Dear Editor,
When you are thinking about what you want for the future of your country should you look to the past or to the future?
If you are a Caribbean person and a descendant of slaves, looking to the past shows you great injustices that explain many parts of your existence. If you are a Caribbean person and you look to the future, the picture is quite different.
The major influences of the Caribbean past are slavery followed by economic collapse due to the decline of sugar. That sad past does relate to the near- and long-term future of the Caribbean in a world with very different circumstances.
The future of the Caribbean has thoroughly different threats that exist in an environment that is globalized and dominated by major powers, both sovereign and private. Here are some key issues for our future: Small states are not going to be determining much about their future, it will be large states and large associations of states. Climate change impacts have a good chance of being much greater than small states will be able to endure financially. Trade will be (and is) controlled by large sovereignties. To be globally competitive governance has to be at a high level and the governance skills and financing are most likely to emanate from large sovereignties.
Many of those projecting a future for Sint Maarten on the basis of the past rely on a psychological turnaround when ties with colonial powers are broken. Recent history of comparative jurisdictions shows that breaking ties with colonial powers does not produce a psychological turnaround that suddenly stimulates development and solves underdevelopment problems. The states liberated from colonial associations continue with the ever-present challenges of underdevelopment, financing shortages, productivity limitations and deficits. Their populations still make every effort to move developed brainpower via migration to jurisdictions with a higher level of development (and remuneration).
The anger that exists as a result of slavery and colonialism is real, undeniable and justified. But should it cloud the planning of a future in which there are likely to be very different challenges, possibly no less severe, that will require very different planning and development strategies?
When the future unfolds itself, the fact that the colonial ties were with the Dutch will be an inconsequential detail of what will then be history. The testy friction of a complex kingdom structure will be an unimportant by-note. The greater theme in history will be how the micro-sized small country that is called St. Maarten (or a new name) will have positioned itself in the context of what the future economic sector called tourism (or some very different economic activity) will look like and how they (us) have made their economy sustainable on a tiny land mass with no natural resources that is shared with a major power.
Robbie Ferron
