Bush Is Inaugurated and Reverses US Climate Policy, a US Spy Plane Is Detained in China, Foot-and-Mouth Devastates British Agriculture and Milosevic Is Arrested

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review | Published 3 April 2001 | Reporting Period: 3 January – 2 April 2001

Quarterly Briefing

• George W. Bush is inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States on January 20, ending a disputed election process that required a Supreme Court ruling to resolve; his administration signals an immediate reversal of US climate policy, withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions on March 28; the withdrawal provokes sharp criticism from European allies; for Caribbean small island states, whose vulnerability to climate change and sea-level rise is existential, the decision by the world’s largest per capita carbon emitter to abandon the primary multilateral climate framework is a matter of deep concern.
• A US Navy EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft collides with a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy fighter jet over the South China Sea in the early hours of April 1, hours before the reporting period closes; the Chinese pilot is killed; the US aircraft makes an emergency landing on Hainan Island; 24 American crew members are in Chinese custody as this edition is published; the Bush administration demands their immediate release; China demands an apology; the standoff is ongoing and represents the new administration’s first significant foreign policy crisis.
• The United Kingdom’s most severe foot-and-mouth disease outbreak since 1967 begins on February 20 when cases are confirmed at an abattoir in Essex; the disease spreads rapidly across England, Scotland and Wales; by the end of March, over 900 cases have been confirmed and the slaughter of infected and at-risk animals is proceeding on an industrial scale; the countryside is effectively closed to visitors, disrupting tourism; the outbreak has significant implications for Jamaica and Caribbean producers competing with or connected to UK agricultural markets.
• Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for war crimes in Kosovo in 1999, is arrested in Belgrade on March 31 following a 36-hour standoff at his villa; the Serbian government, under pressure from Western donors who had tied aid and EU integration prospects to his surrender, detains him after the standoff; his eventual transfer to The Hague will be a landmark for international criminal accountability; the arrest is the most significant development in Balkans stability since Kosovo.
• The Second Intifada, entering its sixth month, continues to produce weekly casualties in Israel and the Palestinian territories; Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, elected on February 6 by a landslide after the collapse of the peace process under his predecessor Barak, rejects negotiation under conditions of ongoing Palestinian violence; the Mitchell Committee, established by the outgoing Clinton administration to investigate the Intifada’s causes and recommend steps to end it, has not yet reported; the peace process is effectively suspended.
• Caribbean governments open 2001 tracking the implications of the US political transition; the Bush administration’s priorities — tax cuts, missile defence, scepticism of multilateral agreements — differ substantially from the Clinton-era framework in which Caribbean diplomatic relationships had been managed; the Caribbean’s primary concerns — trade preferences, debt relief, climate vulnerability, drug interdiction cooperation — will need to be renegotiated within the new administration’s value system.

Prologue: A New America and an Anxious World

George W. Bush’s inauguration on January 20 marked a significant change in US foreign policy orientation. The Clinton administration had engaged multilateral institutions with qualified enthusiasm: signing the Kyoto Protocol, supporting the ICC’s Rome Statute, pursuing the Oslo process, intervening in Kosovo for humanitarian reasons. Bush’s team — Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell — brought a different set of instincts: scepticism about multilateral constraints on US sovereignty, a preference for unilateral action where necessary and a strategic framework that prioritised state-to-state relations over norm-building. The Kyoto withdrawal on March 28 — taken without prior consultation with European allies — was the first clear signal of these instincts translated into policy.

Kyoto and the Caribbean’s Climate Emergency

For the Caribbean, the Kyoto withdrawal was not an abstraction. The Alliance of Small Island States, in which CARICOM nations played a leading role, had been the most persistent and morally cogent voice in global climate negotiations: these were countries that had contributed negligibly to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere but faced the most severe consequences of their effects — sea-level rise, intensifying hurricanes, coral bleaching, freshwater scarcity. The United States, as the world’s largest economy and second largest emitter (after accounting for China’s recent growth), bore a disproportionate share of responsibility for those consequences. The Bush administration’s withdrawal from the framework that represented the first serious attempt at international mitigation was, for Caribbean governments, a fundamental abandonment of multilateral responsibility.

Looking Ahead

The Hainan Island standoff is the immediate crisis as this edition is published; its resolution will establish the early tone of the US-China relationship under a new administration that had campaign rhetoric about China as a strategic competitor to reconcile with the practical necessity of stable bilateral ties. Milosevic’s eventual transfer to The Hague — pending political decisions in Belgrade about the conditions under which it will occur — will be a test of the ICC’s legitimacy as an instrument of accountability. Britain’s foot-and-mouth crisis is approaching its peak; the economic cost will be counted in billions. The Caribbean opens the spring tourism season in a global environment less stable than it was a year ago.

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review is published quarterly, examining how wars, geopolitical tensions and major international crises have shaped Jamaica, the Caribbean and their economies.

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