WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
STRATEGIC OPTIONS FOR CARICOM IN THE AGE OF AMERICAN REASSERTION
By Professor C. Justin Robinson
Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal, The UWI Five Islands Campus
In part 1 of this series I argued that the Caribbean faces an existential moment. The post-war international order that enabled small-state sovereignty is fracturing. The United States has moved beyond multilateral disengagement to active coercion. Geography offers no escape. The diagnosis is grim but diagnosis is not destiny.
This essay analyses the strategic options available to CARICOM, not to prescribe a course but to hopefully help clarify the choices before us. Leaders and citizens alike must decide our collective future. The options range from full compliance to principled defiance, and each carries costs. The question is not whether we will pay a price, we will. The question is what we are willing to sacrifice for what we hope to save.
The Monroe Doctrine Returns
To understand what is at stake, we must understand what is being revived. The Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed in 1823, in a world of great powers and colonies. Caribbean territories were possessions of the Spanish, British, French, Dutch. We were traded, exploited, and administered by distant capitals. The doctrine declared the Americas off-limits to European colonization, but it did not recognize Caribbean sovereignty. It asserted American hegemony over a region of subjects, not partners. We were not consulted as we did not exist as nations.
The post-war order changed this fundamentally. Decolonization created sovereign states where colonies had been. International law recognized our juridical equality. The United Nations gave us voice and vote. We became actors in world affairs, not objects of great-power management. The question was no longer which empire would administer us, but how we would govern ourselves.
When American officials now invoke the Monroe Doctrine, as they have explicitly, they reveal the logic underlying current policy. The doctrine was created for a world without Caribbean sovereignty. Its revival implies that our nationhood was provisional, our independence a concession that can be withdrawn, our sovereignty an aberration now to be corrected. This is not hyperbole; this is the plain meaning of returning to a framework that predates our existence as nations. The stakes are existential in the precise sense, not merely which policies we pursue or which relationships we maintain, but whether we exist as sovereign nations at all or revert to the status our ancestors fought to escape.
The Spectrum of Options
Compliance. Accept the new reality, align with American preferences and avoid relationships that trigger retaliation. The case for compliance is straightforward: the United States is overwhelmingly dominant. Punitive measures could devastate any CARICOM member within months. Resistance, on this view, is reckless and futile.
The risk is equally clear. Accommodation does not guarantee protection. Today’s compliance invites tomorrow’s escalation each concession establishes precedent and Sovereignty, already fragile becomes nominal, retained in form only and hollow in substance. Nations built through anti-colonial struggle are reduced to managed dependencies, precisely the status the Monroe Doctrine envisions.
Quiet Hedging. Maintain public alignment while quietly diversifying relationships. Comply on the surface while pursuing alternatives underneath. The case: preserve flexibility without triggering retaliation essentially buying time while reducing dependence. The risk: hedging requires sophisticated statecraft that may exceed CARICOM’s current capacity. Washington monitors relationships closely and punishes perceived disloyalty. Discovery could bring harsher consequences than open defiance with duplicity compounding the offence of independence.
Collective Balancing. Use CARICOM and broader coalitions to create counterweight. Pool sovereignty to resist collectively and seek alliances with other small states and alternative powers. The case: picking off fifteen states is harder than one. A unified position raises the costs of coercion and alternative partnerships diversify options and reduce vulnerability. The risk: CARICOM has never demonstrated capacity for genuine collective resistance. Individual states may defect under pressure. Collective balancing may provoke retaliation specifically designed to break solidarity, divide and rule which is the oldest imperial strategy of all.
Principled Defiance. Openly resist coercion, assert sovereignty regardless of consequences and position the Caribbean as a moral voice against great-power bullying. The case: some things matter more than stability. Sovereignty is dignity, our historical experience demands more than subservience and defiance may attract international solidarity from nations facing similar pressures. The risk: retaliation may be swift and devastating. If solidarity does not materialize, defiance becomes martyrdom and the costs fall on ordinary citizens, lost jobs, reduced remittances, diminished futures and not on those who make the speeches.
Reform Advocacy. Focus on reforming the international system itself. Lead efforts to relocate UN institutions from vulnerable host nations. Advocate for diversified funding mechanisms. Build coalitions committed to reconstructing rules-based order. The case: address root causes, not symptoms. Success benefits all vulnerable states, not just our own. The risk: reform is slow while coercion is immediate. Advocacy without results may simply demonstrate impotence. This strategy is best pursued alongside others, not instead of them.
Combining Strategies
No CARICOM state will pursue pure compliance or pure defiance. Realistic strategy involves combinations: selective compliance on lesser issues while building alternatives on greater ones; hedging while constructing collective capacity; defiance on core principles while accommodating on peripheries. The art lies in discernment, knowing when to comply, when to hedge, when to stand firm, and when to push for systemic change. This requires analytical capacity and political courage that CARICOM institutions have not historically demonstrated. Above all, it requires honest conversation about what we are willing to sacrifice.
Questions We Must Answer
What are we unwilling to surrender, regardless of cost? What costs are we willing to bear and for how long? Can we achieve genuine solidarity, or will we be divided and defeated in detail? Which alternative partnerships are real, and which are illusions? What do we owe future generations, stability now, or sovereignty preserved? These are not technical questions. They are political and moral. They require democratic deliberation in parliaments, in media, in communities. The conversation must happen now, before events overtake our capacity to shape them.
The Choice Before Us
We must understand clearly what acceptance of the new order means. The Monroe Doctrine was created for a world without Caribbean sovereignty, a world of great powers and their possessions. Its return is not simply American assertiveness, it is a claim that our nationhood was provisional, our independence a gift that can be revoked.
Every strategic option must be weighed against this reality. Compliance is not merely accommodation it is acquiescence to our own diminishment. The question before us is whether the Caribbean remains a region of sovereign nations or reverts to what it was before our ancestors won our freedom, a sphere of influence, managed by others, for purposes not our own.
Caribbean nations and Caricom faces an existential choice. No option is costless. The choice cannot be avoided by pretending the threat will pass. It will not. The forces reshaping American politics are structural, not transient. We must decide who we are and what we are willing to do about it. The Caribbean has faced worse odds and prevailed. We built nations from slavery’s ruins. We won independence from empires expecting perpetual dominion. We can face this too but only if we see clearly, choose deliberately, and act together. The time for comfortable illusions has passed. The time for strategic choice has arrived.
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