Trump-Pompeo split shots hurt the Caribbean
By Sir Ronald Sanders
Kaieteur News – As they prepare to leave the White House and State Department on Jan. 20, the outgoing Donald Trump administration has planted some explosives for Joseph Biden Jr.’s government foreign policy.
A grenade has already been thrown into policies that Antony Blinken, Biden’s nominated Secretary of State, could follow in relation to Cuba and, consequently, the Caribbean region.
In the dying days of his stint as Secretary of State and just nine days before Blinken took over US foreign policy, Mike Pompeo placed Cuba on a unilaterally-created List of State Terrorist Sponsors.
As the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM) noted on January 13, listing Cuba as the state’s sponsor of terrorism is “baseless”. Caribbean Community Heads of Government (CARIOM) on the same day were unequivocal in their view that “Cuba’s international conduct does not in any way guarantee that designation”.
In pursuing this insightful policy against Cuba, including resolving the previous Obama administration’s carefully woven policy to try to normalize relations between Cuba and the United States, the Trump government seeks to maintain Cuban Americans in Florida’s fundraising support for its political activity in the coming years and to be able to present the state to a presidential candidate it favors – perhaps even for itself in 2024. As Juan Gonzalez, the new Senior Director for Western Hemisphere at Biden National Security Council. , securing Florida for the 2020 Presidential election was Trump’s primary policy driver in Cuba throughout his term of office.
The context of Trump-Pompeo Cuba policy for CARICOM countries is little publicized. Less than a month ago, the US government sent a questionnaire to Caribbean countries. The answers will be used to compile its annual Human Trafficking Report (TIP) which will be presented to the US Congress. The December questionnaire included a new and sinister section dealing specifically with workers from China and Cuba.
In relation to Cuba – from which all Caribbean countries have sought and received – essential assistance through the provision of medical personnel, the US asks questions, which are entirely a sovereign State business, or a sovereign committed States business to contracts. The questions clearly intrude on the rights of the State. If the same questions were asked of the US Government, it would be entirely right to deny the exact credibility of asking them.
Human trafficking is a very troublesome activity. It is one that every country should fight valiantly. In this respect, it is true to say that Caribbean countries have worked diligently with the US to try to eradicate the activity, linked to what constitutes modern slavery in its worse form, and its best to criminally exploit vulnerable people. , especially women and girls.
However, this outgoing attempt by the Trump administration to include Cuban medical and professionals, serving the Caribbean governments, is an attempt to politicize an otherwise noble cause. The objective seems to be to classify Cuban medical personnel as ‘trafficked persons’, thereby implicating the Cuban and Caribbean governments in criminal activity. The latter would be to arm policy against countries that throw co-operation against crime and replace it with coercion.
The implications of this are quite serious and will be a priority in the work of the Caribbean countries with the Biden administration and the US Congress because of the dangers to them.
Under the US TIP Act, non-trade, non-humanitarian aid may be withdrawn from any country deemed to be non-compliant with “the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking” and “not it is making significant efforts to bring itself in. comply with such standards ”. Of course, it is the US government officials who decide what constitutes “minimum standards” and “substantial efforts” altogether.
Each year, the TIP report classifies countries from Tier 1 (most acceptable) to Tier 3 (least acceptable). Of the 14 independent CARICOM countries, two were listed – the Bahamas and Guyana – in 2020 in Tier 1. There were seven countries in Tier 2. These were: Antigua and Barbuda, Haiti, Jamaica, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. On the Tier 2 Watchlist were Barbados and Belize. For unclear reasons, Dominica, Grenada, and St Kitts-Nevis do not appear in any of the Tiers. In any event, no Caribbean country is at its worst level – Tier 3.
However, if the presence of Cuban personnel in CARICOM countries becomes a criterion for the United States to unilaterally declare a human trafficking offense, this will injure US relations with CARICOM countries for no good reason, because U.S. security United States and US values are in no way threatened. .
Adding to the US TIP questionnaire from a section on Cuban and Chinese workers fit well with the Trump administration’s anti-China, anti-Cuba stance to serve its domestic political agenda.
It’s unclear how much of this booby trap left for the Biden administration is known for its new State Department and National Security teams, but the Caribbean must consider advising them as a priority. The next US TIP report will be published and sent to the US Congress in June.
A US publication, Foreign Policy, quoted a US official recently saying that the Pompeo team was engaged in “separating shots aimed at deliberately obstructing the incoming administration’s foreign policy”. When those “separatist shocks” affect Caribbean interests, the region must act in unity to protect them.
(The author is Antigua and Barbuda Ambassador to the United States and the American Provincial Institute. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London and Massey College at the University of Toronto. The views expressed are entirely his own .)
Previous responses and commentaries: www.sirronaldsanders.com