U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be the headliner guest at this week’s Caribbean Community leaders’ summit in St. Kitts, and as expected, the meeting could be a tense one given the increasingly harsh set of policies Washington has imposed on a region that has traditionally been among the friendliest to it over the decades.
Officials say that nearly every member state, except the British dependency of Montserrat, has confirmed plans to attend the three-day summit beginning on Tuesday. This is the first major in-person summit of leaders with Rubio ever since the Trump administration had, towards the end of last year, severely upped the pressure on the grouping of mostly small island nations to comply with a series of controversial edicts from Washington ranging from accepting deportees to cutting back on relations with Cuba.
Rubio is scheduled to hold “closed door meetings” with the leaders on a number of issues, ranging from the visa suspensions for Antiguans and Dominicans, pressure on governments to scale back relations with China, demands from Washington for the region to also cut back on the decades-old Cuban medical brigade program and for the grouping to look more towards the U.S. Exim Bank for development loans rather than China’s.
The U.S. and other Western nations have also been trying to force the minimization or cancellation of citizenship-by-investment or golden-passport programs for foreigners, despite the fact that the Trump administration is doing the exact same thing.
For example, the governments of St. Kitts, Antigua, St. Lucia, Dominica, and Grenada, which have this system, say it is one of their main sources for development finance outside of tourism, as the banana and sugar export regimes to Europe have long collapsed, leaving a gaping revenue gap.
In St. Vincent, which has had a new government since late last year, the cabinet says it will soon go this route, as the previous administration had staunchly opposed this program.
And as if to underscore the importance of this summit, Chairman and Kittian Prime Minister Terrance Drew visited nearly every member state in recent days, holding crucial talks with delegations headed to his Eastern Caribbean island nation.
Mark Kirton, a retired University of the West Indies professor and Director for the Center of International and Border Studies, says this summit is “crucial for Caribbean unity as we have to speak with one voice, to let Mr. Rubio know that we are speaking with one voice. Nobody is looking at our backs. We are basically alone, and we have to start by ensuring and understanding that there are convergences of interests, and we need as Caribbean people to develop a new level of trust in leadership and speak with a united voice.”
He says that the region may also have to begin forging new linkages with nations including Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, which have shared or similar interests, as there is much talk now about the Monroe Doctrine and various levels of hegemony in the hemisphere.”
