Robert Buddan -POLITICS OF OUR TIME Bruce Golding's visit to Cuba last week signifies two things. The realities of the world order have made redundant the old idea that 'the west' or the United States can be the centre of our foreign policy as the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) thought it should be in the 1960s and 1980s. The People's National Party (PNP) had never believed it and courted 'the South', including Cuba, in the 1970s, the 1990s and beyond.
Right up to the September elections, supporters of the JLP were still naively of the old view. But the crises of oil, trade and food have kept the JLP doing business with Venezuela, Cuba and China and remaining steadfast in CARICOM, even calling on Guyana to help with rice production.
The other signal is this: Jamaica and Cuba can entertain relations on a bilateral level to meet specific needs, such as in agriculture, water, housing, tourism and health. But at the same time, they can engage in a more global vision of change in the world order. Venezuela and Cuba also relate at this more global level, and this is the point of the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA). They want to change the world order.
It was at this level that Michael Manley and the PNP related to the South in the 1970s while working towards a New International Economic Order. We can now ask: does Golding have a vision of a new and different global order, and does he intend to become a global spokesperson and a world statesman to advance that vision?
relations to improve
Golding has promised President Raul Castro that he will use Jamaica's influence to improve relations between Cuba and the United States. This is not likely to help much. Golding has little, if any, influence over Bush. What is more, with four Jamaican Members of Parliament on the government's side holding American citizenship and another having Venezuelan citizenship, the Jamaican government could be seriously compromised considering the aggressive actions being taken against American citizens who violate the Cuban embargo and whose allegiance is sworn to the United States.
The only way that US-Cuba relations will change positively in the near future is if Barack Obama becomes president of the United States. It would then be Obama and Castro's influence that would change relations between those two countries and Golding (or whoever the Jamaican prime minister might be) could only smooth the process out at the regional level. That, however, will not change the world order although it would provide important openings in order to do so.
Professor Hal Klepak of the Royal Military College of Canada and an expert on Cuba gave a lecture at the Mona campus of UWI in April. He made this important statement. US policy towards Cuba was not an irrelevant hangover of the Cold War but a clash of two world orders. There is the current world order that the United States supports and a different vision of a world order that Cuba supports, one costly to the United States. Thus Cuba (and Venezuela), more than other cold war US enemies like Vietnam and China, had to be kept isolated.
The clash between these two world orders is not a clash between freedom and "unfreedom", as the United States would make it out to be. It is about freedom itself, though not freedom with poverty but freedom from poverty. Some of the elements of that new vision can be seen in ALBA. There is no oil crisis in ALBA. ALBA is using oil to deal with the real crisis, the human crisis.
For the first time, oil revenue is being used to provide health care, education, clean water, subsidised food, electricity and other basic services to the Venezuelan poor and middle class. American oil multinationals and the American state would not dream of doing this for Americans or the people of the Americas.
helping other countries
This new world vision is about helping other countries to develop even if they are not members of ALBA. Jamaica has benefited under PetroCaribe by saving US$500 million that it wouldotherwise have had to pay out to receive oil from the western multinationals and this money is allowing us to keep our exchange rate fairly stable and to import vital food. Without it we would be in a sorry mess.
This new vision is of non-coercive relations between states. Jamaica can, for instance, benefit from Cuba's Operation Miracle eye surgery programme for free even without being a member of ALBA. Jamaica and Cuba have even expanded Operation Miracle so that Jamaicans can get treatment in Jamaica. Under western arrangements like NAFTA and the EPA, countries are given deadlines to join on terms that they negotiate as very unequal partners or be left out of benefits.
Under ALBA's vision, food is grown for people, not to provide energy for cars. We can't eat gas. Fidel Castro has been alerting the world to the fallacy of growing corn and other grains for ethanol while more and more people starve. That is why Cuba started the light bulb programme for Jamaica. It was to encourage us to reduce the cost of electricity without substituting food for energy. When western countries talk about energy independence, they mean growing grain as a source of bio-fuel.
Prime Minister Bruce Golding and Cuban President Raul Castro embrace during a recent visit by a Jamaican government delegation to Havana.- file
environmentally responsible
This new vision is for a more sustainable and ecologically friendly world. The United States and Europe continue to violate treaties that limit carbon emissions that warm global temperatures and create a more destructive climate. Cuba is not a violator but is one of the most environmentally responsible countries in the world. How free can you be if the very air you breathe is killing you?
In all of these ways, the vision of the world order that we need is fundamentally different from the reality of the world order that we have. But the world lacks global statesmen. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has recently resurrected the idea of a new world order. But Brown's party then took a bad beating in local government elections and his government might not survive the next general elections.
One can hardly name a European president or prime minister of global status, so little impact do they have on world opinion and world conscience. Canada is the same. The US president is famous but for all the wrong reasons. Gone is the time when world leaders from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and some from Europe spoke with conviction about a more just and equitable world order.
There is growing inequality within and between nations. Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil and a few other countries are willing to talk about the injustice of the world system. The English-speaking Caribbean, particularly Jamaica, has long had a voice in this. Does Golding have a broader vision that can connect the world outside of Jamaica to the troubles at home, and is he multi-dimensional enough to be a national and world leader at the same time? It is that mission that Cuba really wants to hear about.
Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm. Feedback may also be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com
