Whether by ac­ci­dent or de­sign, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and some of his Cari­com coun­ter­parts had the same theme for their ad­dress­es at the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as---a re­buke of the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion for its re­fusal to in­vite the lead­ers of three na­tions to the hemi­spher­ic gath­er­ing.

In his time on the podi­um at the Los An­ge­les event, Dr Row­ley called for the re­moval of sanc­tions against Cu­ba and Venezuela and for their in­clu­sion in fu­ture Sum­mits.

His call echoed that of Cari­com chair, Be­lizean Prime Min­is­ter John Briceño, who at the open­ing ple­nary a day ear­li­er al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­demn the long-run­ning US em­bar­go against Cu­ba as “an af­front to hu­man­i­ty.”

Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley of Bar­ba­dos struck a sim­i­lar chord in her ad­dress, quot­ing late reg­gae leg­end Bob Mar­ley with her de­c­la­ra­tion: “There is so much trou­ble in the world.”

But do not take that as an in­di­ca­tion that there was a strong, unit­ed Cari­com pres­ence at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Sum­mit. Far from it.

In the weeks lead­ing up to the Sum­mit, the ex­clu­sion of some heads of state was a source of con­tention for the re­gion­al bloc which nev­er ar­rived at a con­sen­sus on the is­sue. St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves was the on­ly Cari­com leader to state de­fin­i­tive­ly that he would boy­cott the event.

At the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Sum­mit on Wednes­day evening the size of the Caribbean del­e­ga­tions showed that there would on­ly be lip ser­vice about ex­clu­sion. All that had gone be­fore turned out to be mere saber rat­tling.

And by the end of the Sum­mit on Fri­day, it was clear that the con­cerns of Cari­com coun­tries did not get ur­gent at­ten­tion lead­ers from this part of the re­gion had been hop­ing for.

There was the Los An­ge­les de­c­la­ra­tion on mi­gra­tion for a “shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty” by all na­tions to deal with mi­gra­tion flows. This is an is­sue of con­cern to T&T which has been strug­gling with an in­flux of mi­grants from neigh­bour­ing Venezuela but is just one of many so­cial, eco­nom­ic, and po­lit­i­cal chal­lenges con­fronting this coun­try and the rest of the Caribbean.

Oth­er ur­gent con­cerns are the Russ­ian in­va­sion of Ukraine which has been dri­ving up prices at the worst pos­si­ble time since many coun­tries are still strug­gling to re­cu­per­ate from the ef­fects of COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Al­so, as Briceño high­light­ed in his ad­dress, the Caribbean needs as­sis­tance with debt re­lief, cli­mate change and ac­cess to con­ces­sion­ary fund­ing.

These would have been rea­son­able ex­pec­ta­tions if the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as had kept to its orig­i­nal pur­pose of fa­cil­i­tat­ing the type of hemi­spher­ic di­a­logue that yields a col­lab­o­ra­tive agen­da.

In­stead, as was made clear from the de­bate over ex­clu­sion, there is a deep­en­ing hemi­spher­ic rift be­cause some gov­ern­ments are try­ing to up­hold de­mo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues while oth­ers tol­er­ate more au­thor­i­tar­i­an ide­olo­gies.

More than ever, the 2022 Sum­mit dis­played to the world the ex­tent to which the Unit­ed States has lost po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic dom­i­nance in the Amer­i­c­as.

Caribbean lead­ers should weigh in on these chang­ing hemi­spher­ic dy­nam­ics at the Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment sched­uled for Ju­ly 3-5 in Para­mari­bo, Suri­name.

Ex­pec­ta­tions of co­op­er­a­tion and sup­port must be ad­just­ed.