the Jamaican economy. Not surprisingly, the Obama administration is a strong supporter of the IMF’s deal with Jamaica – and it was likely discussed in the bi-lateral meeting with Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller which was scheduled to take place before the official CARICOM meeting. The report outlines in sharp detail that Jamaica has been pushed into adopting the harshest austerity budget in the entire world – resulting in cuts which overwhelmingly compound the impact on the island’s shrinking middle class, the poor and the vulnerable.
The report even pointed out that “Without the Venezuelan and Chinese investments staving off recession, it’s likely the IMF program would fail due to serious public opposition. In this way, the IMF program is largely being subsidized by both Venezuelan foreign aid and Chinese investment”. Heading into the Obama-CARICOM meeting, the major themes for discussion were centered on youth and crime, trade and investment, in addition to regional energy security. While the meeting may superficially appear to be about kick starting a green energy revolution in the region – building on Vice President Joe Biden’s Caribbean Energy Summit held in January, it was also realistic to perceive this meeting as a strategic geo-political maneuver by the United States to try and drive a wedge between the Caribbean and Venezuela.
Staying true to this, Obama remarked this afternoon in his official statement that: “a particular focus today is going to be one of the greatest barriers to development in the Caribbean, and that is expensive, often unreliable and carbon-intensive energy. This region has some of the highest energy costs in the world. Caribbean countries are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and we have to act now. This is an example of how large countries and small countries have to work together, because without collective action, we’re not going to be able to address these challenges. The Vice President hosted a summit on this in January. Our Caribbean Energy Security Initiative aims to help move the region toward cleaner more affordable energy.
Today, we’re announcing new partnerships, including a new fund to mobilize private investment in clean energy projects in the Caribbean and in Central America. And I’m confident that given the commitment of the CARICOM countries and the U.S. commitment, that this is an issue in which we can make great strides over the short term and even greater strides over the long term.” As an article in the Jamaica Gleaner mentioned right after January’s Caribbean Energy Summit in that “Jamaica has not been singing from the same hymn sheet as the US. To solve our energy crisis, we have turned – not to the US private sector, or any other – but to entities wholly owned by the governments of Venezuela and China. This has weakened the influence of the USA in Central America and the Caribbean.
The Caribbean Energy Security Initiative of the US government is an effort to turn back the clock, to re-establish US hegemony in the region.” This is even more obvious that the geopolitical stakes are high given the fact that the last and only time a President of the United States visited Jamaica was during the height of the Cold War in 1982, when Ronald Reagan visited Edward Seaga to congratulate him on putting an end to Michael Manley’s experiment of democratic socialism and calls for a New International Economic Order which held the promise of altering the terms of trade to be fairer to commodities exported from the Global South. If one wants a key sign that the geopolitical landscape of the Caribbean is not what it was in years past, looking at the membership of Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA), the islands of the Caribbean are well represented. Member countries include Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – with Haiti holding observer status.
ALBA, the 11 country alliance is also set to present a joint declaration to Obama at the Summit of the Americas, to denounce the policy of increased aggression towards Venezuela. If Obama truly wants to avoid repeating the mistakes of his predecessors he can start by shedding the hostile rhetoric and engage in constructive dialogue with Venezuela – and stop treating the Caribbean as trinkets that can be treated as geopolitical pawns to be abandoned at will. The reality is that Washington has not paid any attention to the Caribbean since the end of the Cold War, and in that space Venezuela has stepped up big time providing development assistance and oil at concessionary prices through PetroCaribe.
Experts throughout the region, such as Sir Ronald Sanders, the late Norman Girvan and David Jessop have made it very clear that without the lifeline of PetroCaribe many economies would have simply collapsed. As David Jessop rightly points out “Despite criticism from those outside the Caribbean who do not like the implied political leverage the programme gives to Caracas, no other nation at this time has the political will to provide this level of support to Caribbean states.”
While Obama’s likely pitch to the Caribbean leaders is that Venezuela’s PetroCaribe program is unsustainable and they should jump ship now, they cannot offer any viable alternative but a wink and a handshake. Given the history of repeated U.S. intervention, broken promises and the fact that the only real connection between the Caribbean and the United States has at present has been the ongoing “Made in Washington” austerity budgets dominating the region, it is hard to imagine that the Caribbean leaders will be swayed so easily – or that Washington will be willing to make a comparable effort to Venezuela’s investment.