WASHINGTON: The United States Department of State has released documents on its foreign relations with the Caribbean.
The Department said the documents, which are available on its website, are part of a foreign relations subseries that documents the “most important issues” in the foreign policy of Presidents Richard M Nixon and Gerald R Ford”.
The volume documents the formulation of a new US policy towards the region as a whole and bilateral relations with 14 countries and one British possession.
The countries comprise The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, and Nicaragua.
It said US policy towards the region during the period centred on establishing what former US Secretary of State Henry A Kissinger called a “New Dialogue”.
Launched in October 1973, just days after Kissinger took office, the New Dialogue was envisioned as a constructive way for the United States to meet the challenge posed by the perceived emergence of a regional bloc, the State Department said.
It said the initiative called for regular meetings of foreign ministers “to address issues of mutual concern and aimed to restore a sense that a special relationship existed between the United States and its neighbours to the south”.
By 1976, however, US officials had largely abandoned the idea of pursuing a unified regional policy, as called for by the New Dialogue, the State Department said.
Instead, recognising that the region was not a monolithic bloc, the Ford administration focused more on bilateral relations with the nations of the hemisphere, according to the State Department.
As the volume documents, during the Nixon and Ford administrations, immigration and narcotics control emerged as key issues in bilateral relations.
Other themes that occur are water salinity, economic concerns, and investment disputes, the State Department said.
