That Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar chose to char­ac­terise Cari­com's talks with US Vice-Pres­i­dent Joe Biden as "bru­tal" is prob­a­bly in­dica­tive of more than a mea­sure of re­sis­tance on the part of the US vice-pres­i­dent of the many de­mands made for Amer­i­can as­sis­tance and an­tag­o­nis­tic fol­low-through by re­gion­al lead­ers.

As Vice-Pres­i­dent Biden in­di­cat­ed, "is­land na­tions face spe­cial dif­fi­cul­ties." How­ev­er, he not­ed that un­der the CBI, 85 per cent of the ex­ports of Cari­com go in­to the US with­out tar­iffs. Fur­ther, un­der the new Trade and In­vest­ment Frame­work Agree­ment there will be US as­sis­tance to seed growth and de­vel­op­ment in the economies to be cov­ered by this fol­low-up to the three-decades-old Caribbean Basin Ini­tia­tive.

How­ev­er, Cari­com lead­ers should not miss Mr Biden's point that they have to fo­cus on the ar­eas in which Wash­ing­ton would be will­ing to as­sist. The vice-pres­i­dent list­ed ed­u­ca­tion, in­vest­ment and co-op­er­a­tive ef­forts to bring down the cost of en­er­gy to mem­ber states of Cari­com.The re­gion­al lead­er­ship must come to an op­er­a­tional un­der­stand­ing of a world which has dra­mat­i­cal­ly changed from the 1980s. To­day glob­al­i­sa­tion and free trade are the dri­ving forces of in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions.

In such a world, the self-in­ter­est of na­tion states con­tin­ues to be cen­tral. The les­son to Cari­com must there­fore be that the US, like oth­er tra­di­tion­al­ly friend­ly states, must be giv­en rea­sons to as­sist small states.Along its third bor­der with the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca, se­cu­ri­ty is­sues deal­ing with crime, mon­ey-laun­der­ing and the trade in arms and drugs re­main the most sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns of the US.

Cari­com must work with the US to fash­ion in­ci­sive mea­sures to counter the il­lic­it trade and the threats posed to US ter­ri­to­ry if the re­gion is to re­ceive ad­di­tion­al as­sis­tance from Wash­ing­ton.The era of lim­it­less trade pref­er­ences has end­ed. What Cari­com needs is to cre­ate a new par­a­digm for the US to work co-op­er­a­tive­ly with the re­gion.

Vice-Pres­i­dent Biden opened up the pos­si­bil­i­ty of his gov­ern­ment seek­ing to es­tab­lish pol­i­cy mea­sures where­by the Caribbean busi­ness di­as­po­ra in the US could find op­por­tu­ni­ties to in­vest in the Caribbean.Like­wise, al­though a lit­tle em­bar­rass­ing, Mr Biden point­ed to de­vel­op­ing cost-sav­ing en­er­gy for Cari­com coun­tries which pay large sums for their en­er­gy. One pos­si­bil­i­ty here is for US firms to pro­vide the tech­no­log­i­cal base for so­lar and wind en­er­gy which will be sus­tain­able and at very low costs.

Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the alert by Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar that Cari­com will once again be seek­ing a sum­mit with Pres­i­dent Oba­ma. The prepa­ra­tions for such a sum­mit must start now.A cre­ative set of pro­pos­als which goes be­yond sim­ply beg­ging for more as­sis­tance from a rich and friend­ly na­tion must be de­vel­oped. Cari­com gov­ern­ments have to stop be­ing men­di­cants hold­ing out their beg­ging bowl to the Unit­ed States and oth­er large in­dus­tri­al part­ners.

Cari­com gov­ern­ments must re­mem­ber too that be­fore he can make con­tri­bu­tions to re­gion­al growth and de­vel­op­ment, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma must per­suade his own pop­u­la­tion that the US gov­ern­ment is not sim­ply giv­ing hand­outs to im­pov­er­ished na­tions.Maybe the lan­guage will change, if and when there is a sum­mit at the lev­el of the US pres­i­dent, from be­ing "bru­tal" to one in which there is com­mon ground for tru­ly co-op­er­a­tive ven­tures be­tween the US and Cari­com.