Tour D’horizon – A Bajan Optic on Foreign Policy
Successive governments of
Barbados have failed to play any significant role in world affairs. We are well
aware of the historical and current environmental circumstances within which a
small island state must seek to operate but our country must have the courage
to properly define our own national interests, for in the final analysis our
permanent interests, not friends, are most vital to our country. Is this not
what independence means? Barbados could be doing much better at mobilizing
nationals abroad into an army to fight the current war for economic survival at
home. The country continues, with the possible exception of China, to ignore
the tectonic shifts taking place elsewhere, thereby grossly misreading the new
Great Game. Barbados’ foreign policy, if it exists, continues to ignore the
suffering peoples of Palestine, the Rohingyas of Burma and many other groups,
especially in Africa, Latin America and Asia that our country could develop
some strategic ties with based on common interest, respect and a difference
sense of the future. We are dismayed that few strategic development plans exist
in any area of national life. It is as if the country still largely operates as
little more than somebody’s colony where thinking about foreign policy is
outsourced to some dying mother country somewhere, who should know better.
There must be millions of Bajans,
Caribbean nationals and their descendants abroad. Yet there has never been a
coherent national development strategy to harness their energies as effectively
as a good general would direct her troops for battle. In fact, the absence of
an understanding of how the great military generals from history saw international
relations may well be a disadvantage to the foreign policy ‘experts’ in
ministries across the Caribbean. For in international relations diplomacy is
the means to avoid hot wars, some say it is sometimes a war of words. The war
for economic survival, tactically, is little different that a hot war. We are
by no means arguing that Barbados is to be engaged in any hot wars anywhere for
resources or for any other reasons. The reverse is true. We however suggest
that the foreign minister of Barbados does not now and will not anytime in the
near future have the capacity to deliver two million emails to a target in any
branch of the United States government to influence a pending decision that
could be harmful to Barbados’ national interests. This is the ultimate exercise
of soft power. Such ability could, in the best case, avoid hot wars and in the worst
case, raise the international stature of the country so that we are really
punching above our weight.
The elites in Barbados and the
structures that support them have a long history of denying Bajans from abroad
participation at the centre of economic activity, not the periphery, the centre.
As amateur historians we all recall the Bajans who came back from Panama
seeking to buy large tracts of land in Barbados, when laws were changed to
curtail this activity, before it started. And there are several other examples.
Very little has changed nearly a hundred years hence. These structural
‘ambiguities’ are right now severely limiting the range of options available to
decision makers. But like deer in the headlight local decision makers are
caught up in their own web. For example, we have a place that calls itself a
university which lacks the competences to engage thousands of financial experts
within the diaspora, people who are better positioned than the likes of the
Dodridge Millers or Loh Jacks of this world, who have the abilities to extract
billions of US dollars from a bankrupt international financial system,
especially at this time, that could be put at the disposal of that institution
through some perpetual entity. This is a foreign policy failure. This foreign
policy failure results in said institution exerting extreme pressures on the
local government at a time when it is least able. But it is the government
(successive governments) itself that has suborned this failure by continuing to
promote an insidious kind of dependency at home and abroad, at all levels of
society. This tactical response to current difficulties could be repeated
across other areas. But, who amongst the credentialed class is seeking freedom
from perpetual dependence?
The foreign policy establishment
of Barbados has been overly influenced by partisan beneficiaries rather than
genuine experts. Official seems to convey a nonverbal language that suggest a
meeting with a foreign counterpart is about the kind of friendliness that exist
between people who know each other, instead of a means to avoid hot war and
further Barbados’ interests in other countries by peaceful means. We understand the pressures for policy
convergence from global players and institutions, some in not too subtle ways.
We understand the nature and function of the Center for Foreign Relations (CFR)
and other institutions within the pyramid of the globalist agenda. We
understand the relations between the formal and informal global structures. We
understand that there is very little that Barbados could do when a US
ambassador is caught engaging in activities inconsistent with her ‘official’
role. We know that Barbados has long supported some things we care about like
Palestine’s UN vote, Cuba, and others in defiance of US hegemonic foreign
policy. But this is not enough. There is little evidence that Barbados’ foreign
policy, to the extent there is one, considers the new Great Game in central
Asia.
The posture of Barbados’
diplomatic missions overseas is anachronistic at best and at worst - a
reflection of a uni-polar world. The geo-strategic, geo-political Great Game of
the world tomorrow is being driven by the insatiable lust of the Atlanticists
to control the vast resources of Central Asia, checkmating China, militarily
surrounding Russia and ultimately the prolongation of a uni-polar world. As a
result we see NATO fighting an illegal guerrilla war in Syria as a prelude to
an attempt to decapitate the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran and
stop the collapse of Israel, they will fail. But where are Barbados and the
Caribbean located in all this? To what extent should we choice winners and
losers? And when/if we make a strategic decision to plan the next fifty years,
what would that World be like? We judge that the American Empire will give way
soon. We also judge that the Fourth Reich of Angela Merkel will have near total
dominance over Europe within five years, in the wake of the collapse of the
Euro. We are however not persuaded that the trajectory of China, though it will
continue to rise, will not achieve its apogee, relative to other contenders for
global dominance. The answer to the central question raised here is difficult
to determine without more study for there are too many variables. However, a
best guess is that the next superpower may be an old one - an ancient power
from Central Asia and the Near East. Is any of this kind of thinking going on
in the External Affairs Ministries in Barbados and the Caribbean? If so where
are the discussion papers, the other scholarly writings and the public
articulations of the ministers in charge? In these circumstances, how can we
creatively re-align our foreign policy to best serve our national interests?
The USA has deceitfully used
human rights to extend its hegemony. We suggest that Barbados and other
Caribbean countries could use human rights as a point to further their own
interests. We have never heard any minister of foreign affairs in Barbados
objecting to the genocide of the Rohingya people of Myanmar (Burma). A people
of 800 thousand living in Myanmar since the second century and yet the
Myanmarese government, led by their new Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi,
in the midst of a Great Power Game between the USA and China for Myanmarese
resources and dominance in the South China Sea, can be the target of genocide
and there is not a word in objection from one single Barbadian or Caribbean
foreign relations official. It is this Barbados regime that continues to have
relations with the Zionist state as similar atrocities are committed against
the rightful peoples of all of Palestine for more than 60 years. Is there any
space for a small island state to play a diplomatic role, in its own interest?
Why do we not have closer relationship with real independent state like
Bolivia, Ecuador, Russia, Venezuela and Iran? Is it at all possible that these
countries will increase their power projection in the world of tomorrow?
We judge that the North Atlantic
countries will start to see most of the internal dislocations that they have
wrought on the rest of the world for centuries. These will be exacerbated by
the physical environmental factors. In Canada there is a strong separatist
movement to establish Quebec as a state. We expect the collapse of the US
dollar as the means of international exchange. The Euro is unlikely to last
much longer and is already tottering. Already in the USA large concentration
camp facilities are being built and other laws and control measure are being
put in place – as though the masters of the universe expect wide scale social
unrest. Abroad America is losing its soft power and is increasing resorting to
hard power (war) as the only means left to resolve global problems. There is
the beginning of a mass exodus from the USA by the smart people. On the other
hand, other countries are rising and presenting significant challenges to an
Empire in decline. What will be the world tomorrow be like for Barbados? Who
are the big brain people thinking about these issues in Barbados? Or are we
just waiting to grab crumbs from somebody’s table? Tell us.
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