By Dr. Isaac Newton
Caribbean diplomacy must begin with a clear understanding of who we are and what we choose to become. Foreign policy is the outward expression of our identity. It carries our values, voice, and vision into the global arena. Strategy is the quiet discipline of listening beneath the noise of events and sensing change before it arrives. An asset is anything that grows in strength when used with intention. Transformation is the decision to rise into something greater than habit or history. When these ideas converge, foreign policy becomes the compass of national renewal and a foundation for a confident regional posture.
This vision resonates with the Right Hon Dr. Denzil L. Douglas, one of the most accomplished statesmen in the modern Caribbean. A former four term Prime Minister and now Minister of Foreign Affairs, Economic Development, International Trade, Investment, and Commerce, he guides national engagement where domestic aspiration meets global possibility. His portfolio demands clarity, discipline, and forward-looking imagination. It is from this vantage that he reminds us, “Foreign policy must not simply describe our world. It must shape the world we wish to enter.”
The Caribbean operates in a world of shifting alliances, fragile norms, and competing ambitions. Powerful nations speak of rules while bending them and praise sovereignty while ignoring it when convenient. For small island states, this produces both vulnerability and opportunity for those who navigate with insight. Influence no longer depends on size but on resolve, relationships, and resonance. Caribbean diplomacy must move from reaction to deliberate direction, strengthening resilience, economic security, and regional standing.
Diplomacy reaches far beyond negotiating tables. It shapes the price of food, the strength of our borders, the health of our reefs, and the energy that powers our homes. Foreign policy becomes the bridge that determines whether opportunities land on our shores or drift elsewhere. To secure them, Caribbean ministries of foreign affairs must be at the center of national strategy, coordinating systems and sectors with focus and discipline rather than ceremonial visibility.
Looking outward, partnerships with nations such as Indonesia, Africa, India, Brazil, the Middle East, and other countries with shared needs and compelling interests provide practical paths to renewal. These regions read the sea, the land, and the global economy as teachers rather than boundaries. Shared efforts in marine stewardship, climate resilience, renewable energy, technology transfer, and skills training can lift livelihoods and expand national capacity. These are immediate frontiers where cooperation turns potential into progress. The decade ahead invites the Caribbean to embrace a future powered by clean energy, guided by science, enriched by sustainable oceans, and led by citizens equipped for a complex world. If we meet this moment with clarity and courage, our diplomacy becomes not a mirror of global change but the instrument through which transformation takes flight.
Editor’s Note
Dr. Isaac Newton is a strategist and scholar trained at Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia. He advises governments and international institutions on governance, transformation, and global justice, helping nations and organizations turn vision into sustainable progress.
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The entire system needs transformation, our people need to be more technological, and empowered by land and financial resources, business financing.
These religious organization that seek to only control the people for their wealth and submissive control that strengthen and maintain western hegemony and neocolinial agenda through mental control of people’s aspiration need to be assign productive purpose to our society for the tax concessions they enjoy from the government and same people that they exert religious pressure on to relief of their wealth.
The government should negotiate with these religious organization to build trade schools, and really impact the nation by teaching trade skills, in that case crime would reduce and youths will be productive given the government commitment to finance their venture in entrepreneurship. The youths are presently despondent with the church teaching classical scriptures and conditioning their minds on this benign atmosphere across the sky, they want their piece of the pie as jimmy cliff would say right hear on earth as other Caucasian ethnicity.
Trade skill in Alison transmission repairs and heavy duty diesel electronic engine repair and EV vehicle repairs should be taken up by these religious organization that has benefited from generations of our ancestors wealth and service.
I am just trying to reimagine society in this era of so call independence going nowhere because of academic and spiritual colonization.
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