Global vision for Trinidad and Tobago
By Kirk Meighoo Trinidad Express | July 10th 2005 http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_opinion?id=88327712 Despite the pronouncements at the close of the Heads of Government meeting last week, there is still much that needs to be sorted out with regard to Caricom, Venezuela, the United States, and Trinidad and Tobago's place among them. Though the PetroCaribe proposal highlighted these problems, we must understand this is merely symptomatic.The real challenge is properly situating our place in the region, hemisphere, and the world, economically, culturally, and politically. The international arena-and its attendant organisations and negotiations -is extremely complex. Politically, there are organs such as the OAS, Caricom (with the OECS, Bahamas, and the LDC-MDC split as importantchallenges), ACS, EU-LAC, and UN. Economically, there are the WTO, FTAA, EU-CariforumEPA, and the hemispheric trading arrangements such as CAFTA, Mercosur, SAFTA, and Venezuela's proposed ALBA. There are the changing geo-politics: the rise of anti-Americanism in Latin America (most importantly for us in Venezuela), the United States' "war on terror", the rise of China and Brazil, the changing nature of the global energy industry, among other issues. It can be quite confusing.However, the complexity could be significantly reduced if we had a proper vision of our place in the world:yesterday, today,and in a future of our own imagining. International complexities would become superficial, merely several paths leading to a common end. Trinidad and Tobago needs to make its economic, political, and cultural presence felt in the world to a much greater degree than at present. Our country is economically the most important member of Caricom, the most important Caribbean state in the Eastern Caribbean, the most important centre of Indian culture in the Western Hemisphere, and one of the most important countries that can culturally bridge the Eastern and Western hemispheres. We must see ourselves at the centre of a globally-important emerging civilisation, having a distinctive role and responsibility. The Caribbean is truly a global-historical crossroads of Europe, Africa, and Asia in the Americas, which provides tremendous diplomatic and economic opportunities, which should be developed over this century. We have the potential to provide a distinctive model of human civilisation to the world, and our foreign policy should be focused on helping us make a positive contribution to global society. We must reject characterising ourselves as the United States' "Third Border"and see that the US is in our backyard. That is the only way an autonomous people can view the world. >From this angle, we must consider the future of our energy industry. While we have made great strides, both the local and global industries have reached critical points. Let us take stock. Trinidad and Tobago has less than 0.1 per cent of the world's proven oil reserves and accounts for 0.2 per cent of global oil production. Even in the natural gas market, where we are much more significant, we account for only 0.4 per cent of global gas reserves, although we possess 4.9 per cent of gas reserves in the Americas. Venezuela, however, has about 6 times the amount of proven gas reserves that we have. Globally, we account for 0.9 per cent of the world's marketed production of natural gas, and 2.8 per cent of that production in the Americas. All this is to say is that a global vision for our energy industry must be based on our organisational smarts, our innovation, and our strategising, not on volumes and production levels. Thus, our interest in PetroCaribe, for instance, must include opportunities for global expansion of Petrotrin and NGC / NEC, so that they become Forbes Global 2000 companies. This angle, too, causes us to shift emphasis from the global initiatives for free trade, toward Caribbean production. What sense does free trade makeif we do not produce goods and services that are tradable? Indeed, we must develop our own "colonial" policy, that is, an explicitly defined and organised relationship with our permanent settlements overseas in London, Toronto, New York, and Miami, in particular. Theunderutilised overseas network of roti shops, nightclubs, Carnival organisations, West Indian groceries, small businesses, and High Commissions can promote economic expansion and intelligence gathering for social, cultural, economic, political developments. Further, this vision demands a full and open debate on Caribbean integration, taking into account the concerns of Indians in particular, who perhaps provide one of the greatest sources of legitimate resistance to the idea. What then becomes important is determining the means by which such integration is to occur, and what does "integration" mean precisely: economically, politically, and culturally? This will help us with a a clear, relevant policy on the "war on terror", which takes into accountboth Trinidad and Tobago's Muslim heritage and our close alliance with the United States. It would seem logical for us to support the development of a multi-polar global order, in which the Caribbean will play a distinctive part.This would suggest that if we support the UN,then we should provide military troops for UN missions, as does Fiji, for example. We need to be serious in such matters. With such a clearly enunciated vision, we would have a basis to position ourselves between Venezuela, the Caribbean, and the US, without getting into diplomatic embarrassments of the kind in which we found ourselves last week. But it will take a different kind of political leadership, and indeed a different kind of politics, to move up to that level from our present overwhelming focus on politics as local power struggle. -- This is ZESTGlobal. Post articles on international affairs to [email protected] If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTGlobal by sending a blank mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTGlobal/join/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTGlobal/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
