DIPLOMACY AND SMALL STATES IN TODAY'S WORLD

Alan K. Henrikson

I am deeply honored to be asked to deliver the 12th Dr. Eric Williams Memorial Lecture,

and I thank the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, and its Governor, Winston

Dookeran, for the invitation to do so.  Prime Minister Williams, scholar and statesman,

was a bold thinker.  One of the arresting statements he made which caught my attention,

in his magisterial work From Columbus to Castro:  The History of the Caribbean, 1492-

1969, is the observation that "in intellectual, as in political matters, the Caribbean is a

geographical expression.  There is no history of the Caribbean area as a whole." [1]   

With that book, published in 1970, there now exists such a history.  With his example of

broad perspective and clear perception in mind, I am emboldened to say:  "There is no

diplomacy of the Caribbean as a whole."  However, there can be.  One is developing.  It

can develop faster.  It must do so, because it is needed.  That is my subject and my theme.

GREAT POWERS AND SMALL COUNTRIES - POWER AND LAW

For the big states of the world, the surest, if not perhaps the ideal, means of self-

preservation is the use of power.  The term "great power" - the name associated with the

largest countries in the international system at least since the Congress of Vienna -

reveals the centrality of power in the very identity of the big states.  It is not always an

attractive image.  Henry Kissinger has written of Russia at that time:  "Russia's raw

physical power was made all the more ominous by the merciless autocracy of its

domestic institutions."[2]  What the term, "great power," essentially means is that the

country thus classified is capable, if necessary, of protecting itself and of defending its

interests - by acting alone.

"Small countries" is a correlative, or counterpart, term.  By definition, as well as usually

in reality, a "small country" is one that cannot protect itself by it own efforts.   Small

countries require allies - or to be allies.  By adding themselves to coalitions they can hope

either to contribute to the counterbalancing of a threatening great power or to secure their

safety by jumping on the bandwagon of the threatening power.  "Balancing" and

"bandwagoning" - these two basic alternative strategies are called in contemporary

political science.

For small states, I believe that neither strategy is appropriate.  The very smallest states in

the international system - those 1.5 million or less in population [3] - can hardly rely on

power at all, their own or that of others, because they do not have enough of it to

contribute to the game.  They are, as Dr. Williams historically described the West Indian

countries, Europe's and America's "pawns."[4]  They are not the knights, the bishops, or

the rooks of international chess - but merely the pawns, counting for only "1" each in

points.  Although they have little inherent strength of their own, they can, sometimes,

hold positional advantages. But they have limited range, and can rarely enter into large,

complicated, and strategic international power plays.

The greatest chance of safety and survival for small states lies, I submit, in law, in

institutions, and, especially, in diplomacy.  International politics is not really like chess. 

It is fundamentally a normative order.  Even chess has its framework and rules.  The new

diplomacy, unlike the old (of the Congress of Vienna period), will increasingly be a rule-

governed discourse.

In order to succeed well in diplomacy, a state must be completely sovereign - not merely

in the sense of having legal independence and international recognition but in the full

sense of national self-possession.  A nation-state in today's world must be confident of its

own identity, know its political and other interests, recognize both its strengths and its

weaknesses, and have the support of an informed and united public.  Sovereignty is not

just a juridical concept.  It encompasses self-determination of every kind - political,

economic, social, cultural, and emotional.  A state must be able to determine itself in

order to make commitments to others.

Diplomacy is by definition a system of sovereign states. A state, of whatever size, must

be sovereign in order to participate.  The key to participation in that system is

government. Without a well-ordered and effective government, there is not likely to be

success or even much involvement in diplomacy. I mention this because nowadays one

hears expressions such as "citizen diplomacy," as if the general citizenry of a country or,

more precisely, nongovernmental organizations, could substitute for the state in

international relations. This is, I believe, a profound mistake. It is short-sighted to

consider the state, as many do now, to be a secondary factor, less important as an

influence than "market forces" or "civil society." It is the state that makes agreements. It

is only the state that has the authority, and sometimes the responsibility, to bind a nation,

to others, joining and even pooling sovereignties.

Critics may say that formal diplomacy is the last refuge of the state.  I would reverse this

and say that such diplomacy is the highest and truest expression of the state, and of a

nation as a community in a world of national communities.  Particularly for small states,

effective engagement in the international diplomatic system is simply crucial.  From the

"summit" level to lower-level technical meetings, the representatives of a country to other

countries, and to international organizations, establish the persona of that country in the

world, not merely its "image."  Active participation in the diplomatic system can also be a

country's best safety net, to be relied upon when and if all else fails.

Today, the Cold War is over.  Now it is economic negotiations, not military talks, that are

most important in international relations.  Consider, for example, the fate of the

government of Indonesia, where the personal regime of President Suharto has just been

overturned in part because of external economic-policy pressure, coupled with growing

internal political unrest.  The small countries of the Caribbean, as it happens, face a

daunting array of diplomatic challenges in the realm of economic negotiations.[5]  These

are such as would test the capacity of even the greatest of the great powers.  The United

States, the sole surviving superpower, is not doing perfectly:  it does not seem able, for

instance, even to gain for itself "fast track" negotiating authority to engage decisively in

international trade talks.

The Caribbean economic-policy negotiating agenda includes, within the region, the

implementation of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States and CARICOM Single

Market and Economy.  In the context of Caribbean relations with North America, it

includes the persistent question of "NAFTA parity." In the context of the region's

relations with Europe, it includes negotiations to find a satisfactory successor

arrangement, in concert with the larger African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) group, for

the European Union's fourth Lomé Convention, due to expire on the not-too-far-distant

date of February 29, 2000.  The trade-diplomacy agenda further includes the vast and

unprecedented task of completing hemispheric negotiations, started in Miami in 1994,

looking toward a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by the year 2005.[6]  I would

add to the list as well, though it is of course not on any official international program, the

negotiations that must inevitably occur to end the United States trade and investment

embargo of Cuba, and to bring Cuba into a Caribbean-wide trading area and back into the

fold of the Inter-American System.  The recent request of Cuba to join the Lomé

Convention, followed by the participation of Cuban Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina as

an observer at the ACP/EU Council of Ministers Meeting in Barbados earlier this month,

is forcing this issue.  The sheer variety and complexity of this list of tasks of economic

diplomacy must seem almost overwhelming.

Fortunately, one important instrument for the management of this complicated process

has been set up with the newly established Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM). 

Created at the CARIFORUM level (with Suriname and also Haiti and the Dominican

Republic included), the RNM is being led by Sir Shridath Ramphal as Chief Negotiator. 

It hopes to supervise and perhaps also to conduct many of the negotiations in which

Caribbean countries are now and will be involved.[7]  The investment of resources,

human as well as financial and by public authorities as well as private contributors, in this

grand and ambitious regional undertaking should pay dividends for years to come.  It

will, incidentally, be a wonderful training experience for young Caribbean diplomats and

officials who will be involved in it - equivalent perhaps to a couple of years at The

Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy!

I am here reminded of something a student at the Fletcher School once told me about her

father, Arthur Hartman, a senior American diplomat who served as U.S. Ambassador to

France and to the Soviet Union.  Very early in his career, in the late 1940s, he had

worked to help establish the Marshall Plan - the European Recovery Program and, in

Europe, the entity that later became the Organization for Economic Cooperation and

Development.  She said to me that one of "Arthur Hartman's greatest regrets" was that he

had not been able in his own subsequent career to offer to the young diplomats and

officials under his supervision the kind of challenge that he had been given at a

comparable stage when helping to build the framework for U.S. economic relations in the

period after World War II.  What I am suggesting is that the countries of the Caribbean

now face a "Marshall Plan"-type challenge in figuring out how to structure their - your -

economic relationships with not only the larger Caribbean region itself but also the new

Europe and the rest of the world.  It is a historic moment for you, and it can be a defining

one.

The kind of diplomatic skill required for this task should be not only in economics but

also in politics and, of course, law.  What is needed, in terms of training, is what Dr. Paul

Leifer, the Director of the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna, calls "pluri-disciplinary"

instruction (precisely neither "generalist" nor "specialist" - a conventional distinction

which he faults).[8] A negotiator today often must really know what he or she is talking

about in several areas, not just one.  Other languages, too, are needed, especially as in the

dominantly Anglophone area of the United States and English-speaking Caribbean we are

deficient in the ability to talk with, particularly, our increasingly numerous Spanish- and

French-speaking neighbors and conationals.

SIX TYPES OF DIPLOMACY FOR SMALL STATES

I should like now to proceed to talk more explicitly about the problem of "Diplomacy and

Small States."  In so doing, I shall offer at least part of a new analytical framework for

the study of diplomacy, with particular reference to the situation of small states.  My

hope is that this structured analysis will prove useful to practitioners of small-state

diplomacy as well as to theoreticians.  With negotiations now going on all around them,

diplomats need a pattern, or template, to help them in designing strategies, and

combinations thereof, that have the greatest chances of producing results, even with

limited numbers of personnel and other means to employ.

What I shall do is to identify, and briefly to describe and illustrate, six different types of

diplomacy that, I believe, are especially pertinent to small states, including those of the

Caribbean, as they seek to define and secure their places in today's world.  The

diplomatist can select among these in accordance with his or her country's particular

circumstances, traditions, and priorities, as well as specific strengths and skills.  The six

types of diplomacy I shall discuss are ones that I think of as coming in three "pairs."  In

each pair, the individual items are "matched" by an opposing, or counterpart, diplomatic

type.

First, there is "quiet diplomacy."  This is traditionally practiced by professional

diplomats, normally those regularly accredited to governments in foreign capitals.  Quiet

diplomacy thus usually takes place elsewhere.  Its practitioners are a country's

representatives stationed abroad - and sometimes, therefore, out of touch.  This is the

kind of diplomacy long practiced by, for example, the High Commissioners of the

Commonwealth Caribbean states in London.  Inherently bilateral, such diplomacy,

particularly between mother and daughter countries, often involves "special

relationships," such as the ones that notably obtain between former British colonies, in

the Caribbean and elsewhere around the globe, and Her Majesty's Government in the

United Kingdom.  The presence of the West India Committee in London, though it is

more commercially oriented, somewhat generalizes these bilateral Commonwealth

relationships a bit, creating a "special" mini-community.

The manner of quiet diplomacy is usually respectful, even deferential perhaps.  The voice

of a Caribbean or other small Commonwealth state in dialogue with Great Britain is not

that of power but rather that of reason, perhaps mixed with sentimental tones.  In part

because of a shared history, there is mutual understanding and regard, and a capacity for

close, even intimate partnership.  This diplomacy can be "quiet" because its small-state

practitioners already "have the ear" of the larger country.  Although it is probably true

that the post-colonial era of "special relationships" is coming to an end, it is also the case

that the Caribbean "still has friends" in Europe.[9]

To some degree Caribbean-U.S. diplomatic relations have developed similarly. 

Nowadays, Washington probably is an even more important diplomatic center for the

Caribbean states than is London, the old metropole.  Formally, the contact in Washington

is with the State Department, although other agencies of the administration are dealt with

too, including the White House.  Increasingly, Congress is approached, for many of the

most important decisions affecting Caribbean interests - "NAFTA parity," for example -

are made there.  Pertinent committees and also certain special groups within Congress,

one being the Black Caucus, can be very important sources of practical support as well as

sympathetic understanding.  Ambassadors from Caribbean countries in Washington

sometimes meet together to coordinate their efforts, informally assigning tasks of

representation to the White House, to congressional committees, to key officials, and so

on to those diplomats who are believed to have the most influence in those various

places.

Increasingly, the Inter-American System, institutionally centered in Washington, is also

becoming important for Caribbean countries.  The "Western Hemisphere" is the rubric for

some of the most important trade and economic discussions, notably the Miami process

leading toward a possible FTAA.  This means that the Organization of American States

as well as the Inter-American Development Bank are important institutions to know and

deal with.  The same is true of the World Bank, a delegation from which is currently

visiting Trinidad and Tobago.

A newer diplomatic focus for Caribbean states that I would mention, a somewhat

problematical one, is Brussels.  As in London (from which some Caribbean diplomats

come in order to treat with the European Union), the emphasis has been on seeking

economic development assistance and maintaining non-reciprocal trade preferences.  In

dealing with the EU, therefore, the context for contact has been mainly limited to the

ACP framework.  It has been well pointed out that Caribbean countries ought, in

addition, to cultivate the central executive body of the European Union, the European

Commission, with regard to other matters.  So, too, should they develop ties with more of

the influential EU member states on the Continent, in part so as to be able to use these

relationships in Brussels.[10] This is good advice, as the days of generous ACP benefits

may be numbered, and fully reciprocal economic relations with the EU and its members

may soon become de rigueur, for everyone.[11]

The main subject matter of Caribbean quiet diplomacy, as mentioned, has been to seek

better terms within preferential trade systems, a kind of special pleading.  Originally, in

the early days of independence, this was most often done on a one-to-one basis.  That is

much less possible now in the era of broad international trade negotiations dominated by

the World Trade Organization (WTO).  Now individual countries are dealt with similarly,

and therefore have to respond similarly - in "class action" suits, so to speak.  This brings

me to the next, and logically contrasting, diplomatic type.

The second type is "protest diplomacy."  This is a still-current style of diplomacy that is

somewhat reminiscent, historically, of the pre-independence period, when "sovereignty"

was the main objective of most Caribbean states.  Its basic stance is confrontational.  It is

also, to a greater or lesser degree, "open," so that others, on the outside, may be given to

know that grievances have been felt and that demands are being made.  The actual

objectives of protest diplomacy may be, of course, quite limited - to secure redress of

some particular offense, to remedy an injury, or simply to try to get a marginally better

deal, or win a "break" of some kind.  Its operating assumption, when the goals thus are

limited, is that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease."

Because protest diplomacy is open and public, it happens, occasionally with unfortunate

consequences, that statements are made that go beyond or are at variance with what has

been said in official and confidential exchanges.  Such public expression can cause

confusion and increase contention.  Public newspaper and other media may even be relied

upon by protest diplomats as the principal channels of communication, in order to try to

pressure a government, by mobilizing opinion, into making the decision that is desired. 

The language of protesting diplomacy in such cases tends to be rhetorical, rather than

reasonable.  It makes a moralistic appeal.  It expresses indignation, against "unfair"

treatment, on the basis of damaged interests or a sense of violated principles.

Though protest diplomacy can be bilateral, it typically implicates others, if only as

hearers, or a sounding board.  Sympathizers provide a kind of emotional confirmation

and sometimes even provide parallel support with action.  Diplomatic protests, private or

public, attract attention.  They can win a following, but they also can lead to a falling

out.  Generally, protest diplomacy is associated with polarization - although, historically,

it probably more often has been the effect of international polarization than a cause of it. 

During the long Cold War period, when the basic pattern of international relations was

polarized ideologically, and exaggerated distinctions between "West" and "East" and also

between "North" and "South" were drawn,[12] protest diplomacy was in its heyday.  In

the Caribbean context, as throughout the "Third World" during that time, the

organizational carrier of this style of diplomacy was the Non-Aligned Movement.  Today,

in the post-Cold War world, protest diplomacy can just seem noisy.  Yet it must be kept

in reserve, as an instrument in the small-state diplomat's kit bag.

A recent use of protest diplomacy was the strong denunciation made by Jamaica's Prime

Minister P. J. Patterson, as chairman of CARICOM's committee on international

negotiations, of the European Commission's proposals for a successor arrangement for

Lomé IV.  He was speaking following a caucus with leaders of CARICOM, the

Dominican Republic, and Haiti after a summit meeting in Grenada in March 1998.  Prime

Minister Patterson was particularly critical of the European Commission's proposed

conditionalities regarding human rights and governance.  The EU position was

"alarming," he said.  It "smacked of an outdated colonial relationship."[13]  He no doubt

made his point.  I doubt that this technique was as effective, however, as it would have

been in an earlier day.  Now, for the next pair of diplomatic kinds.

The third type is "group diplomacy."  The operative principle here is that there is

strength, or at least obscurity and a kind of safety, in numbers.  Group diplomacy is

particularly in evidence within international organizations, such as the United Nations.  In

the UN there is a recognized "group system."  In the General Assembly, there are well-

established regional groups, based mainly on geography.  There is also the so-called

Group of 77, consisting of an even larger number of developing countries from many

regions.  In the General Assembly and most of the other larger UN bodies, such

geographical and political groupings often have controlled the votes.  The small-state

Caribbean, as a vote-rich area, is a desirable ally in this context.

Group diplomacy can be more effective, in practical terms, in specific functional

contexts, such as, to take probably the most famous case, the United Nations Conference

on the Law of the Sea.  In this setting, the Caribbean countries such as Jamaica, for one,

played a major part.  Island states had a natural advantage and interest.  They also had a

great deal at stake, particularly when the new principle of a 200-mile Exclusive

Economic Zone (EEZ) was being defined.  Ambassador Tommy Koh, from small-state

Singapore, served with distinction as the President of the Third UNCLOS.  Koh, with

whom I have collaborated in a study of global diplomacy, has said of the UNCLOS

"group system" that it had both positive and negative effects.  On the positive side, he

explained, "it enabled countries to join forces with other countries with which they shared

a common interest.  In this way, a country could acquire a bargaining leverage that it

would not have had if it had operated alone."  In fact, as he reflected:  "It proved to be

impossible to conduct serious negotiations at UNCLOS III until these special-interest

groups were formed."[14]  However, on the negative side, he acknowledged, "once a

group had adopted a common position, it was often difficult for the group to modify its

position."[15]

From the point of view of participating countries, like those of the Caribbean, it can

prove difficult to gain particular, individual national advantages in such group-dominated

settings.  Overall group consensus is a goal as well as the method.  There is a tendency

toward the lowest common denominator - or, sometimes, the highest, which can mean a

set of unfulfillable aspirations.  The ideological dreams of the "New International

Economic Order," which the G77 advocated in the 1970s, are an illustration of utopian

envisioning.  Such unrealistic goals can only be voted for, in non-binding resolutions. 

They seldom can be legislated, made into workable international law.

The enduring advantage of the group-diplomacy concept, as Ambassador Koh pointed

out, is that it enables countries to join forces with others, even far outside their own

geographical region, and to gain added bargaining leverage thereby, either generally or

with regard to specific issues.  The African, Caribbean, and Pacific grouping of

developing countries interacting with the European Union is a major example of "group-

ness," one that has particular current relevance for Caribbean diplomacy.  Within the

ACP negotiating context, inter-continental "strategic alliances" with other countries and

interests can perhaps still be formed.  Sir Alister McIntyre, experienced in these matters,

recalls with pride "the leadership that CARICOM countries gave in developing a

common ACP position in negotiations on LOMÉ I, and in founding the Group itself, as

well as in negotiating the Georgetown Declaration on intra ACP cooperation."  The "key

factor," as he notes, that gave CARICOM its position of leadership was "the expertise

that the region was able to offer the Group as a whole."  This example "needs to be

repeated in future negotiations," he has advised.[16]

Such a repetition of leadership, however, may prove very difficult.  The European Union,

facing the incalculable costs of its own future enlargement, appears to be determined to

deal with the ACP membership by negotiating separate regional economic partnership

agreements and free trade zones, including a separate scheme for the Caribbean.  In

response to this, with the aim of expressing a "clear and firm message" of Caribbean

resolve to maintain ACP unity, Prime Minister Patterson, following the gathering in

Grenada, planned to make a visit to Great Britain, the current holder of the EU

Presidency - there, perhaps, to exercise some quiet diplomacy on behalf of the cause of

ACP group solidarity.  As part of the same strategy, Trinidad and Tobago's Prime

Minister Basdeo Panday was to visit France.  Dominica's Prime Minister Edison Charles

visited Sweden.  Other missions were planned for some African countries.  The

Caribbean delegation that took part in the EUACP meeting in Brussels in late March no

doubt also firmly upheld the principle that the ACP must negotiated with "as a single

grouping."[17]  It will be impressive - but surprising, I believe, under current

circumstances - if this broad-group strategy succeeds.  Havelock RossBrewster,

Ambassador of Guyana to the European Union, has, for one, suggested that a somewhat

"customised" relationship between the Caribbean and Europe might not be a bad thing.

[18]

Fourth, and somewhat in contradistinction, there is "niche diplomacy."  This novel

concept recently has been developed by a number of scholars, one of them being Andrew

Fenton Cooper at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, with a particular focus on the

diplomacies of the middle powers, old and new.[19]  The traditional middle-level

diplomatic players - the knights, bishops, and rooks, so to speak - include Canada,

Australia, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries.  Today, there are also many

others, including the more recently emerged, middle-powered diplomatic forces of, for

instance, Malaysia, South Africa, and Turkey.

A concept closely akin to marketing, the idea of "niche diplomacy" is that countries'

foreign policies, somewhat like their business products, can occupy secure and influential

places on the international scene in accordance with a highly differentiated kind of

division of labor.  The emphasis is entirely on individual distinctiveness, not at all on

group conformity.  (Of course, groups are needed to provide support, in the form of the

political "market" for niche-diplomatic products.)  By concentrating their limited

resources and energies on certain specific objectives, and intrepidly taking the initiative

("rolling the dice," as I recently heard Canada's Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy say),

such diplomatically active countries, even without decisive power, can sometimes make

decisive contributions.  Recent examples are the leadership role that Canada has played in

sponsoring and continuing to promote an International Convention to Ban Landmines and

the more behind-the-scenes role that smaller Norway has been intermittently playing to

foster peace between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.  In the cases of

both the Ottawa process and the Oslo process, so called, significant expense - in terms of

high-level official attention and exertion if not large financial outlay - has been incurred. 

Niche diplomacy, though it may not require super-ordinate power, has its costs. 

Resources should be invested wisely in it.

It is not inconceivable that some of the world's smallest countries too, including small

states of the Caribbean area, can find ways to project themselves onto the international

stage in this fashion, claiming some of the limelight for themselves.  Such efforts might

make sense for them, I would suggest, if and only if diplomatic initiatives are devised,

very precisely, that correlate closely with basic national and probably also regional

interests, and not just broader affinities or moralities.  Altruism does not always make

sense.  There should also be a close connection between the external posture of a country

and its internal position when engaging in niche diplomacy.  Here is a case where civil

society and public opinion are vitally important.  The support of the public, and the active

involvement of nongovernmental organizations, make it more likely that a national

"brand-name" initiative in diplomacy will have intellectual substance to it, popular

backing, and political continuity, from one governmental administration to another.

One can think of various international initiatives that Caribbean countries have taken and

might currently or in the future take that would qualify as niche diplomacy.  Some of

these might be of a very hard-headed kind.  One instance might be international policy

leadership in the tourism field - a traditional but also a very modern service sector, in

which Caribbean countries have a direct stake as well as strong interest.  With the

International Seabed Authority, authorized under UNCLOS, to be located in Kingston,

one can imagine that the Jamaican government will be interested in advancing initiatives

in the oceans-policy field.  In the environmental area too, with the Caribbean's sandy

beaches and clear waters being jeopardized by global warming and ship-borne and other

pollution, one can conceive of highly visible initiatives that might be taken.  One such

might be, for instance, an effort to universalize the idea of a modest environmental levy

on cruise ships, such as the US$1.50 per passenger charge that Grenada, with difficulty,

has recently succeeded in negotiating with Carnival Cruise Lines, as part of a larger

OECS solid waste management project conditionally assisted by international funding. 

An example of an earlier Caribbean diplomatic achievement in the environmental field is

the 1994 Barbados Declaration and Plan of Action on the Sustainable Development of

Small Island Developing States.  For Trinidad and Tobago, with its well-established

petroleum refining industry and exciting new oil and gas discoveries, there may be policy

"niches" in the sphere of energy diplomacy that will need to be filled.  I do not myself

know enough about that industry to suggest exactly what these might be.[20]  And then,

of course, there is the as-yet-unmentioned topic of bananas, with which the Caribbean is

well identified.  Its effort to "sell" its policy position in that diplomatic market is highly

public and well-known.  But will it be successful?  It might not be unless, as Professor

Norman Girvan of the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, has suggested, the

Caribbean banana-producing countries form an alliance by engaging in "direct

negotiations with the countries of the Central American Common Market on the banana

question and on the proposed Caricom-CACM free trade agreement."[21]  But that wider

strategy might reduce the "niche-ness" of its agricultural and diplomatic product.  Niche

diplomacy poses dilemmas like this, and may require tradeoffs.  Now, for my final pair of

contrasting diplomatic types.

Fifth, there is "enterprise diplomacy."  This term implies greater daring and risk-taking

and perhaps also imagination and innovation than does "niche diplomacy."  It occurred to

me when I recently read a reference, in an essay on Caribbean affairs by Professor

Anthony Bryan, to "enterprise theory" where, as he briefly explains it, "economic activity

takes place across a spectrum of business that is both legitimate and illegitimate."   By the

light of this theory, decisions to open up offshore financial havens that ensure secrecy, for

instance, might be viewed as "rational business decisions."[22]

By "enterprise diplomacy," I do not mean illegal international activity as such (though

there might be some dangerous tendency toward that).  Rather, I intend by it the highly

aggressive, competitive, and entrepreneurial activity that "steals" international advantages

- the diplomatic march, as it were.  Such diplomacy, like the business-organizational

activity that it resembles, has a transgressive quality.  It often involves some disregard or

even outright defiance of prevailing norms if not actual infringement of majority-

enforced rules.  From the perspective of the U.S. government, particularly Senate Foreign

Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, the contacts that Caribbean states such as

Jamaica have developed with Castro's Cuba would so qualify.  The inclusion of Cuba in

the new Association of Caribbean States (ACS) is a kind of regionalized version of such

assertive diplomacy -- an amalgam of "enterprise diplomacy" and "group diplomacy." 

Cuba's being allowed to join the ACP grouping and also being accepted as a new member

of CARICOM would further assert the reality of Cuba's international presence.  In

welcoming Cuban Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina and his observer delegation to the

ACP/EU Council Meeting in Barbados in early May, Prime Minister Owen Arthur

stated:  "My expectation is that Cuba will soon take its place in the ACP as a member of

the Caribbean group; giving a new sense of completeness to the Caribbean and a new

coherence to our international relations."[23]  As for Cuba's membership in CARICOM,

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, when she was in Trinidad and Tobago the

month before to meet with Caribbean Foreign Ministers, said, in talking with reporters,

that Cuba's admission to CARICOM was something that would have to be decided upon

by CARICOM itself, though it was very important to continue efforts to make that

country a democracy.[24]  Should the Caribbean effort to open wider relations with

Castro's Cuba succeed, and help clear a path for the United States to alter its Cuban

policy, the result would be nothing less than a diplomatic revolution in our common

region.[25]

In the international economic-policy field, an older example which might be

retrospectively characterized as "enterprise diplomacy" is the liberalized system that

Panama long has maintained for registering ships - a system that has attracted ship

owners from all over the world, including a substantial part of the U.S. merchant fleet.  

Such a flexible (some would say even lax) system draws attention.  It also brings

revenues.  But it does not necessarily enhance a country's reputation.  Enterprise

diplomacy can be dubious.  The undoubted financial success of the Panamanian ship-

registry regime does put competitive pressure on others, including the United States,

whose change of a comparatively rigid policy might produce a beneficial liberalization

(or "Liberian-ization," one is tempted to say) of the entire industry.  In the realm of

financial services, much the same could be said about, say, the Cayman Islands and some

other Caribbean polities that have set up offshore tax havens, and have reaped significant

rewards therefrom.  These enterprising governments do provide what companies and

wealthy individuals are asking for, and they may in fact force these companies' and

individuals' home countries to offer much the same in terms of services.  Thus

international financial norms may be changed -- in which case the enterprising state's

advantage could be partially or wholly lost in time.  The benefits may last, however.

"Enterprise diplomacy," as I have called it, proceeds not through negotiation but through

demonstration effects, the force of example.  A certain notoriety often is entailed by

entrepreneurial demonstration.  This may be welcome or unwelcome.  To cite a

completely negative case - that of the international drug cartels operating in the greater

Caribbean region, most notoriously in Colombia - the exemplary effect is almost violent. 

This emanation of a criminal menace from Colombia and elsewhere can cause

intimidation and, to that extent, it is effective.  It is something to be reckoned with,

especially by the governments of the countries where the drug traffic originates. 

Paradoxically, those governments' very weakness in the face of drug entrepreneurship

heightens their own influence, as a source of international (including U.S. governmental)

concern.  Now, for the opposite of entrepreneurship, and, to some degree, a corrective to

it.

Sixth, there is "regulatory diplomacy."  In response to the increasingly serious drug-

trafficking challenge, and problems like money-laundering that may be related to it, a

high order of technical international cooperation is necessary so as to uphold the rule of

law, and sometimes even the capacity of small states to govern.  As I am myself an

American diplomatic historian, I perhaps inescapably think of President Theodore

Roosevelt's 1904 phrase, "flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or importance," and his

suggestion, in response, of "the exercise of an international police power."[26]  But I am

not going to invoke the Roosevelt Corollary!  However, what I would do, as I believe has

not been done before, is to note the historical originality of Roosevelt's concept of an

"international police power."  Such an international authority need not be one, and today

should not be one, that is unilaterally exercised.  The basic notion does have potential -

as we see, for example, in the international efforts to build up a non-military policing

capacity in Bosnia-Herzegovina or, closer to home, in Haiti.  One must in fairness

remember of Roosevelt's international constabulary idea that it came nearly a generation

before the Wilsonian idea of collective security and the League of Nations was

established.

It is not wholly far-fetched, I believe, to see in this early twentieth-century American

doctrine interventionism - in dealing with what Teddy Roosevelt called "flagrant cases" -

precursors of present-day collective interventionist policies, not to collect debts or "keep

out" the Europeans but rather to defend human rights and to safeguard democratic

institutions in the Hemisphere.  The military action of the United States, followed by help

from CARICOM peacekeepers and others, to restore the duly elected government of

Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti in 1994 is the leading contemporary case of intervention

under both global-organizational and regional-organizational auspices.[27]  To be sure,

some consider the multilateral action in Haiti to have been unwarranted (even if needed)

interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign, if small, country.  Haiti was not an easy

case.

The Haitian experience was a serious test for what Richard J. Bloomfield, a retired

American diplomat of long experience in hemispheric affairs, characterizes as an

emerging "inter-American regime to defend democracy."  The cornerstone of this

incipient regime, or regulatory system, was laid with Resolution 1080, approved by the

Organization of American States General Assembly in Santiago, Chile, in 1991.  The

Santiago Commitment, as it is known, provides that, in case of "any sudden or irregular

interruption of the democratic institutional process or of the legitimate exercise of power

by the democratically elected government in any of the Organization's member states," an

emergency meeting of OAS foreign ministers will be convoked within ten days to decide

upon a collective response.  Ambassador Bloomfield comments, almost with a sense of

awe (as he knows Latin American and Caribbean anti-interventionist sensibilities well),

that the OAS foreign ministers have in the Haitian and also several other cases "not only

condemned the overthrow as illegal and called for a prompt return to democratic rule, but

have resorted to economic and political sanctions to back up their demands."[28]

What I have here broadly termed regulatory diplomacy, I would argue, can work to

prevent the deterioration of law and order in situations that might otherwise invite the

application of sanctions and even military intervention.  In short, regulatory diplomacy,

conducted in a timely and consistent way, can help to make military action unnecessary. 

By carefully setting and strictly monitoring internationally agreed-upon rules, it can serve

to assure adherence to international norms which, if openly ("flagrantly") violated, can

engender internal unrest or even violent disorder.  Small states alone may be especially

hard pressed to deal with such challenges to their public tranquillity, as not only Haiti in

recent times within the larger Caribbean area has borne witness.

Among the most frontal challenges to domestic and even international peace and security

in the Caribbean is that of narco-terrorism.  When President Bill Clinton met with a group

of Caribbean leaders at the Caribbean/U.S. Summit in Barbados in May 1997, he stated: 

"We must band together to defeat the criminal syndicates and drug traffickers that prey

upon open societies and put our children and or very social fabric at risk."  He then said: 

"No nation is so strong that it needs no help from its friends; and none is too small to

make a real difference."[29]

The common Declaration of Principles that resulted from the Barbados Summit - an

unprecedented meeting of a U.S. President with Caribbean leaders taking place in the

region itself - affirmed the signers' conviction that "stable and prosperous economies,

buttressed by the rule of law, are bulwarks against the forces of transnational crime."  Mr.

Clinton and the other leaders resolved to join together against those forces by, inter alia,

searching for "creative and innovative ways to improve our justice systems and the

cooperation between them."  In the Plan of Action also agreed upon in Bridgetown, the

leaders candidly recognized "limitations in the laws and law enforcement agencies of the

Caribbean region."  Accordingly, they pledged to work together in "modernizing crime

control laws" and also "strengthening the institutional capacities of these agencies

through technical assistance, resource strengthening, and multi-agency

collaboration."[30]  There could hardly be a clearer example of what I have called

regulatory diplomacy, or of its ethos, though one would wish that the content of it could

have been different.

A SUMMATIVE EXAMPLE OF SMALL STATE DIPLOMACY:  TRINIDAD

AND TOBAGO, THE CARIBBEAN COMMUNITY, AND AN INTERNATIONAL

CRIMINAL COURT

I should like to conclude the Dr. Eric Williams Memorial Lecture with a broader example

of Caribbean creativity in international diplomacy, one which incorporates elements of

virtually all the six paired types of diplomacy that I have heretofore described.  No single

one of these, I would emphasize, is the "key" to diplomatic success for small states,

including those of the Caribbean area.  All are necessary to know, and to use when and if

circumstances call for them.  Most often, some combination of diplomatic methods and

foreign-policy strategies is in order.  The example I have in mind shows earmarks of

quiet diplomacy, and gives some signs even of protest diplomacy.  It has involved active

participation in international group efforts, but it also reflects an awareness of a country's

distinctive niche, or particular national interest.  It demonstrates as well considerable

enterprise, and, as will be seen, its very nature is regulatory.

The example I here cite is the current diplomatic effort - in which the small states of the

world arguably have a bigger stake than do the great powers - to establish a permanent

International Criminal Court (ICC).  Originally proposed after World War II, following

the mixed experiences of the ad hoc Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, the idea of an ICC

was provisionally given form when in 1948 the UN General Assembly asked the

International Law Commission to examine the possibility of establishing an International

Criminal Court on a permanent basis.  The divisions of the Cold War blocked further

progress toward that goal.

In 1989 the government of Trinidad and Tobago, acting within the context of the United

Nations system, singly refocused the world's attention on this long-suspended endeavor. 

It proposed that efforts be resumed to draft an ICC statute for an international judicial

body that would be capable of dealing with, among other challenges, the increase in

crimes of international drug trafficking.  Such an international judicial body would be

expected to provide a supplement and complement to the Trinidadian judicial system, and

the judicial systems of Caribbean countries generally, to cope with a problem that may be

greater, and certainly is wider, than their capacities or jurisdictions as small states.  This

Trinidadian initiative thus served both a national and an international interest.

While there remain major differences between members of the UN over the proper scope

of a permanent ICC, in particular over whether only the three "core" crimes of genocide,

war crimes, and crimes against humanity should be covered (provisionally, or perhaps for

all time, leaving aside the less-well-defined crimes of aggression, terrorism, and drug

trafficking), there is clear evidence today of a world philosophical movement toward

creating an international judicial mechanism for making individuals, as well as states,

accountable for what they do before the law.

There is a strong regional component, including a noteworthy Caribbean element, in this

deliberative process.  A broad coalition of some sixty-five "like-minded states" working

in the Preparatory Committee to draft an ICC statute has kept up the diplomatic

momentum.  Among the various regional bodies or groupings that have made statements

of support for establishment of a permanent ICC are the Southern African Development

Community, a group of twenty-five African countries meeting in Dakar in February

1998, the European Parliament, the Rio Group of Latin American states, and the

Caribbean Community.

I understand, from a telephone call to the U.S. State Department, that the government of

Trinidad and Tobago has just hosted a meeting of justice ministers from Latin American

and other countries to discuss the project of an International Criminal Court and related

issues involved in assuring respect for the rule of law in this region and around the

world.  Indeed, when I arrived at Piarco Airport, there it was, a sign saying:  "The

Government of The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago welcomes Delegates to the

Workshop on Mechanisms for the Development of International Criminal Justice, May

14-15, 1998 - Parliamentarians for Global Action."

One of the speakers invited to that conference was David J. Scheffer, the U.S.

Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues.  The government of the United States is

clearly committed - though with some reservations regarding respect for the role of the

UN Security Council - to the project of establishing a International Criminal Court on a

permanent basis.  American official support, including funding, for the ad hoc

international tribunals now examining war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda

is testimony to its interest in securing justice, as well as maintaining peace, through law.  

Starting next month, in Rome, there will be a long-awaited Diplomatic Conference to

consider a "consolidated" draft text of an ICC statute.  Although many issues remain, the

diplomatic process will be complex, and a final positive result may in fact never come,

the way forward has been shown - by the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, leading

others.

May small sovereign states like Trinidad and Tobago continue through diplomacy to

emphasize law - a rules-based international order -  rather than an equilibrium based on

power, which they cannot acquire.  There are, of course, situations in which leverage can

be exercised, and such opportunities for skillful bargaining probably should not be

missed.  The contexts in which such opportunities will arise in today's world are more

and more likely to be diplomatic ones - summit meetings, sessions of international

organizations, ad hoc diplomatic conferences, and many other international gatherings,

including some perhaps of entirely new kinds (e.g., negotiations via the Internet)[31]

regarding completely new topics (e.g., regulation of Internet gambling).  In these, the

large voices of small-state Caribbean representatives, informed and eloquent (and

increasingly in languages besides English), will surely be heard.

Notes

[1] Eric Williams, From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean, 1492-1969

(New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1970), 11.

[2] Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 75.

[3] This is the new quantitative definition of "small state" used in the 1997

Commonwealth report, A Future for Small States: Overcoming Vulnerability, which

was launched at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Edinburgh in

October 1997. The book was prepared by a nine-member Advisory Group of

eminent persons chaired by Dame Eugenia Charles, former Prime Minister of

Dominica. The cut off figure of one million or less was taken as the criterion for

"small state" in the 1985 Commonwealth report, Vulnerability: Small States in the

Global Society. By the upward-revised 1.5 million test, there are at present forty-

nine independent states; twenty-eight of these are in the Commonwealth and forty-

two are in the developing world. Thirty-two small states are islands. "Smallness and

Vulnerability," an excerpt from the 1997 Commonwealth report, in Commonwealth

Currents, no. 1 (1998), 14-15.

[4] Williams, From Columbus to Castro, 11.

[5] Anthony Peter Gonzales, ed., Small Caribbean States and the Challenge of

International Trade Negotiations (St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago: Institute of

International Relations, The University of the West Indies, 1998).

[6] For an analysis of the continuing Miami Summit process, see From Talk to Action:

How Summits Can Help Forge a Western Hemisphere Community of Prosperous

Democracies, A Policy Report by the Leadership Council for Inter-American

Summitry (Miami: North-South Center, University of Miami, March 1998). A

Supplementary Comment by Dr. Winston Dookeran drew attention, with regard to

the interests of the smaller economies of the Caribbean, to the likelihood that the

FTAA would be "devoid of any special trade and tariff advantages unless we use

the Summit process to bring our unique characteristics to the fore" (p. 20). Dr.

Richard L. Bernal, Jamaica's Ambassador to the United States and Chairman of the

FTAA Working Group on Smaller Economies, similarly reflects that it is "at the

stage of conceptualization" that the Caribbean region "stands the best chance of

effectively impacting on the process." Richard L. Bernal, "CARICOM States and

the FTAA: Adequacy of Preparation, Participation and Negotiating Structure," in

Gonzales, ed., Small Caribbean States, 98.

[7] Sir Shridath Ramphal, "Securing Our Future," Caricom Perspective, no. 67 (June

1997), 5-6.

[8] Quoted in Alan K. Henrikson, Diplomacy for the 21st Century: "Re-Crafting the

Old Guild," 503rd Wilton Park Conference, "Diplomacy: Profession in Peril?"

Wilton Park Occasional Paper 1 (Steyning, West Sussex, U.K.: Wilton Park

Conferences, 1998).

[9] Anthony T. Bryan, Trading Places: The Caribbean Faces Europe and the Americas

in the Twenty first Century, North-South Agenda Papers 27 (Miami: North-South

Center, University of Miami, 1997), 1, 15; also idem., "Towards 2000: The

Caribbean Confronts Changing Trends in International Trade," Caribbean Affairs 8,

no. 1 (First Quarter, 1998), 18, 40.

[10] Paul Sutton and Anthony Payne, "Commonwealth Caribbean Diplomacy: A New

Strategy for the New World Order," Caribbean Affairs 5, no. 2 (April-June 1992),

47-63.

[11] As Dr. Francisco Granell (Director, Directorate-General for Development,

European Commission) notes, "it is important to remember that the Uruguay Round

and WTO rules put differentiated, non-reciprocal schemes like Lomé in doubt."

Presentation to UK/Caribbean Forum, Nassau, Bahamas, February 13, 1998.

[12] Alan K. Henrikson, "East-West Rivalry in Latin America: `Between the Eagle and

the Bear,'" in East-West Rivalry in the Third World: Security Issues and Regional

Perspectives, ed. Robert W. Clawson (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources Inc.,

1986), 261-90.

[13] "Caricom Denounces EU Lomé Proposals," Caribbean Insight (April 1998), 2. Cf.

the statement in the opening-ceremony address by the Rt. Hon. Owen Arthur, Prime

Minister of Barbados, at the 23rd ACP/EU Council of Ministers Meeting,

Sherbourne Conference Centre, St. Michael, Barbados, May 7, 1998: "This structure

of the negotiations is even more unpalatable when what seems to be contemplated

by the overall agreement is a political regime with a high degree of intrusiveness

into ACP policy frameworks in the social and political spheres. Human rights,

democracy, the rule of law and good governance (all values which have been part of

our political ethos even before some EU member states) are apparently to be part of

a system of virtual EU certification of ACP states, not based on dialogue, but

apparently based on dictation."

[14] T. T. B. Koh, "Negotiating a New World Order for the Sea," in Negotiating World

Order: The Artisanship and Architecture of Global Diplomacy, ed. Alan K.

Henrikson (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1986), 42. Cf. the

observation by the Inter-American Dialogue Study Group on Western Hemisphere

Governance that the "variable geography" of the Western Hemisphere, which has

produced a variety of subregional arrangements, "has actually helped in the

negotiations of consensus, in that it has permitted coordination of positions and

views, and - in the case of the very small states - pooling leverage in order to deal

with larger powers." The Inter American Agenda and Multilateral Governance: The

Organization of American States (Washington, D.C.: The Inter American Dialogue,

1997), 5.

[15] Koh, "Negotiating a New World Order for the Sea," 42.

[16] Alister McIntyre, "The Importance of Negotiation Preparedness: Reflections on the

Caribbean Experience," Dialogue: A Policy Bulletin of Caribbean Affairs 1, no. 1

(July/August 1994), 4.

[17] "Caricom Denounces EU Lomé Proposals."

[18] Havelock Ross Brewster, "Time to Take in the Begging Bowl? The Caribbean in

post Lomé Europe," Caricom Perspective, no. 67 (June 1997), 15-17.

[19] Andrew F. Cooper, ed., Niche Diplomacy: Middle Powers After the Cold War

(London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1997); Alan K. Henrikson, "Middle Powers as

Managers: International Mediation Within, Across, and Outside Institutions," ibid.,

46-72.

[20] I note that when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was here in early April, in

order to confer with the Caribbean Foreign Ministers, she signed a bilateral energy

agreement with Trinidad and Tobago, regarding such matters as price forecasting

and oil and gas technologies.

[21] Norman Girvan, Reinterpreting Caribbean Development, The Second Sir Arthur

Lewis Memorial Lecture, St. John's, Antigua, November 12, 1997 (Basseterre, St.

Kitts: Governor's Office, Eastern Caribbean Central Bank), 34.

[22] Anthony T. Bryan, "The State of the Region: Trends Affecting the Future of

Caribbean Security," in From Pirates to Drug Lords: The Post-Cold War

Caribbean Security Environment, ed. Michael D. Desch, Jorge I. Domínguez, and

Andrés Serbin (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 44.

[23] Address to the Opening Ceremony of the 23rd ACP/EU Council of Ministers

Meeting, May 7, 1998.

[24] Kathleen Maharaj, "Albright Gives T&T Top Marks," Express, April 5, 1998.

[25] The obstacle that the Cuban problem poses for wider U.S.-Caribbean cooperative

relations is discussed in Alan K. Henrikson, "The United States, the Caribbean

Basin, and the Post-Cold War International Order," in Choices and Change:

Reflections on the Caribbean, ed. Winston C. Dookeran (Washington, D.C.: Inter-

American Development Bank, 1996), 197-228.

[26] Quoted in Williams, From Columbus to Castro, 422.

[27] Alan K. Henrikson, "The United Nations and Regional Organizations: `King Links'

of a `Global Chain,'" Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law 7, no. 1

(Fall 1996), 54-57.

[28] Richard J. Bloomfield, "Security in the Greater Caribbean: What Role for Collective

Security Mechanisms?" in Desch, Domínguez, and Serbin, eds., From Pirates to

Drug Lords, 126.

[29] "Common Values, Common Dreams," remarks at reception for Caribbean leaders at

the Governor General's residence, May 9, 1997, Partnership for Prosperity and

Security in the Caribbean, Bridgetown, Barbados, May 10, 1997 (Washington,

D.C.: United States Information Agency, 1997), 3.

[30] Ibid., 8, 22.

[31] It is pointed out by Professor Dietrich Kappeler that "Information Technology is

creating an entirely new situation for small States desirous to become or remain

active participants in international negotiations." Kappeler, "The Impact of

Information Technology on Preparation and Support of Small State Participation in

Economic Negotiation," in Gonzalez, ed., Small Caribbean States, 143; see also

idem., "Malta and the European Union: Experience in Maximising Negotiating

Capacity for Possible Entry into the Union," in ibid., 151-54. Kappeler is Director

of the Diplomatic Studies Programme at the Graduate Institute of International

Studies, Geneva, Switzerland, and a former Director (and subsequently Chairman of

the Board) of the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies, University of

Malta, which has a specialized Unit for Information Technology and Diplomacy

(Website: www.diplomacy.edu).