‘If You are not at the Table, You are part of the Menu’
THOSE WORDS were spoken by the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Carney spoke as the prime minister of what he described as a Middle Country. Despite past nonsensical talk about SVG being close to First World status, whatever that means today, CARICOM of which we are a part is a grouping of mostly tiny countries that are certainly some distance from being classified as Middle Countries. We are certainly on the Menu but clearly the Menu for the dogs. Carney’s speech as was evident from the reception it got, really gave a bewitching analysis of the world as it is today. There is no doubt that the target was President Donald Trump of the US. An angry Trump, realising he was a key figure in Carney’s speech declared that Canada lives because of the US.
The international rules based order of which America is a central player is particularly false. Carney declared that “We are in the midst of a rupture not a transition…. More recently great powers have begun using economic integration as a weapon.” He seemed to be singling out a role for Middle Powers “building in a new order coalitions that work issue by issue with partners who share enough common ground to act together”. The old order, he stated, will not come back.
“We should not mourn it.
Nostalgia is not a strategy.
Canada, he declared, was a “stable, reliable partner in a world that is anything but a partner that builds and values relationships for the long term.”
Carney’s analysis of what he calls “the old order” is one- especially coming from the Prime Minister of a so-called Middle Powerwith which we can identify.
President Trump has been pushing the military and economic might of the US beyond what the Monroe Doctrine was all about. His threat to acquire Greenland by purchase or force is one directed at a NATO Community, Greenland being a member of NATO through its relationship with the Kingdom of Denmark. He went as far as to threaten to impose tariffs on those European countries that did not support his quest for the acquisition of Greenland. He backed off from this at the Conference in Davos, claiming to have reached some agreement which apparently satisfies him. I am not clear what this agreement is, but it is felt that what stopped him in his track was the explosion on the Stock Market.
The acquisition of Greenland to me was all a joke and was in keeping with the actions of how a writer at the Financial Times described him- TACO (Trump always chickens out). He has created problems on the global economic front where he claims to be imposing high tariffs on a number of countries, and then later reversing them.
The stability that is needed for economic growth disappears with Trump continually reversing decisions he had made.
Greenland is far removed from us. We had been faced with flight and cruise ship cancellations when he kidnapped the Venezuelan President. Fortunately, the activity was short lived, for had there been any meaningful resistance that would have lasted a bit longer; our tourism industry would have suffered tremendously. Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago were asked to allow the installation of certain drones, I believe, at their airports. Most Caribbean countries found themselves on a list of 75 countries on which certain Visa restrictions are levied. Even more, our countries were asked to take in persons being deported by the US, who were unable to go back to their countries of birth. Who those persons would be is not known. Here is where rhetoric and reality clash.
It is one thing to decide to reject that request, but are we in a position to withstand what might follow from the US? I have maintained that our position should be one taken at the CARICOM level. In any event sheer economic and military power shapes his bravado. Constitutions and Regulations matter little to him. But CARICOM even with its divisions, cannot play dead. They have to find some way of showing that their countries are adults, not children. The question is what can they do without harming themselves and their people. In the US itself he has been turning things upside down, challenging the many guard rails that are in place. Many of his unilateral moves have and are being challenged in Court. His Republican colleagues in Congress have been mostly rubber stamping some of his moves, even those that should be acted on by Congress. Does the President have on his own the right to invade another country without the agreement of Congress? We might go further and question the right of Congress even to sanction such an act. But the US has a record of the invasion of a number of Latin American and South American countries, and even the Caribbean as seen with Grenada.
The final story about Trump and his manoeuvres will have to come from the US, despite the fact that he has turned most of the world against him and by extension the US. He has reached low levels in the polls. The people are increasingly showing their disgust with him, but will this manifest itself at the midterm elections? In the meantime, we in the Caribbean with little muscles should not give up but how do we combat such madness? That is the question!
_ Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian
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