The outcome of the October 28, 2026 United Nations General Assembly vote calling for an end to the longstanding U.S. embargo against Cuba has generated considerable commentary across the Caribbean press, including in the pages of this newspaper. Much of the discussion has centred on the fracturing of the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) traditionally strong support for the resolution, adopted annually since 1992, except in 2020. What explains this striking departure from the bloc’s longstanding position?
The resolution passed by 130 votes to 17, with 25 abstentions. Among CARICOM’s 14 sovereign member states, seven—The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Suriname—voted in favour. Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and Saint Lucia did not record votes, while Trinidad and Tobago broke with its previous position to join the United States in voting against the measure, and Guyana, Haiti and Jamaica abstained.
The historical contrast is striking: Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago were three of the four newly independent Caribbean states that established diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1972, defying Washington’s efforts to isolate Havana and asserting their foreign policy autonomy through collective diplomatic action.
More than five decades later, the divisions revealed by the Cuba vote illustrate a wider paradox confronting CARICOM. Washington’s renewed assertion of its sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, against the backdrop of intensifying great-power competition, is placing the international institutions and diplomatic principles on which CARICOM’s small states rely under acute strain, making collective action more necessary than ever. Yet these same geopolitical pressures, compounded by profound power asymmetries, are deepening divisions among member governments over how best to exercise strategic autonomy.
The divergent voting positions reflect competing national calculations about the costs and benefits of upholding longstanding regional principles, maintaining diplomatic flexibility or accommodating U.S. power. In certain instances, the Cuba vote represents more than a departure from an established diplomatic position. More broadly, it is the latest manifestation of CARICOM’s deepening foreign policy divisions over how to respond to U.S. power in an increasingly contested international order.
I examine these tensions and their implications for CARICOM’s collective diplomatic leverage in greater detail in my recently published article, “Why CARICOM Is Caught in a Strategic Autonomy Trap,” in the Oxford Review of Latin American Studies.
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Nand C. Bardouille, Ph.D., is a former manager of The Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean in the Institute of International Relations at The University of the West Indies (The UWI) St. Augustine Campus, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. He previously served in policy roles at the CARICOM Secretariat, as well as other intergovernmental organizations and institutions. The views expressed here are his own.
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