Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

The Unit­ed States has an­nounced hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in new com­mit­ments for Caribbean health care, se­cu­ri­ty and dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture, as Wash­ing­ton seeks to strength­en its strate­gic ties with the re­gion.

US Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau an­nounced the fund­ing yes­ter­day at the open­ing of the US-Caribbean Di­a­logue in Wash­ing­ton, DC.

He called for stronger in­sti­tu­tion­al ties and in­creased pri­vate-sec­tor in­vest­ment to sup­port long-term eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

The com­mit­ments in­clude US$61.5 mil­lion for a re­gion­al health-care ini­tia­tive, US$37 mil­lion in new se­cu­ri­ty pro­gram­ming, US$55.5 mil­lion to strength­en law en­force­ment, US$11 mil­lion in For­eign Mil­i­tary Fi­nanc­ing for Caribbean se­cu­ri­ty forces, and US$175.8 mil­lion for se­cure dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture through an un­der­sea ca­bles pro­gramme.

Lan­dau said the di­a­logue was over­due and re­flect­ed a re­newed ef­fort by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion to give the West­ern Hemi­sphere greater pri­or­i­ty in Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy.

“For far too long, we have been look­ing at things that are hap­pen­ing halfway across the world, and we have been ig­nor­ing things that are hap­pen­ing right in our own neigh­bour­hood,” he said.

He de­scribed the Unit­ed States as a Caribbean na­tion, cit­ing ge­o­graph­i­cal prox­im­i­ty and shared his­to­ry, fam­i­ly and cul­tur­al ties. Wash­ing­ton want­ed last­ing re­la­tion­ships based on in­sti­tu­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion and sus­tained eco­nom­ic part­ner­ships, he said.

Lan­dau said long-term growth and job cre­ation would de­pend on pri­vate busi­ness­es pur­su­ing vi­able op­por­tu­ni­ties in the Caribbean, rather than re­ly­ing sole­ly on gov­ern­ment grants. The US plans to launch an in­vest­ment di­a­logue next year to con­nect Caribbean gov­ern­ments with Amer­i­can busi­ness­es. He urged re­gion­al lead­ers to iden­ti­fy pri­or­i­ty projects, in­clud­ing ports, en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and dig­i­tal net­works.

The US$61.5 mil­lion for AS­PIRE—the Amer­i­ca Strate­gic Part­ner­ship for In­de­pen­dent Re­gion­al Health­care Ex­cel­lence—is in­tend­ed to help Caribbean coun­tries build stronger, more self-re­liant health-care work­forces.

Lan­dau cit­ed the move­ment of il­le­gal drugs from South Amer­i­ca through the Caribbean to­wards the Unit­ed States as a se­cu­ri­ty con­cern. The US$37 mil­lion in new Caribbean Basin Se­cu­ri­ty Ini­tia­tive pro­gram­ming will sup­port pro­tec­tion of crit­i­cal dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture and strength­en port se­cu­ri­ty. The ad­di­tion­al law-en­force­ment fund­ing and mil­i­tary fi­nanc­ing are al­so in­tend­ed to boost re­gion­al ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

He said Wash­ing­ton was pre­pared to work with Caribbean gov­ern­ments against crim­i­nal net­works and il­lic­it firearms traf­fick­ing. He al­so iden­ti­fied il­le­gal fish­ing as a pri­or­i­ty and called for co­op­er­a­tion to pro­tect ma­rine re­sources.

The US plans to in­vest US$175.8 mil­lion in se­cure in­fra­struc­ture through its Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca un­der­sea ca­bles pro­gramme. Lan­dau said it would pro­vide high-speed con­nec­tiv­i­ty and help build re­silient com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works.

Saint Lu­cia Prime Min­is­ter and Cari­com chair­man Philip J Pierre wel­comed the di­a­logue, say­ing Caribbean lead­ers had called for po­lit­i­cal-lev­el con­sul­ta­tions af­ter meet­ing US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio in Saint Kitts and Nevis in Feb­ru­ary.

Pierre said the re­la­tion­ship should be mea­sured by im­prove­ments in peo­ple’s dai­ly lives, in­clud­ing af­ford­able elec­tric­i­ty, jobs, in­vest­ment, safer com­mu­ni­ties and re­li­able dis­as­ter re­sponse. He called for prac­ti­cal com­mit­ments on en­er­gy, trade, health care, se­cure in­fra­struc­ture and ac­tion against or­gan­ised crime and il­lic­it firearms traf­fick­ing.

He al­so stressed the need to main­tain in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion on Haiti, say­ing sus­tained as­sis­tance and cred­i­ble elec­tions with the widest pos­si­ble par­tic­i­pa­tion were es­sen­tial to restor­ing sta­bil­i­ty. Im­mi­gra­tion and mi­gra­tion, he added, must al­so be part of dis­cus­sions be­cause of their im­pact on Caribbean com­mu­ni­ties and peo­ple-to-peo­ple ties.

“The strength of to­day’s meet­ing will be demon­strat­ed by what fol­lows it,” Pierre said, call­ing for sus­tained tech­ni­cal en­gage­ment and clear fol­low-up arrange­ments. He said the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at would help co­or­di­nate the com­mu­ni­ty’s work with na­tion­al au­thor­i­ties and re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions.

Pierre said Caribbean coun­tries were ready to work with Wash­ing­ton on a mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial part­ner­ship that re­spect­ed re­gion­al sov­er­eign­ty and shared as­pi­ra­tions.