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Caribbean Islands THE REGIONAL SECURITY SETTING
Throughout the period of British rule from the early nineteenth
century until the move to independence in the 1950s and 1960s, the
Commonwealth Caribbean islands relied on British protection. After
independence, however, the islands to some extent went their
separate ways and were preoccupied by their own national interests
and security and defense concerns. In the late 1980s, these islands
were still a largely undefended region; only Antigua and Barbuda,
the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago maintained
defense forces, ranging in size from about 100 to 2,100 members
(see table 10, Appendix A).
Despite their relative unimportance in terms of territorial
size, population, and gross domestic product (GDP--see Glossary),
the English-speaking Caribbean islands were a factor in the interAmerican system in the 1980s owing in large part to the strength of
their voting bloc (a solid one-third of the OAS members). Because
of this regional identity, scholars have recognized the Englishspeaking islands as constituting a subsystem of the Latin American
system. One specialist on Commonwealth Caribbean affairs has
observed that West Indian collective security issues can be
understood only within the general dynamics of West Indian politics
rather than OAS-based collective security arrangements, such as the
Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (Rio Treaty). This
is attributed to the lack of solidarity sentiments between the West
Indies and the inter-American system.
Regional attitudes hardened as a result of two events that took
place in the early 1980s. One was the war between Argentina and
Britain in 1982 over the Falkland/Malvinas Islands. With the
exception of Grenada, the Commonwealth Caribbean islands sided with
Britain in the war. The other was the joint United States-Caribbean
operation against Grenada in 1983, an action that was condemned
unanimously by Hispanic Latin America.
Because there is no consistent regional consensus on security
and other issues, however, the English-speaking island subsystem
cannot be treated as a monolithic bloc. For example, four
Commonwealth Caribbean states--Trinidad and Tobago, the Bahamas,
Belize, and Guyana--opposed taking joint military action with the
United States in Grenada in October 1983. Furthermore, unlike most
of the Commonwealth Caribbean, both the Bahamas and Trinidad and
Tobago are signatories of the Rio Treaty, the former since November
24, 1982, and the latter since June 12, 1967.
The 1979 coup in Grenada was the first violent,
nonconstitutional overthrow of an elected government in the history
of the Commonwealth Caribbean. The potential military and
subversive threat to the region posed by the Grenada situation
spurred regional efforts to establish an RSS in the Eastern
Caribbean with United States, British, and some Canadian
assistance. Although these efforts did little to facilitate the
combined United States-Caribbean military operation in Grenada in
October 1983, they have developed significantly since then. An
examination of regional security issues in the context of postwar
regional integration efforts helps to explain how the RSS developed
in the Eastern Caribbean.
Data as of November 1987
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