EVERY now and then – from the Cuba-US-Soviet missile crisis in the early 1960s to the intervention in Grenada in 1983 to the current calls for yet another intervention in Haiti — turbulent winds blow across Caribbean waters and skies that threaten the region’s peace and stability.

Throughout the last six decades of independence — and particularly since the 1980s — there have been scattered calls for the Caribbean to be declared, treated and respected as a Zone of Peace, which arose from opposition to transportation of nuclear waste (and other toxic materials) through the Caribbean Sea, to increased military exercises by the traditional external guardians of regional security.

History has shown and taught enough about the long-term uncertainties that come with nations and regions having to completely depend on external might to determine and shape regional security, even as much-needed assistance for improving domestic defence and security capacity has also appreciably increased.

But after six decades of independence, it’s the duty of any and all nations that can to better shape their national defence and security forces in ways that can greater help reduce dependence on external defence and security support.

Not that Guyana or any regional state should in any way undervalue current levels of security assistance from traditional allies. But with the region’s security situation now at a stage where the Caribbean has to take stronger collective measures to combat proliferation of weapons into the region, it’s also necessary to note where the intelligence priorities of allies pursuing national interests in regional spaces may not always coincide with those of host nations.
Fortunately, regional security and defence measures, while adopted at home, have of late been increasingly collective and in pursuit of similar goals, all in the interest of preserving peace in all CARICOM member-states and always improving regional security.

Guyana is engaging in multifarious mutual security and defence exercises aimed at strengthening the capacity of the nation’s defence and security forces and enhancing their ability to always better protect the homeland against any eventuality, from any quarter.

Guyana’s size and location also come with larger and wider security and defence responsibilities that stretch from its own historic border security requirements to South America, the Caribbean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, the neighbouring Gulf of Paria, the Gulf of Mexico, all the way to Central America and the Panama Canal.

Historically, the region’s seas have been governed by the traditional allies that annually engage in air, naval and land exercises in different Caribbean locations, but mostly in pursuit of sharpening their own ability to address pressing national security concerns abroad.

As global events have always shown, allies’ pursuit of national security concerns abroad through international or direct economic and other sanctions, unavoidably hurt citizens more than the administrations they’re aimed at, as in Ukraine and Niger today.

But Caribbean land, water and skies always need to be continuously protected against the dangers of transportation of toxic chemicals and weapons of mass destruction.

CARICOM has historically supported calls for the region to be respected and treated as a Zone of Peace. These calls have been supported by the likes of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), Association of Caribbean States (ACS), Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC), MERCOSUR, PetroCaribe and others.

However, the deafening calls for military intervention in Haiti also continue to generate debate across the Caribbean about whether more should not be done to adopt the mechanisms to permanently declare the Caribbean a Zone of Peace. This may very well be a thought whose time has finally come.