Mash Up the Government Boots: Shut Down the Caribbean Regional Security System (RSS)
Haiti will soon be invaded in the name of regional “security.” The United Nations Security Council has made its decision. “Activists” are blaming Kenya, the UN, and the United States. Some are troubled, especially the communists for state capitalism, by the failure of Russia and China to veto the multinational force. But the campaign of disinformation is on. Most are not pointing fingers at CARICOM or leading a campaign against its Caribbean member governments who collectively endorsed the invasion of Haiti. Some say, well, only three of them are taking part in the invasion of Haiti. Total nonsense. On the other side of this mystification lies a trail of government boots.
In 1983, the legendary Bajan calypsonian Mighty Gabby condemned the Caribbean Peace Force — a Caribbean military alliance formed in support of the U.S. invasion of Grenada, Operation Urgent Fury. In “Boots,” Gabby understood his home country of Barbados to be complicit in Ronald Reagan’s theatrics in the Caribbean and throughout the hemisphere. Barbados joined Jamaica and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States in lending troops to the U.S. invasion, which also marked the first operation of the Regional Security System (RSS) a military compact formed by Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in 1982.
Gabby croons: “Is it necessary to have so much soldiers in this small country? No! No! No! No!” Gabby reminds us that the government boots are not those of the U.S. military alone. Far from dupes of the Hollywood cowboy, Reagan, the government boots of Caribbean nations are willing participants in efforts to suppress the popular will of working people in Grenada and their own territories alike. Today, in Haiti, they promise to carry on this legacy. A principled response to the approval of a multinational invasion of Haiti requires that we not only demand “hands off” or “no government boots” on Haitian soil, but the complete dismantling of the Regional Security System (RSS).
The catastrophe of the invasion of Haiti (again and again) is a “hurricane” and “earthquake” not simply produced by Empire but also of Caribbean rulers’ own making. It may be too soon — or too late — to reverse the trajectory the world is set on. CARICOM governments have endorsed the invasion of Haiti, and boots on the ground are imminent. Before and after, fake and misguided activists try to save CARICOM’s legitimacy as it totters, dangles, and blows in the wind. Is it necessary to have the Regional Security System in the Caribbean? We say, “No! No! No! No!”
The CARICOM Reparations Hustle
Many remain loyal to CARICOM as a result of their top-down slavery reparations campaign that convenes no meetings of toilers or the unemployed. It makes no promises to homeless or barefoot persons for a self-directed new society. It blurs the ambitions of the rich with the historical injuries of poor to keep those below society powerless. Indeed, this is what nationalism does. It does not affirm the cultural pride of oppressed people, but rather the arrogance and duplicity of aspiring rulers.
It is clear a Caribbean political class aligned with North Atlantic industry and finance is prepared to serve as a money manager, mortgage lender, and facilitator of loans and debt for ordinary people, whether in pursuit of home or business ownership. But are loans, debt, and mortgages the reparations that the common people clamour for?
From Barbuda to Barbados, CARICOM leaders insult the Caribbean masses as unhealthy, mentally ill, and illiterate in the 10-point platform for reparations. They propose not to evangelize the power and genius of ordinary people, but to remedy their own debts, fund development schemes, and extend only piecemeal financing to everyday citizens. In the CARICOM campaign for reparations, Caribbean governments and Wall Street have been partners all along.
Government Boots on the March
CARICOM governments are less forthcoming about the other side of their populist campaign. With the addition of Guyana in 2023, eight member states are now sponsors of the Regional Security System (RSS), an army raised in the name of Caribbean unity to police and surveil “gangs” and other undesirables. More members, including Haiti, are rumored to follow. We are told the problem in Haiti amounts to “gangs” — but not the gangs of finance, industry, or the police state. Restoring order means bringing these gangs back or placing them again comfortably at the top of Haiti in the name of reason and civilization.
It is unintelligible for “progressives” to suggest that CARICOM can still be defended as a legitimate institution on the eve of the invasion of Haiti. There are no “progressive” states in CARICOM when they all endorse and attack Haiti. All of them are embarrassments to Caribbean civilization.
Many say we will never forgive or forget the invasion of Haiti. It is hard to believe many saying this. But as the youth like to say, we are keeping receipts. “Progressives” where they work for the cultural apparatus of the state, at home and abroad, will forget as soon as possible, likely at the next election cycle when they close ranks around CARICOM governments as the supposed vanguard of struggles for reparations and climate justice.
It is understandable that a complete list of all invaders cannot be circulated in every instance— it is a long list led by Kenya. But this becomes a disinformation campaign if we allow some to claim that not all CARICOM states are participating. Each and every one, even the smallest and poorest Caribbean nation-state and their rulers are participating. That is what the RSS was, and is, organized for.
Coordinated by “Auntie Mia” Mottley’s Barbados, the RSS was designed for the smallest city-states and poorest nations to forge a military compact including St Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Grenada, and Dominica. Trinidad, Guyana, and Jamaica are independent in name only — they too have been trained and funded by the United States with assistance from the British and Canadians.
Research can be rewarding. There is no question the RSS has the capacity to put three to five times the 1000 government boots that Kenya officially offers to “lead” the maneuver. Whether each peripheral territory only sends 500, 50, or 5 soldiers, whether they offer technological or medical aid, is beside the point.
The foreign relations of CARICOM governments are subservient to U.S. Empire. We have to be careful when we talk about subservience. The rulers of the Caribbean political class are not an oppressed class in chains even when they play a mas as “barefoot” and “downpressed” for their reparations campaign. In practice, this empty masquerade provides cover for a creolized empire and ethnically-plural police state.
The Military Masquerade in Haiti
Indeed, invading Haiti is racist. But every Caribbean government led by Black and Indian Caribbean premiers is taking part. They denounce white supremacy and “racial capitalism” only to keep the company of European billionaires like Digicel-founder Denis O’Brien. The forces of global capital want to invade Haiti (again) and they have compensated the African and Caribbean political class all over the world to take part.
On the other hand, too many anti-imperialists who have thrown their lot with Russia and China have been embarrassed and exposed by their “abstain” votes on the UN Security Council resolution on Haiti. Indeed, both have a closer relationship with the U.S., the “greatest purveyor of violence,” than the vulgar opportunists think.
Aspiring Caribbean rulers want to be “equal” under the terms of European and American hierarchy and domination. They declare “massa day done” only to proclaim themselves the “massa” of today and tomorrow. They, too, want a piece of the action.
Many will remember Malcolm X’s “you can’t have capitalism without racism” but the progressives insist otherwise. The progressives cheer on people of color who gather wealth at the expense of labor. When the local capitalists in peripheral nation-states gain their piece of the action, some even dare to call this “socialism.”
A progressive is somewhere lost between liberal capitalism and an empty, ethic-less, and ill-defined socialism. Among them are people who identify with Russia and China and BRICS nations in search of their own banking and industry. There are other progressives who are unapologetically American nationalists or mimics. Progressives sometimes fight among themselves. Both can talk as if they are building alliances for peace, while building alliances in fact for a greater piece of capital.
This worldview can only say now “Haiti, I’m Sorry” — like David Rudder — but the mystification will continue. The progressive leaders are living delightful lives at Caribbean toilers’ expense. But those below society are ready to declare their independence from the “massas” of today.
Not the Regional Security System, The Rulers Security Service
Already, CARICOM has blood of Haiti on its hands. The RSS takes pride in its heritage of forging Caribbean unity through the suppression of popular democratic movements in the region. Just as the African Union and CARICOM celebrate their “Pan-Africanism” to invade Haiti, the RSS presents itself as a Pan-Caribbean project. As Mighty Gabby reminds us, the RSS debuted when government boots landed on the shores of Grenada in 1983. The RSS was also deployed against prisoners in St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Barbados. Many propose a Black agenda to shut down AFRICOM and end U.S. manipulation and training of African militaries. But amidst the reparations chatter, none utter a word in public against the RSS.
The RSS is not a regional security system. As one perceptive elder observes, it has not solved crime, alleviated racial insecurity, contained gang violence, or ended corruption among the local police in Caribbean territories as it claims. 40 years after Mighty Gabby’s calypso, there is no “security” to be found. In reality, the Regional Security System is better called a “Rulers Security Service” trained by the British and Americans.
The RSS compact represents the will of all CARICOM governments — all of whom have endorsed the invasion of Haiti. The chorus of Mighty Gabby’s “Boots” goes: “left, right, left, right, the government boots…” While he intended to simulate the sound of marching soldiers who prepare to brutalize, mutilate, and kill the ordinary people of the Caribbean, our literary senses “sight” another meaning.
Both the “left” and “right” wings of party politics in the Caribbean oppose racism and empire in their thin and vacuous ways. Seen? With the invasion of Haiti imminent, both left and right are silent about the government boots marching in unison behind them. “Left, Right, Left, Right, the Government Boots…”
#ShutDownTheRSS #AbolishCARICOM #MashUpTheGovernmentBoots
