Byron Blake | Marco Rubio’s visit to the Caribbean: Is all well on the northern front?

When United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the CARICOM Caribbean, he came to an apprehensive, if not tense, region. Many leaders, most not invited to any part of the party, uncharacteristically issued strong statements on different issues rumoured to be matters of concern to him.

Now he has left. There is an eerie silence. One might interpret this as a sense of relief.

The public statements have been complimentary to the Secretary of State. In his brief statements, including in his press conferences with Irfaan Ali, president of Guyana, and President Chan Santokhi of Suriname, he was disarmingly affable and prepared. He made no apparent big demands on the region, while:

• Undertaking to re-evaluate travel advisories on Jamaica.

• Maintaining his opposition to the Government of Cuba sending of medical personnel but offering to review if conditions of engagement in CARICOM countries met international standards.

• Offering to encourage investment and collaboration in areas like security, trade, energy, and human resource development for data centres and artificial intelligence (AI).

• Purporting to seek opportunities for the United States private sector to compete with others for implementing projects in the region.

• Supporting stability in the region through the sharing of information on undesirable migrants, and a willingness to take back to the relevant Authorities the Region’s concern about guns from the United States.

• Expressing strong support for Guyana’s territorial integrity and reading the riot act to Venezuela.

These are all goodies of interest to all CARICOM countries, which perhaps explains the relief of CARICOM leaders. It certainly explains the enthusiasm of Jamaica’s tourism interests, for example.

So, is all well on the northern border or the southern border, depending on the capital from which you speak?

My seventh sense invokes in me deep concerns. First, as important as these goodies are, they are unlikely to have impelled a secretary of state of a transactional administration to spend two days in the Caribbean. That account does not balance in favour of the United States. The substance could have been handled in a teleconference with all CARICOM leaders. I do not think that our leaders advanced arguments that changed the brief with which Rubio left Washington. United States diplomacy has never worked that way.

Second, why did the Secretary of State see the need for four meetings? There were three prime ministers in Kingston, so why two meetings? Paramaribo is 35 minutes’ flight time from Georgetown. If the prime ministers of Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago could fly to Jamaica, the President of Suriname could fly to Guyana or the President of Guyana to Suriname. There could be more to the balkanisation of the Community. That could be without malice. But the fact that leaders of CARICOM allowed themselves to be atomised, and their secretariat to be ignored, could come back to haunt the Community. Small as it might be their unity is CARICOM countries’ greatest strength in their relations with large and more powerful countries.

Efforts to circumvent that unity are not new. For example, not long after Bill Clinton assumed office in 1993, he invited the five larger CARICOM states to meet with him in the White House. Those leaders signalled that they expected that the president would invite all CARICOM heads. The White House indicated that that would not be logistically possible. It was then agreed to add CARICOM’s secretary-general.

The three countries selected are among the most vulnerable states in the region. Further, two have significant natural resources including petroleum. Also, the presidents of Guyana and Suriname made official visits to China in 2024 and have been developing robust programmes with China. These programmes include, in the case of Guyana, the recently completed Demerara Harbour Bridge, the East Coast Demerara Road project and six regional hospitals, and Suriname projects in bauxite mining, energy and tourism.

Was there pressure on any of these states to make commitments or give undertakings which have not been made public?

Criticised Chinese Companies

Rubio took advantage of a question by Ed Wong of the New York Times about China’s growing presence in the Caribbean and Latin America at the press conference in Suriname, to launch a scathing attack on Chinese activities in the region. He argued “in a lot of these countries, the Chinese companies go and they do a terrible job. Not a bad job, a terrible job. I just came from Guyana, where we had to drive on a road the Chinese built that … . We almost all had concussions, because the plane – the road was so bad – it was terrible …”.

We have quoted Secretary Rubio because (i) both the questioner and Rubio appeared to see the region as an entity, and (ii) it was so undiplomatic for a senior diplomat to use a forum in one country to criticise activities in a friendly third country.

Before this, the Chinese Government would have heard President Irfaan Ali had, in the press conference Rubio, state: “I will say very boldly that such friends must have some different and preferential treatment.” “A friend who will defend me when I need a friend to defend me must be a friend that enjoys some special place in our hearts and in our country, and that will be the case.”

The Chinese government must have concluded that there is more than is being made public. Through a spokesperson in its Embassy in Kingston, it issued a strong statement in The Sunday Gleaner, March 30, titled “Stop vilifying China”. Almost simultaneously it issued through its Ambassador in Guyana a statement stressing “China and Guyana’s partnership paves the way for mutual prosperity. Greater connectivity, and collaboration in the Caribbean Region”.

The most important lesson from Secretary Rubio’s visit and the reaction of China is that individual CARICOM states can be crushed between these two superpowers and the entire region could suffer. The region would be well-advised to approach these and other powers as a unity.

Ambassador Byron Blake is former deputy permanent representative of Jamaica to the United Nations and former assistant secretary general of CARICOM. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com