The Caribbean is signalling that, with an eye to multilateral diplomacy and its new reality, United Nations Security Council reform is a top priority.
With this year’s annual September United Nations’ (UN) summit now in the rear-view, even as the international community’s focus shifts to implementation of the Pact for the Future that includes a Global Digital Compact and a Declaration on Future Generations, the world body and its members still look back at this high-level meeting’s many highlights.
In this regard, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders’ contribution to the 2024 General Debate of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) or UNGA 79 comes to mind. It is remembered for many things—perhaps most of all international diplomacy related to a “reset” of the international order and its global governance-related institutions.
These Caribbean small island developing states (SIDS), comprising 14 mostly Anglophone sovereign nations that gained independence from the 1960s to the 1980s, are among the smallest and most vulnerable of the UN’s 193 member states. At UNGA 79, CARICOM’s leaders lent their countries’ unreserved support to calls for a rethink of the “West-led” international order, which is being buffeted by prevailing hard-nosed, great-power geopolitical rivalries.
UNSC Reform: A Fundamental CARICOM Interest
This is against a backdrop where CARICOM member states have long stood as advocates of UN Security Council (UNSC) reform, setting their sights on “connect[ing] foreign policy priorities to the UNSC agenda.”
CARICOM and like-minded states have already made significant progress in the direction of UNSC reform—as the United States recently threw its weight behind a SIDS seat at the UNSC table.
This high-level foreign policy-related positioning is an instructive road marker on the long march of progress relative to the international order, whose advent had everything to do with the West’s interests. As for many of today’s Global South countries, including those of CARICOM, they were still Western metropoles’ colonial possessions when the Liberal International Order came into being—under the aegis of the West’s intellectual authorship.
That the post-World War II international order is therefore the subject of stark assessments is hardly surprising, considering developing countries are keen to leave their mark on an international order that—from their vantage point—is not in tune with the times. Put differently, insofar as the Global South has assumed an expanded role in geopolitics, the “[g]lobal governance architecture [is] not fit for purpose.”
Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has reaffirmed this very point—which connects to the following question: What’s driving CARICOM’s thinking on UNSC reform? As I argue elsewhere, these states approach this reform process in a holistic manner—i.e. ‘the general calculus’. But they also have three other compelling, specific interests in mind.
This CARICOM member states-driven diplomatic stance unequivocally signals a return to form in Caribbean multilateral diplomacy, hearkening back to Caribbean diplomacy of a bygone era vis-à-vis the multilateral realm. Of note, in the 1970s, in hopes of transforming their developmental prospects in relation to the international environment, bloc members Guyana and Jamaica were at “the forefront of the demand for a New International Economic Order.”
Yet the most striking, diplomatically salient climb up the international pecking order for CARICOM in recent decades is informed by its leading role in the international community on climate action. The reality is that the bloc’s members have garnered a well-deserved, historically impressive global reputation in that regard. COP 29 is a pertinent, topical example. With regard to CARICOM’s preparation for this latest iteration of the annual UN climate meeting, which the regional grouping billed as a high-profile diplomatic opportunity to further advance advocacy for SIDS-related climate action, emphasis was placed on “coordinated messaging” and “Ministerial Champions for key negotiation areas.”
In (human) security terms, climate-related priorities have predominated for CARICOM member states. Broadly, as small states, more conventional concerns on the security front have always held sway. (One need look no further than the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy.)
In either respect, these states want to lower the odds that their interests will not be well served in respect of the UNSC. Reform of that body—long a diplomatic guardrail of protection for CARICOM member states—is the linchpin of such an effort.
On balance, CARICOM member states are now intent on pushing back harder still on the UNSC status quo. Diplomatically, such an approach marks another attempt to actively shape the said reform’s scope and trajectory. It can also be interpreted as serving, in its own right, as a crucible to rejig the international order.
After all, given the centrality of the Security Council to international politics, this kind of institutional reform—were it to bear fruit—would certainly have an impact on the international system. (That system turns on status and hierarchical international relations.) With the foregoing in mind, a key question that arises is as follows: Among key P5 actors—which are atop the aforementioned hierarchy—what is the reception like regarding this kind of thinking?
Securing CARICOM’s Future in an Ever-more Complex, Great Power World
In the case of the United States, President Joe Biden’s administration cultivated the perception of strategic empathy toward CARICOM member states. (The United States has especially deepened bilateral relations with Guyana, whose oil boom has provided the impetus for a more nuanced foreign policy thrust that includes shoring up this emergent petrostate’s security-related capacity relative to Venezuela. Venezuela is perhaps the clearest example of an anchor for Beijing-led diplomatic efforts to exercise influence in Latin America, considering that Caracas’ close relationship with Beijing affords the latter leverage on security engagement.) Washington has a strong hand in these relations, with Biden’s one-term presidency playing it to good effect—as the U.S. Department of State notes. That the region comprises thriving democracies, which are grounded in a shared commitment to democratic traditions and institutions, has a lot to do with it. This is in a context where—in rhetorically and strategically framing the international environment—Biden has emphasized the binary “struggle between democracy and autocracy, [and] his administration has set out to support democracy globally as a major foreign policy priority.” (These Caribbean states took advantage of this foreign policy moment.)
But the real issue is that in calling out aspects of the international order, CARICOM member states have hardly created a sense of unease for the United States. For one thing, having regard to their capacity to be system-level disruptors, great power threats—along with the new BRICS+ balancing—dominate Washington’s geopolitical concerns. (Given his stated foreign policy priorities in the realm of high politics, President-elect Donald Trump’s second-term foreign policy will likely be far less concerned than his first-term in office about CARICOM.)
These concerns have only intensified as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia are now more aligned than at any point since the end of the Cold War, owing to their ‘no limits’ partnership. From the United States’ perspective, competing visions of the international order are most troublesome at this level. Yet also concerning is how CARICOM member states calling out structures that perpetuate the global governance-related status quo can feed into what Washington conceives (at least under the Biden administration) as more extreme foreign policy narratives, as well as their associated power dynamics.
Of course, Beijing and Moscow are keeping a close diplomatic eye on CARICOM member states’ UN-based multilateral diplomacy. The PRC, which maintains diplomatic relations with most CARICOM member states (in a context where a handful of them back Taipei), has seized on the opportunity to wield influence. Indeed, as Taiwan’s backers in the Caribbean dwindle, the PRC’s influence in the region has never been greater.
This is certainly not the case for Russia, which is all too aware that—across the Caribbean Basin (Cuba and some others excepted), stemming from the Ukraine war—it has lost goodwill and been dealt a blow regarding its moral authority qua leadership role in the international community. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, within CARICOM, there is a sense of uneasiness with Moscow. In this regard, member states have hardened policies on Russia. For example, on October 21st, Guyana again called Russia out on its war on Ukraine—providing a window into regional thinking on the Kremlin’s international security-related narrative. As Ukraine recently marked 1,000 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion in respect of the Russo-Ukrainian War, clearly, this narrative has little regard for the UN Charter and even less interest in international norms and law.
Perhaps most significantly—albeit years in the making, although solidified by the Ukraine war—Russia is now the PRC’s junior partner in the scheme of things. This point (and the worldview it exemplifies) is not lost on CARICOM member states, which were also in geopolitical crosshairs during the Cold War.
CARICOM’s Read of the Security (Council) Situation
This geopolitical situation belies this question: How much has the idea of a new Cold War à la “balance of power politics” vis-à-vis a more multipolar international system penetrated the Caribbean? Some analysts conclude that a shift is underway from a period characterized by regional states’ relative disinterest in great powers to one dubbed “a new Cold War in which a global rivalry between the United States and China is acted out regionally.”
Today, CARICOM member states are engaged in a balancing act—one that is not without risk. In fact, with an eye to the aforesaid border controversy, CARICOM’s leaders underscore that the Caribbean must remain a Zone of Peace. They are mindful, too, of the wider implications that the Ukraine war and Israel’s war in Gaza (as well as instability in the Middle East) pose to international security.
Above all, as it is currently configured, the UNSC has fallen short in keeping pace with the systemic level transition from U.S.-hinged, post-Cold War unipolarity to multipolarity. To this point, another age of great-power competition has arrived. It is gumming up the UNSC’s ability to give effect to its mandate—churning up far greater risk (even unintended consequences) for and posing a serious challenge to CARICOM’s security.
Accordingly, Security Council reform is a top priority for the Caribbean.
Dr. Nand C. Bardouille is manager of The Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean in the Institute of International Relations at The University of the West Indies’ (The UWI’s) St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad and Tobago. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of The UWI.
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