LANCE ROBINSON

Generally, a country's relationship with other countries at the state level is governed by its foreign policy. The larger and more powerful countries very often design their foreign policies around protecting their national interests, their national security, their ideological goals, and their economic prosperity. This can occur as a result of either peaceful or diplomatic cooperation with other nations, or through aggression, war, and exploitation.

In Jamaica, our foreign policy over our recent history has been framed mainly around the adoption of a set of socialist ideals which had its genesis as far back as Norman Washington Manley but really came into its own during the administration of Michael Manley in the 70s. Mr Manley's foray into socialism was in many ways a product of the times, when Socialist International was in its heyday and Third World super heroes like Nehru, Nasser, Andres Perez and Nyerere were waxing hot. And in spite of their adversarial stance with the Western nations, and their accomodation with the Communist East, Mr Manley no doubt saw it fit to join this fraternity of socialists in their elusive fight against poverty and aggression.

In our short history as an independent nation, Jamaica in many ways has had a very difficult time determining where our best economic interests reposed. For instance, during the Cold War of yesteryear, in the international interaction of nations, although it proved rather anaemic to our own best interests, Jamaica quite often found itself on opposing sides with the United States, our largest trading partner and greatest benefactor. Apart from a brief respite in the 80s, the ensuing years have hardly been any different as our stand-off continued in forum after forum.

Now based on empirical evidence, it is not unreasonable to conclude that left-wing governments the world over have traditionally produced very poor economic results for their populations while those that tended to be more pragmatic or free-market oriented did much better. In subsequent years, therefore, in the case of Jamaica, it must have occurred to successive PNP administrations that our ideological choices and Socialist bloc associations in the past must have had a deleterious effect on our economy, thus accounting for our poor economic performance over the years. One would have figured, therefore, that some lessons must have been learnt.
However, what we had instead were leaders who continued to brag about being socialist even among the economic shambles that such policies produced.

There are any number of small nations in this region who do exceedingly well by sticking to their well-crafted economic policies and forgoing any high-profile ideological positions.
There are the Cayman Islands, The Bahamas, Bermuda and Costa Rica, to name a few, along with some others from the Eastern Caribbean. We would do well to take a page from their book. Jamaica can't have it both ways. Free-market capitalism today is what works for most democratic nations and whether we like it or not, if we want to succeed, this will place us squarely in the economic camp and to a lesser extent, the foreign policy camp of the United States. The sooner we realise this and start exploiting it to our best advantage the better off we will be.

Some have argued that Jamaica must be allowed to maintain its own independent policies over and above any undue pressures coming down from the north. This is all well and good, but in the past this has served only to satisfy long-outdated ideological cleavages at the expense of good economic judgement. A case in point was the rejection of the IMF programmes, which was based purely on ideological grounds and which got us absolutely nowhere. The irony is that had we adopted the fiscal discipline of the IMF and accessed their loan funds at three to four per cent, we would not be in the economic mess in which we now find ourselves today.

Again, in the mini-Cold War involving Venezuela, Jamaica along with its Caricom left-wing cohorts seems to have found it necessary to jump into bed with Chavez, portending for us a very uncertain future in the region. Because of our own poverty, unlike some other Caribbean islands, we find it necessary to embrace the distracting allure of Mr Chavez's petrodollars despite the diplomatic and ideological baggage that this brings with it. Mr Chavez continues to do his utmost to mobilise as many nations as possible in a grand coalition to oppose and confront the US. However, his socialist bravado in the region, based on his oil wealth, is nothing new and will eventually succeed in impoverishing his own nation further in the same manner that Nigeria and Iran have impoverished theirs. The big question is, as a nation, do we really want to come full circle and be a part of all this? Haven't we been there before?

At this point, because of our very depressed economic conditions, it would seem that the only foreign policy that Jamaica should be concentrating on or be pursuing is one that will enhance our sustainable economic performance. To indulge in abstract concepts of sovereignty, nationalism or ideology to satisfy long-outdated fraternal relationships when we are unable to maintain even the rudimentary requirements of nation building, like a health, education or national security system, is catering to highly misplaced values. Jamaica's way forward has to be a path of maximum economic opportunism and one that eschews those over-inflated notions of our own self-importance.

As of now it would seem that a healthy accommodation of United States policies in the region is not only desirable but absolutely essential if Jamaica is to maximise its medium- to long-term economic potential.

Lance G Robinson is a freelance journalist.
lance@mail.infochan.com

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