Fifty years is supposed to feel like an arrival. Instead, the 50th Regular Meeting of CARICOM in St Kitts and Nevis feels more like a quiet reckoning. No dramatic rupture. No formal crisis. Just the steady accumulation of signals that the region has entered a more demanding geopolitical season.
At the centre of that moment stood Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Dr. Andrew Holness, who, in his opening remarks as the outgoing chairman, did something both simple and disruptive. He stripped away the comforting mythology and reminded the region that “CARICOM is not, and has never claimed to be, a political union.” With that, he set the tone for a different level of assessment: frank and contextual in the myriad challenges facing CARICOM member states today.
The Mandate We Began With
CARICOM was born in 1973 through the Treaty of Chaguaramas, forged in the afterglow of independence movements and the hard arithmetic of small-state survival. The vision was clear, if carefully calibrated:
- deepen economic integration
- strengthen functional cooperation
- coordinate foreign policy where interests aligned
- and amplify the collective voice of small island states
What it did not create was a supranational authority with binding political power. CARICOM was designed as a community of sovereign states moving in coordinated formation, not a Caribbean federation-in-waiting.
Over the decades, however, public expectations quietly drifted beyond institutional design. The notion of “integration” gradually morphed into an assumed regional unity of voice, including within CARICOM’s own institutional culture.
That gap between outlook and functionality remained manageable until recent times.
Holness and the Language of Strategic Reality
Prime Minister Holness’s presentation at the opening ceremony was measured yet unmistakably pointed, setting the parameters for where the region stands today. His call to abandon what he described as “unrealistic” expectations of political uniformity did two things at once.
First, it acknowledged the obvious: CARICOM states will continue to interpret risk, opportunity, and diplomacy through national lenses.
Second, it reframed difference not as fracture but as strategic flexibility. His concept of a “spectrum of strategic options” suggests a region preparing for a more fluid and less forgiving global environment.
There is logic in this view. Small states often survive by maintaining room to manoeuvre. But it also raises a harder institutional question that the summit did not fully answer: If divergence is now being normalized, what mechanisms will ensure that cooperation remains effective when it matters most? In reality, integration measured only by good intentions and communiqués is unlikely to withstand the pressures now building in the region.
The Bureaucracy Question That Won’t Stay Quiet
Holness also pointed directly to an issue at the heart of a functioning CARICOM mechanism: the speed of implementation.
His call for CARICOM institutions to move faster was not diplomatic filler. It was a recognition that the global economy no longer waits politely for small-state consensus building.
The Community’s institutional machinery still largely reflects a slower era of regionalism. Meanwhile, the world has shifted toward:
- digital acceleration
- near-real-time capital flows
- supply chain realignments
- and sharper geopolitical competition
In that environment, bureaucratic drag is not merely inefficient. It is strategically expensive.
The Expanding US Footprint
Layered over the internal debate about CARICOM’s future is an external reality that is becoming harder to ignore.
The United States’ policy footprint across the Caribbean is widening and, in critical areas, hardening. Security cooperation, migration management, financial compliance, and energy diplomacy remain longstanding pillars of engagement.
There is a growing sense within regional policy circles that direct and indirect US pressure is reshaping the foreign policy space of CARICOM member states to reflect Washington’s priorities. This is particularly visible in how foreign policy has already been reframed with Venezuela and Cuba.
Caricom governments are being forced into a difficult trade-off as US pressure over Cuba, including visa threats, pushes some states to scale back Cuban medical missions that underpin their public health systems. In the short term, this alignment risk is increasing strain on already stretched healthcare services and potentially exposing vulnerable populations to reduced coverage, or forcing governments to pursue more costly options from already stretched public resources. What was once a diplomatic question has become an immediate public health calculation with real human consequences.
Venezuela presents a similarly delicate test for CARICOM. Beyond concessional oil, many member states have benefited from Venezuelan financing, infrastructure support, and funding for social programmes under initiatives such as PetroCaribe and related cooperation arrangements. The result is a growing short-term risk to economic security as states weigh the loss of these broader benefits against the diplomatic costs of falling out of step with Washington.
This is where the crossroads becomes unmistakably real.
The Sound of Limited Global Attention
Perhaps the most quietly revealing feature of the opening of the 50th summit was the level of global attention it did not receive.
For a region that sits at the intersection of major shipping routes, climate vulnerability, migration pathways, and emerging energy conversations, the international spotlight was relatively subdued. There was no visible rush of competing global powers seeking to anchor new, high-profile partnerships at this milestone meeting.
In diplomacy, attention is a form of currency. And right now, CARICOM is operating in a space where external engagement appears selective rather than urgent.
That alone should focus regional minds.
The Strategic Truth We Are Circling
All of this brings us back to the sentence the region is slowly being forced to finish: No one is coming to save us. Major powers will engage where interests align. They will support where strategic value is clear. They will partner where returns justify the effort.
But the structural strengthening of CARICOM, the modernization of its institutions, and the protection of the collective leverage the region still possesses will not be outsourced.
That work belongs to the region itself.
CARICOM’s 50th Meeting: Ceremony or Turning Point?
CARICOM is not in crisis. But it is unquestionably under pressure from three directions at once:
- rising geopolitical competition
- increasing policy divergence among member states
- and institutional mechanisms that must now operate at greater speed and precision
The next decade will require uncomfortable clarity. Where must the region still speak with one voice to preserve bargaining power? Where is strategic flexibility genuinely an asset?
How fast can CARICOM’s machinery realistically move, and what level of integration are member states truly prepared to finance and sustain?
These are no longer academic questions for conference panels. They are operational questions for survival in a more muscular global order.
The Crossroads Is Here
Today, CARICOM stands exactly where many aging regional institutions eventually find themselves: respected, durable, but under quiet stress from a changing world.
The Community was never designed to be a political union. But it does need to decide, with far greater precision than before, what kind of integration it is prepared to build for the next generation of Caribbean citizens.
While Caricom wheels turn slowly, the global environment is accelerating. External pressure is sharpening. And small states rarely get extended grace periods.
There is definitely more to come beyond these opening moments, to determine how the region moved beyond this crossroad.