ARE THE AMERICANS PIVOTING ON MULTI LATERALISM?

Ambassador to the United States Wendall Jones, Deputy Secretary of State of the United States Christopher Landau, Fred Mitchell, Foreign Minister and Ashley Cargill, Foreign Service Officer.

Last week the American masters of the hemisphere summoned their Caribbean minions to a conference called the US-Caribbean Dialogue in Washington D C.  The invitation came from the Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, not the Secretary of State Marco Rubio and not the President but it was a summons to heads of government.  Interesting. Four Caribbean Heads of Government turned up: Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit of Dominica, Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime of Haiti, Prime Minister Terrance Drew of St Kitts and Nevis and Prime Minister Philip Pierre of St Lucia. The others countries were represented either at the Foreign Ministers level or by an Ambassador. The session as a daylong session in the State Department. The question is what has changed since the last time foreign ministers of the Caribbean were summoned to Washington and told that multilateralism was dead and that each country had to come with their own asks.  The meeting this time was a pitching for partnership and working together on a range of issues from security, to crime, anti-drug, weapons interdiction, communications policy.  There seems now to be a pivot to the fact that there is a need to work together. There is an expression in The Bahamas: talk is cheap but money buys land. Let us see whether the US has found the old time religion and they mean what they now say.