The Last Four Months of 2025: Can CARICOM Survive the Turbulence?

KINGSTON, Jamaica – The last four months of 2025 are packed with regional, hemispheric, and global activities in a toxic and turbulent geopolitical, military, economic, and physical environment. Individually, these activities pose significant challenges to the social, economic, physical, and environmental sustainability of the Region.

Together, they constitute a crucible from which escape requires divine intervention, maximum collaboration, a willingness to sacrifice, deft diplomatic manoeuvring, and technical and political leadership of the highest caliber, confidence, and experience.

Does CARICOM possess these ingredients in 2025?

KEY EVENTS AND ISSUES

Among the major issues and events are:

Launch of a United States Armada in the Caribbean, in August 2025.

• The 80th Anniversary Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, September 2025.
• The Conference of the Parties (COP) 30 in Belem, Brazil, 10 to 21 November 2025.
• The 10th Summit of the Americas in the Dominican Republic, 4 December 2025.

THE UNITED STATES ARMADA IN THE CARIBBEAN

Under a newly minted Department of War, President Donald Trump announced the deployment of an unprecedented array of war assets in the Caribbean on … August 2025. The deployment included eight advanced warships, led by the guided-missile destroyers USS Gravely, USS Jason Dunham, and USS Sampson, as well as the nuclear submarine USS Newport News. According to financial news outlets, at least five of these vessels are armed with land-attack Tomahawk cruise missiles.

The official justification for the deployment, without consultation — counter-narcotics operations — strains credulity. This should have triggered immediate consultation among CARICOM States and a coordinated summoning of the United States diplomatic Representative in the various Member States to explain.

Small States, like those in CARICOM, have no defence against mighty Countries and their armies except the thin sheet of their cooperation and commitment to each other, and the blanket of the 80-year United Nations. CARICOM States failed to prepare and take advantage of these mechanisms, despite opportunities such as the week-long high-level segment of the 80th Anniversary of the United Nations, with the theme “A Global Commitment to Peace, Security, and Development.” This resulted, inter alia:

• The Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago making the alarming statements, “The notion that the Caribbean is a Zone of Peace has become a false ideal. The reality … no such Peace exists today,” and “Trinidad and Tobago is particularly grateful for US Military presence in the Southern Caribbean”.
• The Prime Minister of Jamaica, as Chairman of CARICOM, failing to mention the existential threat to Caribbean peace, security, and development of an active United States military buildup in the Caribbean Sea. This, after the United States sank three defenceless small boats, killing some 17 persons, and destroying all evidence of the crimes, justifying the lethal actions.
• CARICOM Countries moving in three directions, exposing the Region’s vulnerable and exploitable underbelly, on the historically important issue of Israel and Palestine.
• Reports in Times Caribbean that the United States is preparing a formal request to the Grenadian government to permit the deployment of U.S. military assets on or near Grenada. Massive pressure on small Grenada because Washington sees the Country “as an exceptionally strategic location for its southern Caribbean operations, particularly given that the island lies only about 100 miles from the Venezuelan coastline”. The provocateur seeking to pull little Grenada, a Member of the Regional Security Service (RSS), into its self-determined conflict with Venezuela.

The Caribbean is the largest cruise shipping destination in the World, the overwhelming majority of Caribbean States depend on tourism as their number one or number two economic activity, and States such as Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Lucia benefit immensely from the yachts and super yachts that domicile in their ports for most of the year. These activities do not thrive in turbulent and unpredictable environments.

 THE CONFERENCE OF THE PARTIES (COP) 30.

COP30 will be held from 10 to 21 November 2025 in Belém, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon. This ‘COP30 Amazônia’ will focus on protecting the planet for the future of humanity, highlighting the importance of the Amazon in global climate regulation.

COP 28 in the United Arab Emirates and COP 29 in Azerbaijan, two major oil-producing countries, refused to address the existential climate issue, namely, agreed, and actionable programmatic commitments by major carbon-emitting countries to reduce emissions so that increases in global warming can be kept below 1.5 Degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. One result, a breach in the long-agreed 1.5 Degrees Celsius ceiling in 2024, and projections that 2.0 degrees could be reached by 2030. There is a deeply held view that COP 30, hosted by Brazil which organised the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), 33 years ago, is the last opportunity to achieve the required outcome.

Alas, a focus on “Amazônia” will not achieve that result. It could provide cover for diversion. CARICOM and other SIDS cannot afford diversion.

THE 10th SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS

The 10th Summit of the Americas (SOA) is scheduled for December 4, 2025, in the Dominican Republic. The Countries to be invited has been a controversial issue since the first Summit in Miami in December 1994. President Bill Clinton, as initiator and host decided to invite all 34 countries, except for Cuba. CARICOM Countries have always strategized and supported inclusion. They settled because Cuba was not a Member of the Organisation of American States (OAS). The President of the Dominican Republic has invited 32 States. He has omitted Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, as the United States did for the last Summit.

CARICOM States must strategise and ensure that this neither divides nor diverts them from the substance of the Summit.

WHAT NOW, CARICOM?

The answer to this simple question could determine the future of this 52-year-old integration arrangement, second only to the European Union in the World. That is not an achievement to be trifled with.

In our article published on … we urged Prime Minister Andrew Holness, as Chairman of CARICOM, to use his Office to develop coordinated positions on the two existential threats we identified, and to champion them unequivocally at the UNGA. He did not.

We again urge the Chairman to act, but on the wider range of issues identified. If the Chairman does not act, we respectfully remind other Heads of Government that any Member may petition for a Special Meeting of the Conference. These next 3 months are too important for the Region to drift.

Ambassador Byron Blake, is a former Deputy Permanent Representative of Jamaica to the United Nations, and Former Assistant Secretary General at the Caribbean Community Secretariat.