Trump’s Bluster Won’t Help a Caribbean Region That Needs Solutions
This week U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to the Caribbean, where he will visit Jamaica, Guyana and Suriname. Having already traveled to Central America and the Dominican Republic in February, this is Rubio’s second trip to the hemisphere in the two months since President Donald Trump returned to the White House on Jan. 20.
Trump himself has already demonstrated his new administration’s focus on expanding Washington’s power, influence and perhaps even territory in the Western Hemisphere. Among his first acts after taking office was to sign an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” though few besides the U.S. government’s official agencies refer to it as such. And he initially threatened to take control of the Panama Canal, though that topic has receded as a focus of his attention in recent weeks.
In a similar way, Trump and Rubio are bringing more bluster than substance to Caribbean policy, which is a mistake. While the region is given short shrift in terms of time and attention by all U.S. administrations, the Caribbean’s current list of urgent priorities is lengthy. As a result, regional leaders are intent on making the most of Rubio’s visit. They spoke multiple times last week in preparation for it, and Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley plans to be in Jamaica to represent all the Caribbean island nations when Rubio arrives.
Arguably, climate change could be considered the region’s biggest challenge. But given the Trump administration’s environmental policies, arguing over that issue would be a fruitless pursuit and take away time from things that all sides can negotiate and perhaps even agree on.
Next on the agenda should be Haiti, a country without an elected government where gangs continue to expand their power and territorial control, armed with weapons that mainly originate in the United States. A Kenyan-led peacekeeping mission deployed to the country continues to lack the resources necessary to make a dent in the security situation, meaning that Haiti is a continuing source of instability for the region.
Yet, while Haiti is probably the second-biggest regional challenge, it too will likely not feature much in Rubio’s discussions, as each island in the Caribbean has its own individual domestic concerns that may take precedence over the bigger picture.
One issue many Caribbean leaders are itching to bring up is the Trump administration’s crackdown—led by Rubio—on their payments to Cuba as part of Havana’s longstanding practice of sending its doctors abroad as a revenue-generating development scheme. Cuban doctors are a fixture in many Caribbean countries that find the arrangement to be an affordable way to plug gaps in their own health care systems. Now the U.S. government is threatening to sanction governments that participate in the program, including visa bans to keep their leaders from entering the United States.
As Rubio travels to the Caribbean to promote Trump’s “America First” agenda, his offer of diplomatic threats rather than opportunities will provide an opening Beijing will be all too eager to seize.
Supporters of Havana’s doctors-for-hire scheme, including several Caribbean nations, point to the fact that Cuban doctors receive excellent medical training. The doctors are sent to work in locations where medical assistance would otherwise be unavailable. Their training and focus on preventative medicine and health policy often benefits communities beyond individual doctors’ visits, as does the fact that they stay with communities for months or even years, far longer than U.S. programs that bring hospital ships or medical personnel for a brief visit of a week or two.
Critics of the program highlight the abuses that the doctors and their families face. Cuba pockets the revenue the program generates, while barely paying the doctors that do the work. Often, the doctors’ families are held hostage back in Cuba to ensure they do not defect once they are overseas. Beyond that, the medical care is inconsistent. While some of Cuba’s doctors are top-tier physicians and researchers who could practice medicine anywhere in the world, others are spies who could barely pass a basic first aid course. And the U.S. government under many past administrations has disliked the free publicity Cuba gets for a program that its critics portray as a form of slavery.
The frustrating part of this debate is that both sides are in some ways correct. It is true that well-trained Cuban doctors often provide a needed service for poor countries that otherwise struggle to afford quality medical personnel. It is likewise true that Cuba abuses this program to the full extent possible, treating doctors poorly, making money off the poorly compensated doctors and using the program for espionage while benefiting from the positive public relations image it generates.
Perhaps most importantly for the countries that benefit from the program, however, is the fact that these doctors are literal lifesavers. Criticizing the negative aspects of the program is easy to do for the U.S., but far harder for governments whose populations’ health hangs in the balance.
Beyond that issue, the Caribbean also wants to discuss rumors of a travel ban that Trump plans to place on several of the region’s countries. The expected bans on travel from Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela may be extended into potential restrictions on citizens from Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia. The bans—some of which appear to be related to problems with information-sharing and so-called golden passport schemes, whereby citizenship is offered in return for high-level investment—would harm these countries’ economies.
Rubio’s itinerary after Jamaica is more straightforward. His stop in Guyana is an attempt to demonstrate his commitment to that country’s security in the face of continuing threats to its territorial sovereignty from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Rubio has reportedly been winning the recent internal battles over Venezuela policy within the Trump administration and has promised further sanctions against Maduro and Venezuela’s oil industry in recent weeks. In response, Venezuela’s navy sent a patrol boat well into Guyana’s territorial waters—which Caracas disputes as part of its claim to Guyana’s Essequibo region—to harass an oil exploration vessel controlled by Exxon.
Finally, Rubio’s trip to Suriname is an opportunity to demonstrate U.S. commitment to the Caribbean as well as secure more energy deals and critical minerals partnerships in the hemisphere. The Organization of American States’ newly elected secretary-general, Albert Ramdin, was previously Suriname’s foreign minister, and his newfound influence likely explains why Rubio is choosing to travel to a country rarely ever visited by high-level U.S. officials.
Hanging over much of Rubio’s trip is the question of competition with China. Beijing invests relatively heavily and gets along quite well with a number of Caribbean nations, including Suriname, Guyana, Jamaica and Barbados. However, several of Taiwan’s few remaining allies in the world are also from the region, including Belize, Haiti, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Saint Lucia. Notably, three of those countries are also on the proposed Trump travel ban list. Should those bans go into effect, it would give Beijing an opening to make a strong counteroffer to weaken Taiwan’s influence regionally. Similarly, if countries face U.S. sanctions and travel restrictions due to their payments for Cuban doctors, China will be waiting to fill the gap.
As Rubio travels the region to promote Trump’s “America First” agenda, his refusal to discuss the impact of climate change while offering more diplomatic threats than opportunities will provide an opening that Beijing will be all too eager to seize.
James Bosworth is the founder of Hxagon, a firm that does political risk analysis and bespoke research in emerging and frontier markets, as well as a global fellow at the Wilson Center’s Latin America Program. He has two decades of experience analyzing politics, economics and security in Latin America and the Caribbean.