For more than twenty-five years, the tiny independent island-states of the English-speaking Caribbean have been dispatching diplomats to the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Commonwealth of Nations, and to many capitals including Washington and London. This book recalls the heroic instances when the diplomats from these tiny states succeeded in keeping the USA, the world's lone superpower, true to its democratic creed.
The USA is inclined to abandon democratic ideals when other interests are at stake. The Caribbean diplomats have helped to improve US world- and regional-leadership by challenging the US when it was willing to stray; and, they have improved the lives of millions of people in Latin America and the Caribbean by their insistence on democratic ideals at every juncture.
The diplomats and leaders from the tiny Caribbean states have utilized the multilateral institutions where they sit at table with the USA to make themselves a moral force for good. How could tiny states possibly compel changes in US foreign policy? A former Ambassador to the UN, the USA and the OAS answers this question in Democracy by Diplomacy.
Ambassador Lionel A. Hurst has served 15 cumulative years as Antigua and Barbuda's Ambassador to the United Nations, to the Organizationof American States, and to the United States of America. He is an American-trained lawyer, specializing in international law. He also earned an MBA before law school, specializing in international business; and, he earned an undergraduate degree in international politics at the City University of New York.
As a diplomat from a small state, he was instrumental in shaping foreign policy, not only of his country, but of the larger Caribbean region of fourteen states known collectively as CARICOM.
Ambassador Hurst was born in Antigua and Barbuda in 1950 when it was still a colony of Britain, and participated in the reshaping of his state and region during the heady years of the 1960s. His English is impeccable though he often reverts to using the language of his streets which is a colourful mixture of his forebears' African past and the European language they were compelled to learn when shipped to the Caribbean, beginning in 1632. He writes songs for calypso singers, speeches which he delivers to university audiences and multilateral bodies, and articles which appear in two of Antigua's newspapers. He is also the host of a well-listened to radio talk-show called Fire and Steel. He drives a 1980 Volkswagon, studies Spanish, and is the father of eight children.
After 1991, a new chapter was opened in human affairs. Once the US State Department was deprived of the bogey-man syndrome that marked its knee-jerk, anti-communist reaction to every crisis during the Cold War, a real opportunity emerged to buttress and, at times, to challenge the USA’s leadership on democracy promotion. The record reveals that small island-states’ diplomats rose to the challenge, promoting democracy within states with greater vigor and commitment on several occasions, pressing the indispensable nation into changing course rather than appear to be led by micro-states.
That is a significant part of the tale which I relate in this publication. Small states, friendly to the USA, chose to snatch leadership when their diplomats believed that the USA was straying from its core ideal and endangering its world leadership. By so doing, Caribbean diplomats made the USA an even better champion of global and regional freedoms in the process, just as Caribbean immigrants contributed to making the USA a better place in which to live.
Small island-states reject the notion that the USA is an "empire", intent on world domination. As diplomats who observed the USA from up close, Caribbean envoys were not fearful of US power or reprisal. Were the USA truly an empire, interested exclusively in the domination of others, it would have caused the small Caribbean states to retreat by threats of various sorts. The unwillingness of the elephant to squelch the mouse is largely the result of the importance attributed to public opinion born of the announced democratic creed of the USA, in the post Cold War period. Democracy promotion within states cannot be achieved by suppressing democracy among states. It is this realization that has allowed small Caribbean states to challenge US leadership in multilateral institutions when the opportunities arose by taking the lead when the US lagged behind...
The demise of the USSR undid the cold-war mentality that drove the US State Department's response to legitimate nationalist struggle, along right-wing reactionary predilections. The changes in US ideology and policy after 1991 gave greater impetus to democratic ambitions, especially in Latin America, the Caribbean, and further afield. Political scientists surmised that drug trafficking would become the greatest concern of the USA and would thus define its foreign policy in a world where the US dominates. Terrorism has displaced and underlies many other major concerns of the USA following the September 2001 terrorist attacks; and, the spread of democracy is the USA’s second greatest ambition in the new uni-polar world. The USA therefore uses the multilateral institutions in which it is a member to promote democracy as a means of reducing the threat of terrorism; and it spends US taxpayers’ resources to provide assistance to fledgling democracies as well.