Prime Minister Mia Mottley called for renewed US-Caribbean cooperation, highlighting the urgent need for a targeted development compact between the United States and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and hinting strongly that a 40-year-old partnership deal is outdated.
She told an American foreign policy think tank on Wednesday that the region’s stability is at risk due to a lack of recent US engagement, which has left Caribbean nations exposed and overlooked in favour of other global priorities.
“I’ve never been a soldier . . . [or] a military tactician but if your flanks are open, don’t you try to close them?” she said during a discussion hosted by the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations in New York, entitled ‘Blueprints for a Greener Tomorrow: A Conversation with Prime Minister Mia Mottley’.
“And if you’re part of the neighbourhood, then it means that your flanks are open. And if Haiti, right back down to Guyana, is open, then that must be a vulnerability.”
The last major US initiative focusing specifically on the region was during the Ronald Reagan administration. Introduced in 1984, the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) is a trade programme that provides beneficiary countries with duty-free access to the US market for most goods.
But Prime Minister Mottley said the Caribbean has been overlooked in favour of other global concerns, and called for a shift in focus.
She further pointed out the need for Washington to recognise the potential benefits of investing in the stability of the Caribbean.
“President Biden has done good work with the establishment of the American Partnership,” Mottley said.
“But that’s the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean. I’m speaking now for CARICOM, the Caribbean Community. What is needed for us for stability is a drop in the ocean; it’s not even an accounting error.”
She reiterated that a more focused partnership would yield mutual benefits, stating, “I hope and pray that we recognise that there is a win-win equation for both the US and CARICOM to be able to work together to be able to have a better development compact in place.”
Mottley, who was responding to questions at the forum on the upcoming US elections and its potential impact on climate policy, decided to steer clear of direct commentary on internal American politics.
But she weighed in on the issue of women’s rights, stressing what she described as the importance of protecting the right to choose.
“It would be a betrayal of my gender for me not to share that a woman’s right to choose has nothing to do with politics,” she said.
“It is completely above politics. And this is a fundamental issue of agency, that women have had to fight too long across millennia to be where they are today for us to go back in any manner, form, or fashion.”
Her backing of women’s rights comes amid ongoing debates on reproductive rights in the United States during the election campaign, as well as on the international stage.
(SM)
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