A ‘President Trump’ and the Caribbean
In the last few years the world has seen the emergence of what has become known as post-factual politics. This is the practice whereby some running for high office speak untruths, draw factually incorrect conclusions and provide no policy detail. Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s Presidential candidate, has skilfully used such an approach to translate voter anger against economic globalisation, elites and migration, to facilitate his hoped for rise to power. It is a tactic not dissimilar to that taken by those who, without any clear alternative or plan, encouraged the UK electorate to vote to leave the European Union. It is also reflected, for example, in the remarks of President Putin, President Erdogan in Turkey, or President Assad in Syria who reject fact as simply the mistaken perception of others.
The inference is that rationality is dying, that democracies and voter anger are there to be rendered not into practical alternatives, but used to drive a belief that an individual somehow has the ability to transform the life of voters because they say they know best.
This has implications for the Caribbean. The region has become used to the global status quo that emerged from the Second World War, independence, the Cold War, the rules driven trade system at the WTO, multilateral treaties, and organisations such as the UN that have given even the smallest countries a global voice, based on a recognised need for consensus.
Now, in a cry of rage, huge numbers in the Republican Party in the US have chosen as their candidate a man whose approach is so low on detail and high on ego that it requires voters to trust him alone to make them feel
Iintends eventually to become a significant manufacturer and trans-shipper in the region. How a Trump presidency may seek to address what this may mean in future in the Caribbean in geostrategic or transactional terms is far from clear.
And fourthly, the impact of a Trump presidency’s seemingly jaundiced view on European integration, defence and trade could be the final straw that breaks an already divided EU, raising questions about its viability as a single market and development partner for the region.
In short Mr Trump’s approach may have significant strategic implications for the Caribbean, not least because his views do not accord with the way that the region has previously tried to manage its relations with the US.
A world in which ignoring fact, strategic ambiguity, traded-off spheres of influence, deniable actions in the military or cyber world by third parties acting as proxies for governments, is not the one in which the region operates. It is an approach that does not relate well to the perhaps quaint mix of intellectuality, formality, populism and the fierce, if sometimes meaningless, defence of sovereignty, that defines Caribbean leadership.
The Trump doctrine would set aside the emollient approach that the region has become accustomed to since the end of the Cold War. For the countries of Caricom, the implication is that what little influence they may still have in Washington could disappear entirely unless they ally themselves with much stronger regional, hemispheric or international partners. It suggests that only Cuba and perhaps the Dominican Republic will be able to find ways to exert leverage in a Trump Washington. n the US and Europe, visceral voter anger is resulting in the rise of new types of politicians and political parties, notionally anti-elite, desiring to be seen as authentic and somehow able to restore the past. Should Mr Trump win, the Caribbean is ill prepared to address his brand of twentyfirst century politics.
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