KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC – The Director General of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), Dr. Didacus Jules, Monday urged the subregional grouping to strengthen its cooperation to survive in a changing global environment that he often describes as “entropic” and drifting towards disorder.
Addressing the ninth meeting of the OECS Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Jules said that the new global environment is characterized by structures that once anchored stability becoming weaker, and by assumptions that once guided the region’s engagement with the world no longer holding.
“For decades, small states like ours navigated a system that, while imperfect, offered a measure of predictability. Rules mattered. Institutions mediated power. There was space, sometimes narrow but real, for small states to act, to negotiate, to secure outcomes that would otherwise be beyond our reach.”
But Jules told the conference that the space has now contracted and “we are seeing a gradual but unmistakable shift towards a more transactional world.
“Power is being exercised more directly. Multilateralism is under strain. The capacity of global institutions to enforce norms is diminishing. In that vacuum, the logic of might is right is reasserting itself, not always overtly, although increasingly so, but often enough to reshape the operating environment in which we must function.”
Jules said that for small states, this is not an abstract concern, but “an immediate and practical challenge, because when rules weaken, those with less power feel it first and feel it most.
“We are already experiencing the effects of this shift across multiple fronts. The changing posture of major partners is putting pressure on our economies, mobility, and access to development support.
“We see it in the tightening of immigration regimes, in the volatility of remittance flows, in the scrutiny of our economic instruments such as Citizenship by Investment (CBI) programs, and in the retreat from multilateral cooperation that once provided a measure of balance in the system.
“At the same time, we are confronting structural vulnerabilities that have always existed, but are now being exposed more sharply. It is manifested in our dependence on external energy sources, our food import bill, our exposure to climate shocks, and the fragility of our fiscal space.”
Jules said that layered onto this is the reality of regional instability, most starkly reflected in the situation in Haiti, whose humanitarian and security dimensions carry implications for all.
He said that these are not separate issues.
“They are interconnected expressions of a system in transition. And so the question before us is not how we respond to each issue in isolation, but how we position ourselves collectively in a world that is becoming more fragmented and more demanding.”
Jules said that at the heart of that positioning is the question of foreign policy, “how we engage, with whom we engage, and on what terms we engage.”
He said that for the OECS, convergence of foreign policy is not a theoretical or academic exercise, adding, “it is not a matter of administrative convenience or diplomatic niceties.
“It is a highly consequential strategic imperative. And more than that, it is a practical expression of something we must now fully embrace, the pooling of sovereignty.
“There is sometimes an instinctive hesitation when we speak of pooling sovereignty, as if it implies a loss. But in the context in which we now operate, the opposite is true. Individually, our sovereignty is constrained by scale, but collectively it is strengthened by coherence.
“When we act separately, we negotiate from positions of relative weakness. But when we act together, we create weight, and our economies, treated as a single market, carry even more empirical weight than we are aware of.”
Jules said that this is the situation that now exists regarding the trading relationship with Trinidad and Tobago.
He said while Trinidad and Tobago’s exports are globally orientated, totaling approximately between US$7.9 billion and US$11.4 billion annually, its “most consistent and structurally dependent regional market lies within the OECS.
“Individually small, but collectively consequential, OECS member states import an estimated US$400 to US$700 million in goods annually from Trinidad and Tobago, based on aggregated national trade data,” Jules said, noting for example, St. Vincent and the Grenadines alone imported approximately US$79.4 million in 2024, with Trinidad consistently ranking among its top suppliers of fuel, food products, and manufactured goods.
He said across the OECS, Trinidad and Tobago is typically a top three to five import partner, and in critical sectors, particularly refined petroleum, processed foods, and light manufacturers, and that Port of Spain “has a unique trade architecture where intra-regional trade accounts for only 13 to 15 percent of total trade.
“Trinidad and Tobago is the principal exporting economy, and the OECS constitutes one of its largest and most stable clustered markets, comparable in scale to its major single-country partners, such as Jamaica at US$208 million and Barbados at approximately US$183 million.
“OECS is not merely a collection of small markets, but a strategic demand block that underpins Trinidad and Tobago’s regional export economy, particularly for non-energy goods, while simultaneously relying on Trinidad for critical imports. This creates a relationship of asymmetric interdependence with latent collective leverage on the part of the OECS.”
Jules told the conference about the opportunities to learn, leverage, and build the collective strength of the sub-region to transform asymmetry into beneficial convergence. “And just to be clear about my point, I’m pointing out those figures at length to indicate the importance of Trinidad for our trade purposes, but the need to rebalance that trade for mutual benefit in the context in which reliance on the North and other traditional partners is no longer a viable option.
“Then in the international arena, while we can win friends and influence people in far-flung places, it is the pooling of our diplomatic and political weight that expands our room for maneuver,” Jules said, adding that pooling sovereignty in this sense is not about diminishing national authority.
“It is about amplifying it through collective action, and this is the logic that must guide our deliberations today. When we speak of diversifying partnerships, we are not simply seeking alternatives. We are seeking to reduce vulnerability.
“We are seeking to ensure that no single external relationship defines our options or constrains our choices. Engagement with Africa, the European Union, and Asia is not an opportunistic move. They should be part of a deliberate strategy to widen our strategic space and rebalance our external relations.
“When we examine global security developments and energy resilience, we must recognize that these are no longer sectoral concerns. Energy is now deeply geopolitical. Supply chains are instruments of influence. Resilience is not just about infrastructure. It is about independence of action, and for us, that independence can only be built regionally. ”
Jules said that a review of the crisis within the region, “we are reminded that instability does not respect borders.
“It moves, it spreads, it tests the limits of our systems. Our response, therefore, cannot be episodic or purely national. It must be grounded in a coordinated regional strategy that balances solidarity with prudence and principle with realism.
“Perhaps nowhere is the logic of pooling sovereignty more clearly expressed than in the item before us on the restructuring of the OECS missions, on the agenda for our meeting, and the establishment of a shared diplomatic platform.”
Jules said the current diplomatic architecture has served the sub-region, “but it is constrained by fragmentation.
“It is constrained by limited capacity and by the absence of fully harmonized coordination mechanisms. In a world where influence is increasingly exercised through networks, through alliances, through sustained presence in key spaces, we cannot afford to operate as disconnected nodes,” Jules told the conference.
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