Editorial | CARICOM’s worthy hires

THE CARIBBEAN Community’s (CARICOM) appointment this week of the respected diplomats, Wayne McCook and Donna Forde, as its trade and foreign policy chiefs, respectively, signals, this newspaper hopes, the start of a new, assertive response to global issues by the community’s recently installed secretary general, Dr Carla Barnett.

CARICOM is a fledgling single market of 15 countries, whose leaders often fail to follow through on agreements they reach for the integration of their economies. Frustrated at the leaders’ inaction, the community’s secretaries general tend to stew in silence, rather than appear to question their bosses. The limitations of the job make it that way, their sympathisers say.

Earlier this year when Dr Barnett, a Belizean, emerged as the prime ministers’ choice for the post, to succeed Irwin LaRocque, who served for a decade, we urged that she take a new approach to the job, leading from the front and engaging in public advocacy. “Even if that, at times, puts her ahead of, and at odds with leaders, who are lagging on implementation”.

We added: “Dr Barnett, in this regard, should approach the job as if she is in it for a single term and on a clear mission. She must be ready to coax and cajole and talk straight to the leaders. But at times she will have to speak directly to the Caribbean people. And she has to be prepared to be fired, if it comes to that.”

Indeed, many of the issues now faced by CARICOM are without precedent in the community’s near 50-year history, from the COVID-19 pandemic and the global recession it has caused, to the dangers of global warming and the deepening geopolitical tensions, caused, not least, by Western concerns over China’s rise as a global power. In its response to these challenges, CARICOM has to move with care, yet with assertiveness and confidence. Which is why, first, the appointment of Mr McCook to head CARICOM’s Office of Trade Negotiations (OTN) – to succeed his retired Jamaican colleague Gail Mathurin – is a potentially significant move.

Fundamental reforms

Until Roberto Azevedo stepped down as the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) director general a year early in August 2020, Mr McCook, a seasoned trade negotiator – whose diplomatic assignments included stints as Jamaica’s ambassador to China and its representative to UN agencies in Geneva – served as a senior adviser. Mr McCook, therefore, should be fully versed on the issues that led to his former boss’ early departure from the WTO. Mr Azevedo said it was aimed at breaking the logjam at the organisation, where the United States of America, claiming judicial overreach and bias against it, blocked the appointment of judges for the WTO appeals system, thus gumming up the disputes resolution process. The Americans’ demands, however, go beyond disputes settlement. They insist on more fundamental reforms of the WTO, including the basis of China’s membership, which, Washington argues, gives Beijing unfair advantages in trade, even as its companies steal other people’s intellectual property.

While America’s concerns primarily impact disputes between the world’s most powerful economies, most developing countries, including CARICOM’s members, maintain that they largely were locked out of the promised benefits of globalisation when the WTO was launched more than a quarter-century ago. Indeed, the Doha Round of trade negotiations, which were supposed to address the concerns of developing countries, collapsed without delivering on these promises. Nothing has since emerged on the global trade agenda that puts the issues that matter to developing countries at the centre of the discussions. CARICOM, therefore, has to ensure that any reform of the WTO takes its interests into account. Unlike the Uruguay Round that led to the creation of the WTO, they must not agree to any kicking of the bucket further down the road.

Pursue common interests

Mr McCook, in coordinating CARICOM’s approach in these negotiations, brings not only an intimate understanding of the corridors of Geneva and the nuances of the issues that are on the table, but likely, some of the strategic thinking of Mr Azevedo’s successor, the Nigerian Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

However, CARICOM cannot pursue its interests at the WTO, and elsewhere on the global stage, as a group unto itself. Neither should the region attempt to hitch its wagon to any bloc as a junior partner in a reprised Cold War, even if the protagonists call it something else.

CARICOM, therefore, should rally the countries of the global South, ideological perspectives notwithstanding, to pursue common interests. This will require that the community avoid falling prey, as it has in the recent past, to divisive blandishments wrapped to represent seats at an ephemeral table.

Much of what happens in this regard will, of course, depend on the posture of the leaders in national capitals. However, the community’s secretariat must offer to the collective of prime ministers a clear, and comprehensively articulated, perspective of the world that works in the interest of CARICOM as a group. This will fall primarily to Ms Forde, former deputy permanent secretary in Barbados’ foreign ministry, in her new role as CARICOM’s assistant secretary general of foreign and community relations. Ms Forde is known to have clarity of thought. And if her thinking has in any way helped to shape Barbados’ foreign policy and its articulation by Prime Minister Mia Mottley, her presence at the secretariat should be a boon to CARICOM.

But, ultimately, if the new hires do their job well, their value will percolate upwards and gain its real value if Secretary General Barnett leads from the front.