US De­fense Sec­re­tary Robert Gates vis­it­ed Bar­ba­dos late last week in what was the fi­nal leg of a Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean tour–that al­so in­clud­ed stops in Pe­ru and Colom­bia. Gates' vis­it to Bar­ba­dos, where he held talks with re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty chiefs, has been viewed by ex­perts as an at­tempt to gauge progress in the Oba­ma ad­min­is­tra­tion's Caribbean Basin Se­cu­ri­ty Ini­tia­tive, which was launched in late De­cem­ber 2009. It re­mains un­known at the time of writ­ing whether a se­cu­ri­ty del­e­ga­tion from Trinidad & To­ba­go at­tend­ed the talks. When con­tact­ed on Wednes­day af­ter­noon, a spokesman at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty could shed no fur­ther light on the mat­ter. "I am not sure who, if any­one, will be at­tend­ing. We are in the mid­dle of an elec­tion cam­paign and they are busy with that at the mo­ment."

The Caribbean Basin Se­cu­ri­ty Ini­tia­tive (CB­SI) is a mul­ti­lat­er­al agree­ment in­volv­ing all 14 Cari­com mem­ber states, as well as the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and the Unit­ed States. While in the­o­ry the ini­tia­tive al­lows for US as­sis­tance on a mul­ti­tude of se­cu­ri­ty is­sues, its pri­ma­ry re­mit is to as­sist re­gion­al ef­forts aimed at com­bat­ing in­ter­na­tion­al drug traf­fick­ing and transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime. At its in­cep­tion in De­cem­ber 2009, Julis­sa Rey­onoso, As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of State told Con­gress that: "The ini­tia­tive will help the Caribbean na­tions ad­dress a wide spec­trum of is­sues af­fect­ing the safe­ty of our cit­i­zens across a 15-na­tion re­gion with which we share close his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al ties." She fur­ther added how­ev­er that: "Stem­ming the flow of nar­cotics re­mains fore­front in our na­tion­al in­ter­est."

When tes­ti­fy­ing be­fore mem­bers of the Sen­ate sub­com­mit­tee who would ul­ti­mate­ly de­ter­mine fund­ing for the CB­SI, Stephen C John­son, a for­mer As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary for De­fense, stat­ed that: "$US 3.2 bil­lion over 25 years (spent in the re­gion) is in­signif­i­cant to what the Unit­ed States cur­rent­ly spends on se­cu­ri­ty as­sis­tance in oth­er parts of the world." John­son's words ob­vi­ous­ly had the de­sired ef­fect, in that the sub­se­quent bud­get al­lo­cat­ed to the CB­SI was re­port­ed to be around $US 37 mil­lion; to be spread over a five-year pe­ri­od. While all the re­ports com­ing out of Bar­ba­dos have so far been pos­i­tive, a gov­ern­ment-lev­el meet­ing deal­ing with or­gan­ised crime and cor­rup­tion in the re­gion was prob­a­bly the last thing that the Ja­maicans want­ed right now. Diplo­mat­ic ties be­tween the US and Ja­maica are cur­rent­ly at a low ebb due to the lat­ter's re­fusal to ex­tra­dite a Ja­maican man cur­rent­ly want­ed on mul­ti­ple felony charges by the Amer­i­can au­thor­i­ties.

Christo­pher "Dud­dus" Coke is sus­pect­ed of be­ing in­volved in se­ri­ous crime, in­clud­ing in­ter­na­tion­al arms and drug traf­fick­ing, but re­peat­ed US re­quests to ex­tra­dite him have been con­tin­u­al­ly re­buffed by the Ja­maican au­thor­i­ties. The Amer­i­cans be­lieve that the lack of co­op­er­a­tion by the gov­ern­ment in Kingston stems from Coke's al­leged links to se­nior mem­bers of the rul­ing par­ty. As a re­sult, the US State De­part­ment's an­nu­al In­ter­na­tion­al Nar­cotics Con­trol Strat­e­gy Re­port pulled no punch­es in launch­ing a with­er­ing at­tack on high-lev­el pub­lic cor­rup­tion in Ja­maica. The re­port high­light­ed that: "Per­va­sive pub­lic cor­rup­tion con­tin­ues to un­der­mine ef­forts against drug-re­lat­ed and oth­er crimes, and plays a ma­jor role in the safe pas­sage of drugs and drug pro­ceeds through Ja­maica. For the first time, cor­rup­tion ranked first to crime and vi­o­lence as the area of great­est con­cern for Ja­maicans. It re­mains the ma­jor bar­ri­er to im­prov­ing counter-nar­cotics ef­forts.

In­deed, Ja­maica's de­lay in pro­cess­ing the US ex­tra­di­tion re­quest for a ma­jor sus­pect­ed drug and firearms traf­fick­er with re­port­ed ties to the rul­ing par­ty high­lights the po­ten­tial depth of cor­rup­tion in the gov­ern­ment." The Ja­maicans to­tal­ly re­fute the al­le­ga­tions and state that they sim­ply op­pose Coke's ex­tra­di­tion on a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple; in that the wire­tap ev­i­dence against him was il­le­gal­ly ob­tained. Nev­er­the­less, many peo­ple be­lieve that it is they who will blink first in this mod­ern-day de­pic­tion of David ver­sus Go­liath. In­deed, Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter Bruce Gold­ing has since tasked the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to re-ex­am­ine the facts of the case per­tain­ing to the Amer­i­can re­quest. Some Ja­maicans feel that in this cur­rent pe­ri­od of glob­al aus­ter­i­ty, their gov­ern­ment stands lit­tle to gain by an­ger­ing the Amer­i­cans. One con­cerned cit­i­zen re­marked that, "When they (the US) thought that Man­ley was flirt­ing with Cas­tro in the ear­ly 70s, the Yanks put such a fi­nan­cial squeeze on us that I don't think our econ­o­my ever ful­ly re­cov­ered. We can ill af­ford to cross them again."

An­a­lysts in the re­gion have long since main­tained that the end of the Cold War, along with the dra­mat­ic rise in Is­lamist ter­ror­ism in the Mid­dle East and else­where, has led to Amer­i­ca large­ly shift­ing its in­ter­na­tion­al fo­cus away from its trop­i­cal neigh­bours, to oth­er parts of the globe. Gates' Latin Amer­i­can jaunt, how­ev­er, is but an­oth­er in a string of high-pro­file vis­its to the re­gion by an ad­min­is­tra­tion less than two years in­to its tenure. It fol­lows hard on the heels of Hillary Clin­ton's re­cent trips to Latin Amer­i­ca and Oba­ma's at­ten­dance at Trinidad's Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as in April last year. Notwith­stand­ing the change of gov­ern­ment and vast­ly in­creased num­bers of ca­su­al­ties, when one com­pares the speed and alacrity with which the US re­act­ed to the Hait­ian cat­a­stro­phe, to its slug­gish and lack­adaisi­cal re­sponse to its own New Or­leans dis­as­ter, we get the sense that this is an Amer­i­ca at­tempt­ing to re-as­sert it­self in a re­gion that it prob­a­bly feels it has ne­glect­ed for too long.

High-pro­file re­cent wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Viet­nam and Ko­rea be­fore that, make it hard­er to sell the fact that the Unit­ed States has in­ter­vened more times in the Caribbean Basin than in any oth­er part of the world. Some in the re­gion may al­so be of the mind that those in­ter­ven­tions have not al­ways been favourable to, or in the best in­ter­ests of, the lo­cal peo­ples. So whether this rekin­dled Latin Amer­i­can/Caribbean 'love af­fair' is a gen­uine de­sire to im­prove the re­gion's lot, or is sim­ply a flex­ing of the Amer­i­can mus­cle in the face of an in­creas­ing­ly bel­liger­ent Venezuela, and a resur­gent Rus­sia–both of whom are ex­pand­ing their sphere of in­flu­ence in the Caribbean do­main–re­mains to be seen.

Ki­to John­son

Scot­land Yard po­lice­man