By W. Andy Knight

As U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets with Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders in St. Kitts this week, the region faces a moment of quiet but profound strategic consequence.

Beneath the diplomatic courtesies and familiar rhetoric about partnership lies a deeper question: What place does the Caribbean occupy in an increasingly unstable global order?

The answer should concern each and every Caribbean citizen.

We are living through what I, as an international relations specialist, have described as an interregnum, a period in which the old global order is fading but a new one has not yet fully emerged.

Interregna are not new. Authors such as Edward Hallett Carr, George R. R. Martin, and Frederick Andrew Inderwick have written about such periods of flux, uncertainty, upheaval, and transition.

Our current interregnum, which began sometime around the late 1980s and early 1990s saw the advent of the end of the precarious bipolar era, as the Soviet Union collapsed, and the United States began to show signs of a waning superpower.

Clearly, today, the era of uncontested American dominance in the Western Hemisphere is fading.Yet no alternative stabilizing framework has replaced it. In such moments of disequilibrium and transition, small states often become arenas where great and emerging powers test influence, project force, and demand loyalty.

The Caribbean must resist that fate.

I was reminded of this reality only days ago in Trinidad and Tobago, where I delivered the keynote address to the 4th Annual Canada–Caribbean Institute Research Symposium at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus. The symposium’s theme, “Securing Our Future: Positioning Our Region to Address Traditional and Emerging Security Challenges”,precisely captured the dilemma now confronting Caribbean leaders.

Across discussions with scholars, policymakers, and regional practitioners, one concern surfaced repeatedly: the Caribbean is entering a far more uncertain geopolitical environment than the one that shaped its post-independence diplomacy.

Recent U.S. military action connected to Venezuela has reintroduced a troubling dynamic into hemispheric politics: the normalization of hard power in a region historically committed to diplomacy, sovereignty, rules, and peaceful coexistence.

For Caribbean governments located mere miles from South America’s geopolitical fault lines, belligerent escalation is not an abstract policy debate—it carries real risks involving migration pressures, economic disruption, maritime insecurity, and political polarization within our societies.

CARICOM leaders therefore confront an uncomfortable reality. While the United States remains an indispensable partner, economically, socially, and strategically; the region cannot afford to be drawn unquestioningly into great power confrontation.

This is not anti-Americanism. Nor is it ideological posturing. It is strategic prudence.

For decades, Caribbean foreign policy has been guided by principles rooted in the region’s historical experience: a rules-based order, non-intervention, sovereign equality, multilateralism,

and dialogue over coercion. These principles enabled Caribbean states to exercise diplomatic influence far beyond their size (punching above their weight), from anti-apartheid advocacy to leadership on climate justice within the United Nations system.

Today, those same principles must guide the region again.

What the Caribbean requires is the embrace of a doctrine of Active Non-Alignment. Unlike Cold War neutrality, active non-alignment does not mean disengagement. Rather, it means engaging all major powers, Washington, Beijing, Brussels, and others, based on Caribbean interests rather than external pressure. It means cooperating with the United States on security while maintaining independent diplomatic positions on regional conflicts. It means welcoming investment without surrendering political autonomy. Above all, it means refusing to allow the Caribbean Sea to become a geopolitical chessboard.

Small states survive turbulent international periods not through rigid alignment, but through strategic agility.

The United States would be wise to recognize this reality. Influence in the Caribbean has never rested primarily on military capability. It has depended instead on legitimacy, respect, diaspora ties, trade integration, and shared democratic values.

When Caribbean nations are treated as partners rather than junior actors expected to fall into line, cooperation flourishes naturally.

Secretary Rubio’s visit therefore presents an opportunity, but also a test. If Washington approaches CARICOM primarily through the lens of geopolitical competition or security containment, it risks accelerating precisely what it fears: diversification away from U.S. influence. Caribbean states today possess more diplomatic options than at any point since independence. Attempts at pressure politics will only reinforce the region’s determination to hedge its relationships.

But if the United States listens, truly listens, to Caribbean priorities, the relationship can be renewed on stronger foundations. Those priorities are clear: climate security, debt relief, sustainable development, energy transition, and regional stability. For Caribbean societies facing existential climate threats, hurricanes and rising seas represent far greater dangers than ideological rivalry among global powers.

The Caribbean does not seek confrontation. It seeks space, space to pursue development, safeguard sovereignty, and maintain peace in its neighborhood.

History teaches that periods of global transition are dangerous precisely because powerful states underestimate the agency of smaller ones. CARICOM must therefore speak with unity and confidence in St. Kitts. The region’s strength has always been collective diplomacy grounded in principle.

The Caribbean helped shape international norms once before. It can do so again.In this interregnum, the wisest course is neither submission nor confrontation, but strategic independence.

The Caribbean must engage everyone, while belonging fully to no one.

Andy Knight is Distinguished Professor, International Relations, at the University of Alberta and former Director of the Institute of International Relations, Trinidad and Tobago