THE email controversy at the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) has thrown into the spotlight the colonial mentality of some CARICOM leaders and why CARICOM is not a tight integration movement like the European Union. The CCJ imbroglio has brought into focus why many CARICOM countries still have the British monarchy and refuse to embrace the CCJ as its final court.
When you look at how divided CARICOM is, the intimacy of European countries comes into the picture. Why are CARICOM nations, brutalised by slavery and imperial exploitation cannot integrate after 60 years of independence, while the European Union has the world’s most successful integration movement?
The most frequently applied theory is that the Mulatto/Creole West Indian middle class is psychically tied to Western values and they cannot break free from that deep, subliminal imprisonment. This paradigm has its value, but it is not the crucial factor why CARICOM is divided while the EU is not.
Political theorists seldom point to the Japanese and South Koreans as nationalities that are hopelessly sycophantic to Western countries. These two countries are 100 percent opposite to what we see in the Caribbean. Yes, the middle class in the Caribbean is tied to Western culture but not in the sycophantic way it exists in South Korea and Japan.
Caribbean leaders and Caribbean people are proud of their culture and ancestry and do not ape American and European cultures. There are many factors that explain this. One is the post-colonial solidarity of the former colonies after Independence. Secondly, the Caribbean has produced an intellectual tradition that sees the West as a recalcitrant imperialist. No Japanese and South Koreans could even muster the verbal strength to pronounce the word, “imperialism.”
This second factor makes the Caribbean a great philosophical place on earth. It was the CARICOM nations that spearheaded the Dependency Theory, which was the most formidable intellectual exposure of the role of the West in perpetuating economic strangulation of the post-colonial world.
Thirdly, through a vicarious process, Caribbean people sustain political consciousness through the accomplishments of Black American global heroes like Muhammed Ali, radical political activists, music superstars and sports icons. These three factors have made massive dents into the remnants of colonial influence in the Caribbean.
So why, against this backdrop, CARICOM is still not as an integrated family as the EU is? It has less to do with the colonial mentality but more to do with global economics. CARICOM leaders do not see substantial gains coming from closer integration. They ask themselves what is to be achieved by closer bonding when all the economies of CARICOM are, comparatively speaking, very tiny in global influence and international assets.
I think this question has occupied a large part of the collective minds of past and present CARICOM leaders. It may be a mistaken notion, but the fact is CARICOM leaders do not see a colossal transformation of each CARICOM unit if there is to be an EU-type arrangement in CARICOM. On the opposite spectrum, former European empires are closely knitted in the EU. Anti-Western political theorists are always angry when they see this closeness because they ask themselves how come the White people can integrate themselves so neatly and the non-white world remains divided.
There is a reason for the EU being so closely knit. The former empires in the EU have a gigantic amount to lose if they fight among themselves, whereas CARICOM nations have little to lose at the individual level if they quarrel constantly among themselves.
The answer lies in global financial and economic dominance of the EU in the international system. For the umpteenth times on this page I make reference to the autobiography of Guyana’s top international economist, Maurice Odle. He describes the continued financial and economic hegemony of the former empires as the New Imperialism. The major players in the EU – Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia along with Britain, the US and Canada have closely knitted economies based on control of the Global South.
The banking system, the financial nerves and investment architecture of the former empires are a labyrinth. These countries stand to lose their economies if they should fight among themselves. Their role is to stick together and allow the New Imperialism to do what colonialism did from the 18th century onwards. To understand why the EU units are so close together, one has to understand the common goal they pursue in the extraction of resources from the Global South.
A simple analogy should suffice. Two gangs have easy access to steal from a warehouse. If one gang should fight among themselves, then it goes out the picture and the other gang has complete control of the warehouse. CARICOM and the EU are two different worlds.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.