Editorial | Advancing US-Jamaica relations

You can’t but be impressed with how Donald Tapia, the US ambassador in Jamaica, has engaged his hosts and the passion with which he pursues his country’s most major foreign policy initiative, which is to blunt China’s growing challenge of the United States for global leadership.

The strategy, as it relates to Jamaica, is to attempt to drive a wedge into the deepening economic relationship between Kingston and Beijing; by highlighting the ideological parallels between Jamaica and the United States, contrasting these with China’s communism and command economy; and warning that being too cosy with Beijing is to risk contaminating Jamaica’s democracy and undermining individual freedoms.

Despite the absence of evidence of either Chinese intent, or effort, to usurp Jamaica’s democratic system, or those of our Caribbean neighbours, there will, unquestionably, be sympathy for Mr Tapia’s and America’s argument. In any event, no matter the state of the relations between Kingston and Beijing, they can’t but be good with the United States.

Not only is the United States still the world’s most powerful country, with which Jamaica shares a neighbourhood, the ties between the two countries, as Mr Tapia pointed put, are deep and intricate. The US, for instance, is Jamaica’s major economic partner, accounting for more than 40 per cent of bilateral trade. It supplies nearly two-thirds of the tourists who come to the island annually, and American firms, going back decades, have major investments in the island.

“However, it is not only about economics and infrastructure,” Mr Tapia wrote. “Over the last century, millions of Caribbean citizens have made the United States their homes, positively contributing to its development, while, at the same time, creating a strong diaspora that continues to build their native land.”

We agree! But economics and infrastructure do matter. So do other things.

Under the current US president, the mercurial Donald Trump, the sureties of a global multilateral order, within which small, vulnerable states like Jamaica used to presume protection, are no longer certain, threatened, as they are, by Mr Trump’s ‘America First’ doctrine.

EXISTENTIAL THREAT

So, Jamaica and its Caribbean partners are concerned when the United States blocks the appointment of judges to the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) appeal panel, hindering the organisation’s ability to settle disputes, and threatening its continuation as a global body. The fear deepens when Mr Trump denies the science of global warming, as well as pulls out of the Paris climate agreement, thereby exacerbating an existential threat to small island states like this one.

While Jamaica welcomes continued US assistance to Jamaica, especially in the areas of security, promised by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during his recent stop in Kingston, Ambassador Tapia will concede that capital flows from the United States, private or bilateral, haven’t, in recent decades, been at levels to be transformative for Jamaica. This was apparent when the need was most acute – in the aftermath of the Great Recession and the period, over the past eight years, of fiscal adjustment, in a major overhaul of the economy.

During this time China has, by way of equity investments and concessionary loans, provided around US$4 billion in capital flows, most of which have gone to the rehabilitation of run-down infrastructure, or building new ones, such as the North-South Highway, that links Jamaica to major economic regions. Such projects are beneficial to the island’s development.

Jamaica’s foreign policy has been, and must continue to be, sophisticated enough that it doesn’t overturn a principled relationship developed with China nearly 50 years ago, because of the geopolitical concerns, however framed, of an old friend and partner, who may be uncomfortable with the rise of others.

What, perhaps, should be Mr Tapia’s strategy, as he previously signalled was his intention, is to find ways to advance Jamaica’s economic development, and thereby US interests. And that need not be bilateral aid.

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan organised a committee, led by banker David Rockefeller and comprising the bosses of other Fortune 500 companies, to steer investment to Jamaica. They weren’t very successful. But that doesn’t mean that the idea wasn’t good, or that the model, or variations thereof, isn’t still viable, and worthy of the ambassador’s consideration, even without the imprimatur of the White House.

Jamaica is aware of the differences in political organisation between itself and China, as well as of the interests shared by both countries. It is around this understanding that they have framed their relationship. This approach to foreign policy formulation has, in the past, served Jamaica well and won it respect.