Stephen VasciannieALMOST AS a rule, foreign policy is determined by domestic concerns. In the case of the United States, this is openly accepted as a fact of life: as former United States House Speaker Tip O'Neil explained it, "All politics is local". So, each foreign policy initiative needs to be weighed against the interests of the American people, or at least, the American politicians.
Elian has gone home: what will this mean for the Presidential elections? The icy relations between North and South Korea are improving: what implications may this have for Korean Americans and others? The outermost edges of the heavy-handed embargo against Cuba are being chipped away: will this undermine Al Gore in Florida?
Normal trade relations are to be offered to China: will this enhance the status of the Democratic Party among American businesses hankering for access to the Chinese market? And the examples could go on.
In some respects, none of this is surprising because, given America's position of economic and military pre-eminence globally, its politicians are inclined to view the world as their oyster. Thus, some American policy-makers proceed on the assumption that American interests are synonymous with global interests, and develop their positions from this vantage point.
More importantly, though, American politicians are compelled to give due notice to the link between foreign policy and domestic politics because constituents in various part of the country will not let them forget it.
The Cuban-American phenomenon is perhaps the best known, but other domestic groups with foreign interests are always keen to press home particular points. Policy-makers ignore these groups at their own risk.
In Jamaica, foreign policy questions seem, generally speaking, to have a less pronounced link with local politics. This is not to suggest that Jamaicans tend to be uninterested in foreign affairs (indeed, the opposite is true); rather, however, the point is that the average Jamaican has little scope to influence foreign policy initiatives, and indeed, is often forced to accept foreign policy positions from above, no questions asked.
To some extent, this state of affairs is part of a general picture. For a variety of reasons, the democratic nexus between Jamaican public policy initiatives and the interests of civil society is, at best, a fragile construct. Interest groups, especially those which have an impact, are often placed under pressure from governmental and quasi-governmental sources (witness the case of Jamaicans for Justice); and those who would be inclined to mount opposition on particular policies are automatically labelled in partisan political terms.
But, those who formulate foreign policy in Jamaica should yearn for criticism of various initiatives.
Take the case of the Prime Minister's speech in Cairo, on June 19, and Minister Robertson's presentation in the Sectoral Debate eight days later. Quite frankly, even if we start from the premise that the plight of the Third World has been, and remains, the responsibility of the North, Prime Minister Patterson's speech fell between two stools.
Arguably, the Prime Minister could have been advised to use his opportunity in one of two ways: (a) He could have made a presentation at the level of ideas, explaining in detail the philosophical basis on which developing countries make their claim for assistance from their developed counterparts; or (b) He could have advanced the case for specific forms of assistance, or concessions, in areas such as trade, investment and finance. The Cairo speech did neither.
Instead, on my reading, the Prime Minister devoted much of the speech to generalities about multilateralism and globalisation, "a new financial architecture" (ugh!), and the need for flexible responses, without showing, in any detail, how developing countries should tackle the longstanding problems that beset us.
In addition, even a passing reference to the fact that some of our difficulties are internally generated would have given the Prime Minister's presentation a greater sense of reality. His speech noted the "constraints bequeathed by the colonial past and others arising from the external environment beyond our control" (page 2), and mentioned our burden of debt "perpetrated and perpetuated by those who, by their past transgressions, current intransigence and myopic vision, would condemn us to the graveyard of penury" (page 8).
Victimology
These may well be aspects of our plight, but other aspects clearly have internal sources: failure to even mention these suggests that our foreign policy is moving in the direction of victimology.
In his Sectoral presentation, Minister Robertson sought to defend the Prime Minister's position in Cairo. And, indeed, his defence emphasises the need for greater public discourse on foreign policy initiatives.
For, easily the most interesting paragraph of Dr. Robertson's presentation was his response to the critics, which included an attempt to explain the Government's philosophical perspective on its foreign policy initiatives.
Interesting thoughts aside, however, Minister Robertson missed the main points raised by the critics, and sought instead to shoot down imaginary strawmen. Thus, the Minister argued that the critics appear to be suggesting that Jamaica should accept the realities and "confine our activities to understanding what are the rules and adapting them to suit our own reality". Not at all. I believe the main force of the criticism is that the Cairo approach ignores our local reality, not that we should accept current global realities without protest.
Another criticism is that if we are using "past transgressions" to bolster our negotiating positions, we need to develop convincing arguments concerning the relevance of those past transgressions in the current environment. So, the debate should continue. But, it must go beyond platitudes about the "international financial architecture" (ugh, again), and disadvantages "by virtue of historical legacy". If, as a nation, we cannot convince our own people with the force of our international arguments, why do we think policy-makers overseas will buy those arguments?
Stephen Vasciannie, an attorney-at-law, teaches at the UWI, Mona.
