The Soviet Union Falls: A Caribbean Community Surveys a World Transformed

Quarterly Jamaica Windrush & Diaspora Update | Published: 3 January 1992 | Period covered: July–December 1991

Key Developments at a Glance

• 25 December 1991: Soviet Union dissolved; Gorbachev resigns as fifteen republics become independent states, ending the Cold War era.
• Maastricht Treaty negotiations December 1991; John Major secures British opt-outs on single currency and social chapter.
• Yugoslavia’s violent dissolution continues; Croatia and Slovenia independence recognised; Caribbean community watches with unease.
• Gulf War aftermath: Caribbean community assesses what the post-Cold War ‘new world order’ means for small states.
• South Africa CODESA negotiations open December 1991; anti-apartheid movement in Caribbean Britain watches the progress closely.
• Michael Manley PM Jamaica; Britain’s race relations record unchanged; community presses for accountability before the anticipated election.

On Christmas Day 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as President of the Soviet Union, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — which has shaped the international political order, the Caribbean’s strategic calculations, and the global context within which the non-aligned movement operated for more than four decades — ceases to exist. The fifteen Soviet republics become independent states. The red flag over the Kremlin is lowered and replaced by the Russian tricolour. The Cold War, which has structured the world since the late 1940s and which has been the frame within which Caribbean decolonisation, Caribbean politics, and Caribbean diplomacy have operated, is over. For the Caribbean community in Britain — whose members came from islands that navigated the Cold War’s pressures with a combination of principle, pragmatism, and the assertion of a non-aligned identity — the world that existed when their parents arrived in Britain is now gone. The question of what replaces it is not academic: Caribbean small island states, whose foreign policy has always required the ability to work across superpower lines, now face a world in which a single power holds an unprecedented dominance.

The End of the Cold War and the Caribbean’s Strategic Position

The Caribbean’s relationship with the Cold War was never simple. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 transformed the Caribbean into a theatre of superpower competition. The Grenada Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent US invasion of 1983 demonstrated how quickly superpower interests could override the sovereignty of small island states. Michael Manley’s Jamaica of the 1970s experienced direct US economic pressure in response to its democratic socialist programme and its engagement with Cuba. CARICOM’s collective foreign policy has always had to navigate between the demands of the United States — whose proximity, economic weight, and security interests are overwhelming — and the principle of Caribbean sovereignty and non-alignment that the region’s political tradition has asserted.

The end of the Cold War removes one constraint on Caribbean sovereignty and introduces another: in a unipolar world, the ability to balance between great powers is reduced, and the leverage that small states could derive from the competition between the US and the Soviet Union is gone. CARICOM’s foreign ministers, meeting in the aftermath of the Soviet dissolution, are engaged in a rapid reassessment of the region’s strategic situation. The Caribbean community in Britain follows these deliberations through the Jamaican and Caribbean press, with the knowledge that the political world their families navigated on the island is being remade.

Maastricht and What Europe Means for the Caribbean

The Maastricht Summit of December 1991, at which European Community member states negotiate the treaty that will create the European Union and a framework for economic and monetary union, produces a settlement that John Major presents as a British success: opt-outs from the single currency and from the Social Chapter, which would have extended European employment and social rights to British workers. The Caribbean community’s engagement with the European integration question is shaped by its specific interests: the ACP (Africa, Caribbean, Pacific) relationship with the European Community, which provides Caribbean nations with trade preferences and development assistance, has always been a concern for the diaspora community in Britain, which understands that its connection to both the Caribbean and to Europe makes it a stakeholder in both relationships.

The Social Chapter opt-out is of particular concern to community organisations and trade unions that represent Caribbean workers in Britain. The European Social Chapter’s provisions on workers’ rights — minimum standards on working hours, information and consultation rights, and protections for part-time and temporary workers — would have strengthened the legal position of precisely those workers, disproportionately Black and minority ethnic, who are concentrated in the least protected sectors of the British economy. Major’s opt-out means they will not benefit from these protections while their European counterparts do.

Yugoslavia and the Question of Small Nations

The violent dissolution of Yugoslavia, which began with the declarations of independence by Croatia and Slovenia in June 1991 and has since produced a war in Croatia in which the Federal army and Serbian irregular forces have destroyed towns, generated hundreds of thousands of refugees, and produced atrocities that the international community has been slow to name and slower to respond to, is followed by the Caribbean community with a concern that goes beyond the specific geography of the Balkans. The question of what the international community does when a state uses military force against its own population, or when borders are redrawn through violence, is a question that Caribbean political history poses in its own terms.

South Africa: The Long Road to Democracy

The Convention for a Democratic South Africa, which opens in December 1991 with the participation of the ANC, the National Party government, and other parties, represents the most substantial multi-party constitutional negotiations in South African history. The Caribbean community’s anti-apartheid organisations, which have maintained their engagement with the South African freedom struggle since the ANC was unbanned in February 1990 and Nelson Mandela was released on 11 February 1990, follow the CODESA process with the sustained attention of people who have worked for this moment across decades. The negotiations will be long, difficult, and not without crisis; but the fact of their beginning is itself a historic achievement.

Sources: Jamaica Information Service; The Gleaner; Jamaica Observer; Caribbean National Weekly; New Nation; The Voice; BBC News; Reuters; AP; The Guardian; Commission for Racial Equality; CARICOM Secretariat; Jamaica High Commission London; Home Office (UK); House of Commons Hansard; Anti-Apartheid Movement; Commonwealth Secretariat.

Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomes Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com