DeLisle Worrell, Development Stabilization in Small Open Economies: Theories and Evidence from Caribbean Experience. Routledge. 2023.

Price: USD $54.95 | 442 pages

DeLisle Worrell’s Development and Stabilization in Small Economies: Theories and Evidence from Caribbean Experience is a work of love by one of the masters of Caribbean economics. Armed with a Ph.D. in Economics from McGill University, Worrell has had a long and distinguished career, including working at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), fellowships at Princeton and Yale Universities and the Peterson Institute, and a long connection to the Central Bank of Barbados—where he served as Governor from 2009 to 2017. When he is not publishing, he is a member of the Bermuda Financial Policy Council, the Bretton Woods Committee, and the College of Central Banks, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. His current work covers considerable ground on development economics of small open economies.

The main thrust of Development Stabilization in Small Open Economies “is about the implications of small size for the design, targets and implementation of macroeconomic policy, a topic which has not received the attention it deserves during the last four decades.” One of the key factors in impacting these calculations is foreign currency valuations. Worrell contends that part of the problem on the policymaking side—which extends to assessing financial assistance at multilateral lending institutions—is that models used by IMF staff and others to assess Caribbean policies “base their specifications on their experiences, which are of European and North American countries.” This includes factors such as the “dominant currency paradigm,” which encompasses the relationship between nominal exchange rate fluctuations and other nominal and real variables which depend on the currency in which prices can be rigid.

Another issue related to the currency issue faced by small open economies is that their international commerce operates, “in terminology which has become familiar in the context of small renewable energy production, on a buy all/sell all” basis.” This means that small open economies, like those in the Caribbean, face an economic landscape in which their small size and limited range of skills, resources, and productive capacity leave them with a handful of goods and services with which they can compete in international markets. As Worrell explains, “The stability of the small economy is secured by a balance between what they earn in foreign sales and prudent foreign borrowing, and what they spend on purchases from abroad. The growth of the economy depends on selling more abroad, through increased productivity and increased capacity to produce competitive products and services.”

In this context, small open economies are economically fueled by foreign currency. For example, many Caribbean economies have competitive tourist sectors and exports—such as the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Guyana—which earn foreign currency. This in turn helps attract foreign investment. The inward flow of external capital is converted into local currencies, which then go to public utilities, transportation, communications, banking and insurance services, and wholesale and retail activity. In turn, spending on these areas generates imports of fuels, vehicles, equipment, building materials, and consumer items. Any surpluses go into foreign reserves. In this sense, Worrell’s punchline is that, “The economy will grow only when the earnings of foreign currency increase; or when there is major foreign investment.”

Worrell adds that “Government spending on public utilities, health infrastructure or housing may be a national priority, but unless such spending is funded by borrowing from abroad it will be counterproductive, because the imports that would result from the additional activity will deplete the foreign reserves. From the point of view of both growth and stability, the conclusion that foreign currency is what animates the small open economy is inescapable.” This is something that needs to be taken into greater account in looking at small open economies from a model and policy standpoint.

Development and Stabilization in Small Open Economies is divided into four overarching sections. Section A describes the evidence on which the theory and model of Section B are founded. That evidence is not solely from the Caribbean, but is derived from 41 small open economies and considers indicators of human well-being and the changes that have occurred over the past three decades. Chapter 3 (part of Section A) includes case studies of Barbados, the economies of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Cuba, Iceland, and Mauritius. The parts on Barbados, Cuba, and Mauritius are particularly insightful.

Section C expands on the practice of economic policy-making, including the skills and knowledge needed and the proper use of the tools of the discipline. Section D rounds off the book, with chapters on institutions, the global context and changes, and a technical overview of the Human Development Index.

Chapter 19, Practical Guidance for Policy Makers in Small Open Economies, is among the most useful chapters. Here, Worrell ties together the many strands he touches upon throughout the book and underscores what he believes is the need for economists and policymakers to make better use of the Human Development Index (HDI) as the measure of economic success. In many ways, this points to the simple equation that a happy and healthy population is more productive. It also points to a policy framework that improves on the collection, analysis, and timely public distribution of HDI data, “so that the public could be kept abreast of improvements that might be expected as the economic strategy unfolds.”

Another key point is that for any economic program or strategy to succeed, it must be sold to the public. As Worrell notes, “The strategy needs to be sold to the local economy on its merits, with quantitative targets and deadlines with which everyone can mark its progress; and it has to be presented to the world in an informed, analytically sound and persuasive manner.”

In 2010, Worrell gave an address to the Barbados Economic Society in which he stated, “Back in the sixties, when I began my career in economics, we were all too aware of the limitations of the discipline: it was static where the world was dynamic, it assumed competitive markets where few existed, it assumed rationality when we knew full well that economic agents were not rational (at least not by the definition economists use), the choice of first principles was always arbitrary and culture bound, economics had no way of dealing with changing tastes and technology, and much else besides.”

Some time has passed since that speech and Worrell’s book does much to address many of those issues. Worrell’s Development Stabilization in Small Open Economies is highly recommended not only for Caribbeanists, but also those interested in challenges faced by small open economies, students, and policymakers—including those in multinational organizations.

Scott B. MacDonald is Chief Economist at Smith’s Research & Gradings, Research Fellow at Global Americans, and Founding Member of the Caribbean Policy Consortium. His latest book, The New Cold War, China and the Caribbean, was recently published by Palgrave Macmillan.

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Price: USD $34.99 | 320 pages  

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Colombia and Venezuela each elected charismatic, populist leaders. The two countries shared much in common. Both Álvaro Uribe of Colombia and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela adopted a combative posture toward the press, criticized their opponents as enemies of the people, and moved to concentrate power in the executive branch. They also both sought reelection through constitutional reform. Given these similarities, why did democracy decay in Venezuela but persist in Colombia?

Laura Gamboa of the University of Utah answers this question in her latest book, Resisting Backsliding: Opposition Strategies Against the Erosion of Democracy. In doing so, she addresses the larger question of how opposition movements should respond to budding autocrats, a topic that has unfortunately gained relevance across the hemisphere in recent years.

Two Paths Diverged

Gamboa’s book extends the argument that she made in a 2017 Comparative Politics article, in which she examines the presidencies of Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) and Hugo Chávez (1999-2013). According to Gamboa, factors such as economic development, institutions, and public approval were similar in both Colombia and Venezuela when Uribe and Chávez came to power (Gamboa 2017, p. 460). The old parties of both countries were discredited: “Traditional parties were seen as equally corrupt in Venezuela, and as equally incompetent in Colombia” (Gamboa 2017, p. 459). These factors help explain why both nations were vulnerable to backsliding, but not why Colombia preserved its democracy and Venezuela lost its own.

For Gamboa, opposition strategies help explain this divergence in outcomes. The Colombian opposition worked within institutions such as Congress and the courts. Their goals were generally moderate: to constrain Uribe’s power, not to depose him. As such, they were able to forge alliances with moderate uribistas (supporters of President Uribe), and they persuaded Uribe-appointed judges to block the president from running for a third term.

The Venezuelan opposition, in contrast, usually worked outside institutions in successive attempts to remove Chávez from office. These extra-institutional strategies ranged from frequent protests to election boycotts, strikes, and, most dramatically, a coup d’état against Chávez in 2002. In Gamboa’s telling, extra-institutional strategies with radical goals failed in Venezuela, while institutional strategies with moderate objectives succeeded in Colombia.

An Opposition Playbook

In her recent book, Gamboa provides a deeper analysis of the Venezuelan and Colombian cases, and she extrapolates her argument to the cases of Bolivia, Turkey, Poland, and Hungary. One of her boldest claims—implicit in the paper and made explicit in the book—is that Uribe was “as populistic and polarizing, and as willing to erode democracy, as his Venezuelan counterpart” (Gamboa 2022, p. 19). To back up this claim, the author draws on a wealth of reporting, academic research, and her own interviews. This evidence serves to resurface episodes from Uribe’s presidency that many analysts have long forgotten—from the president’s attempts to limit the power of the judiciary and opposition legislators, to his efforts to rule by decree and extend his time in office.

Some will chafe at Gamboa’s insistence that the status quo in Venezuela is in part due to the failure of the country’s opposition. However, recognizing how Venezuela arrived at this point is not the same as assigning blame. This distinction is important not just in assessing the past, but also in considering how the Venezuelan opposition’s choices today can determine future outcomes. With democratic opposition actors divided on such issues as how to hold primaries, how to use leverage against the Maduro regime, and what negotiators in Mexico can reasonably hope to accomplish, there are several possible ways that the Venezuela crisis could evolve. 

Gamboa’s book offers a vital contribution to the academic debate over democratic backsliding. More importantly, it offers practical wisdom. If structural and institutional factors are all that matter, then there is little that democrats can do to resist an ambitious executive. Gamboa makes a powerful case that opposition strategies make a difference and that opposition movements can learn from each other to preserve democracy. As local activists and international actors work together to build a democratic playbook, Gamboa’s work could not be more relevant.

Robert (Bo) Carlson is a Research Associate at Global Americans. He is pursuing his MA in International Relations at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and has written for World Politics Review and The Diplomat. You can find him on Twitter: @bocarlson1.

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Price: USD $75.00 | 240 pages

Distinguished economist and former Barbados Central Bank Governor DeLisle Worrell once declared, “The competitiveness of a small economy has nothing to do with price and everything to do with quality, service, and productivity.” While these three factors are necessary, they are insufficient—there is a complex influencing policy and practice matrix with many more variables. This notion is evident from this latest work by Winston Dookeran, Professor of Practice at the Institute of International Relations of the University of the West Indies. 

Dookeran outlines his intent to trace the ideas that evolved in development and diplomacy over the last decade in policy and academic circles, point to the missing gaps in data and strategy, and identify the way toward a new relevance in analytic leadership. Moreover, he views the work as setting “the analytic baseline for a road map to the changing globalization for the countries on the edge of history in the Caribbean Sea” and as “an anthology of ideas and writings that shaped my thinking over decades of work on development and on the Caribbean.” He pursues this laudable goal through 12 chapters organized into three sections called ‘Confronting the Framework,’ ‘The Missing Link in Thinking,’ and ‘Pathways in Analytic Leadership.’ Daniel Perrotti of the Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Washington, DC office also provides a thoughtful exposition on the evolution of ECLAC’s school of thought and its influence on the Caribbean. 

The Trinidadian-born author offers the supportable contention that leadership and institutions are crucial variables in the performance matrix of countries in the region, and he invokes the wisdom of former Jamaican Prime Minister PJ Patterson who flags the growing acceptance that the old-and-traditional style of governance is obsolete and laments the delayed creation of the desired new order because of continuous, cataclysmic changes. The delay has heightened the importance of seeking “a brand new paradigm for the exercise of political power and the management of national economies,” something that the COVID-19 pandemic has made even more urgent. Quite rightly, Dookeran acknowledges that GDP accounting can no longer adequately capture changes in standards of living; improvements in education and health care, and pollution abatement are among key desiderata in determining improved living standards. 

Statesmen and scholars alike will agree with Dookeran that “collaboration on agreed upon agendas and shared responsibility for the promotion of common interests do not mean that the nation state will disappear, or that national sovereignty will be lessened.” Still, there is incontrovertible evidence that state sovereignty in the Caribbean (and elsewhere) is compromised by the pursuits of non-state actors and the unintended consequences of what former UN Secretary General Kofi Anan once called “Problems Without Passports,” or PWPs. For instance, in the forthcoming book Challenged Sovereignty, this reviewer illustrates how PWPs such as transnational organized crime groups, illicit drug smugglers, and cybercriminals have been pushing Caribbean states towards the edges of their sovereignty and security precipices. 

As a former foreign minister of the twin-island republic, the author fully understands the importance of diplomacy and collective regional integration efforts in attempting to cope with the sovereignty and other challenges of countries in the region. He views the Caribbean as a diplomacy “buffer zone” and advocates that the region work within the realities of the new global economy and strive to emerge on a higher international platform. “In this context,” he contends, “the establishment of the Association of Caribbean States can be seen, not as an integration process per se, but as an attempt to strengthen the region’s negotiating position in international diplomacy.” Moreover, he considers this as a chance for the region “to move away from its traditional posture of protest diplomacy towards a more affirmative stance, in which vital interests are identified and promoted in anticipation of changing balances in world politics.” 

However, Dookeran is candid in bemoaning that the ACS has been unable to get an emerging consensus on how. This circumstance and other realities make both understandable and supportable his proposition that if the Caribbean is to strengthen its negotiating position at a time when both the United States and the European Union are preoccupied with matters unrelated to Caribbean development it must speak with a greater voice. Clearly, the state within Caribbean societies has crucial roles to play in the region’s diplomacy and political economy endeavors. As Dookeran puts it, “there is no doubt that the state has been pivotal in directing the progress of development towards equity and egalitarian public values.” Importantly, though, he is pellucid in contending that the obstacles to the growth process lie in undue reliance on the state and its outdated controls and systems, positing the need for “a ‘catalytic’ role for the state.” 

As might be expected, the discourse in The Caribbean on Edge could not ignore the matter of the COVID-19 pandemic. The author provides a sober, local-global analysis. Although Trinidad and Tobago is the unit of analysis in the local context, his assessment and suggestions carry region-wide resonance. He makes the point that the economic equilibrium of his birthplace has been disrupted by the pandemic’s loop-type shock, which resulted in the collapse of the global oil market, among other developments. Under these complex and interactive circumstances, he argues—and rightly so—global strategic thinking cannot be linear. Drawing on the work of Daniel Drezner, Ronald Krebs, and Randall Schweller on the “End of Grand Strategy,” published in the May/June 2020 issue of Foreign Affairs, he identifies the elements of three strategies that might be valuable to the post-pandemic Caribbean. 

Scholars, policymakers, and health security experts near and far discern not just global geoeconomic fallout from the pandemic but also geopolitical ones. Dookeran shares this thinking and replicates the outlook offered in a May 2020 edition of The Economist. It posits that China’s sphere of influence will grow, that a shift in the global balance of power from West to East will occur, and that the pandemic will become a catalyst for change in Europe’s pursuits and how China engages with the developing world. Beyond this, Dookeran maintains that the logic of the economic equation is often at odds with the logic of the political equation, and that “getting the right balance and policies is a major challenge in political economy.” For him, it is about the politics of the distribution of power in a society, the political sociology of sustaining stability, and the right economic formula for compensation between winners and losers. 

On page 41 of his book, Dookeran offers some prescient observations that might well be situated in his Epilogue and set the stage for his next scholarly enterprise: “Today, the agenda before us has widened considerably, covering the old issues of democracy, development, and integration but at the same time responding to the new issues of sustainable development, good governance, and a new integration paradigm for the region.” He also asserts, “Perhaps more now than before our resilience is being tested, and the sense of our own Caribbean identify is quickly changing. Our response must therefore be to build an enduring commitment to confidence in the Caribbean future that will at the same time retain a sense of Caribbean nationhood.” 

Over the years, the Caribbean has benefited from the worth and wisdom of what might be called crossover leaders who have distinguished themselves in both the political and the academic/scholarly/literary arenas. They could be grouped into two tiers. In the first are luminaries such as scholar-statesmen Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago, Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic, Aimé Césaire of Martinique, Leslie Manigat of Haiti, and Kenny Anthony of St. Lucia, along with scholar-activists José Martí of Cuba, CLR James of Trinidad and Tobago, and Walter Rodney of Guyana. The second group would include scholar-practitioner and Nobel Laureate Arthur Lewis of St. Lucia; professor-politicians Omar Davies, Peter Phillips, and Trevor Munroe of Jamaica; scholar-diplomats Cedric Grant, David Dabydeen, Ronald Sanders, and Odeen Ishmael of Guyana; scholar-diplomats Richard Bernal, Norman-Girvan, and Stephen Vascianne of Jamaica; and scholar-politician-ICJ jurist Mohamed Shahabudeen of Guyana. Of course, this is just a partial list.

Winston Dookeran’s trajectory—trained at the University of Manitoba and the London School of Economics, taught at the University of the West Indies, and served not only as governor of his country’s central bank but also held ministerial portfolios for Finance, Planning and Mobilization, and Foreign Affairs at different times—is also noteworthy. Thus, this “anthology of ideas and writings,” which draws on several earlier works, is informed by a breadth and depth of engagement as both a scholar and a policy practitioner. His book is a thoughtful and timely contribution to the discourse on Caribbean regional policy and diplomacy that students, scholars, and policymakers in the region and those interested in its pursuits and progress should not only acquire but study closely.  

Ivelaw Griffith is a Fellow with Global Americans and a founding member and Fellow of the Caribbean Policy Consortium. His next book, Challenged Sovereignty: The Impact of Drugs, Crime, Terrorism, and Cyber Threats in the Caribbean, will be published by the University of Illinois Press.

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Price USD $30.00 | 554 pages

“Sometimes it seems as if small states were like small boats pushed out into a turbulent sea, free in one sense to traverse it; but, without oars or provisions, without compass or sails, free also to perish.” This statement is among the perceptive remarks made by then Commonwealth Secretary General Shridath Ramphal in addressing the inaugural meeting of the Commonwealth Experts on Small State Security in London almost four decades ago. Many small states—in and out of the Commonwealth—created armies to provide a modicum of a guarantee that they would not perish. This was even if they did not face threats to their territorial sovereignty. 

This was precisely the situation in the Caribbean, as Dion Phillips shows in his magisterial book. Indeed, as he shows, in many cases the establishment of an army was a condition of independence set by the United Kingdom, the colonial power. The Barbadian-born professor emeritus of Sociology at the University of the Virgin Islands spent several decades on this work, with data collection beginning in 1988. This fruit of his labors clearly demonstrates that his time was well spent. 

As is explained in the Preface, the book’s intent is to describe “the origin, structure, recruitment, training, and roles of the contemporary military organizations in the Anglo Caribbean,” with a sub-theme centering on women in the defense forces, once the preserve of men. He acknowledges the cursory treatment of some aspects, noting, “for example, I do not generally address issues of military expenditure, types of hardware in service, and civil/military relations.” Notwithstanding this qualification, Phillips fulfills his intent exceptionally. He offers a tome comprising 19 chapters organized into five parts: the West India Regiment, Bermuda, and Montserrat; Antigua-Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, and Dominica; the Grenada Quartet; Guyana, Jamaica, St. Kitts-Nevis, and Trinidad and Tobago; and Regional Security Cooperation and Conclusion.

Clearly, then, The Military of the Caribbean extends its exploration beyond the existing defense organizations of the independent countries, discussing military formations in some of the dependent territories, such as Bermuda and Montserrat, and examining initiatives that are now defunct, such as in Dominica and Grenada. The extensive narrative description and analysis are bolstered by copious referencing and by a plethora of tables and figures—68 of the former and 18 of the latter, to be exact. The professor also provides an extensive list of the military and political officials he interviewed to source data for the study. 

Readers familiar with the workings of the security sector in the Caribbean could appreciate the author’s herculean efforts in producing this book. As he explained, the view in the region is that “national security concerns dictate that the military draws a curtain of secrecy around operations.” Consequently, “this presumably calls for a clear media strategy that often translates to never speaking on or off the record to journalists, academics, and other outsiders.” A factor that accounts for this is the colonial legacy of the Official Secrets Act, called ‘the zip mouth law,’ which is still alive in many parts of the region. Thus, this book fills a lacuna in the already under-developed field of Caribbean military studies, far exceeding what Sanjay Badri-Maharaj presented in his 2021 study Armed Forces of the English-Speaking Caribbean, which discusses the Bahamas, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago. 

Yet, Dion Phillips has produced a study that goes beyond the field of military studies, extending to the areas of political sociology and security studies. He also demonstrates the futility of attempting to describe the “what,” “who,” “why,” and “how” of the region’s military establishments without understanding international security engagement, with the United States, Britain, China, Brazil, and the Soviet Union, among other countries. Indeed, cognizant of the profound influence of the United States on the nature and pursuits of the region’s security establishments, the author’s stage-setting introductory chapter examines United States security policy towards the Caribbean. Phillips divides the engagement into nine chronological phases: 1898-1930; 1930-1940; 1940-1947; 1947-1989; 1989-2001; 2001-2010; 2010-2017; 2017-2021; 2021-present. Of course, the discourse there reaches beyond the Anglophone Caribbean. 

The author provides several fascinating factoids in the first chapter and concludes it with the reminder that “regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats occupy the White House, the small states of CARICOM operate within the sphere of U.S. influence guided by its national concerns.” Phillips finds a coincidence of interests between the United States and CARICOM countries but also contends that the United States has enlisted “client security” military and police forces to serve as “bulwarks of the system.” It is hoped, though, that when the second edition of the book is produced it will provide more than a superficial discussion of this important aspect of the work, where the discussion in some of the nine phases is afforded less than 12 lines. 

Even before examining the dynamics of the militaries of individual countries, Phillips provides a valuable discussion of the West India Regiment, which was the military component of the West Indian Federation, the attempt by British and Caribbean leaders to fashion a regional governance mechanism. The Regiment, which was headquartered in Jamaica, operated from January 1959 to July 1962, when it was disbanded, following the Federation’s demise. Grenada entered the annals of the region’s history by becoming the place where a first-ever and never-thought-possible event in the Anglophone Caribbean occurred: a coup was prosecuted successfully; that was in March 1979. Then followed years of political upheaval and socialist experimentation that culminated in the revolution’s implosion following the massacre of the country’s top leaders in October 1983, which precipitated an invasion by the United States the same month. Thus, it is unsurprising that Grenada commands four chapters, which no other country does, that examine the dynamics of the Grenada Defense Force, the National Liberation Army, the People’s Revolutionary Armed Forces, and the Revolutionary Military Council. 

The author offers a valuable feature by providing a summary statement at the end of each chapter that captures interesting factoids. We learn in Chapter 3, for instance, that the Bermuda Regiment is the largest of the four existing forces among the British colonies in the region, and in Chapter 6 that the Bahamian military is the only CARICOM force to have launched an aerial drone program for surveillance, in 2022. The point is made in Chapter 9 that the Dominica Defense Force is the only establishment that was disbanded by an existing government and never revitalized, and in Chapter 14 that the Guyana Defense Force had to engage in combat action just three years after Guyana’s independence in 1966, and twice in the same year, in the Rupununi Uprising, when Venezuela instigated a break-away effort, and when Suriname attempted to occupy part of the disputed New River Triangle. We also are reminded in Chapter 16 that the Trinidad and Tobago Defense Force had to suppress two coup attempts since its formation in 1962: one in 1970 by some disgruntled military officers, and the other two decades later by indigenous Muslim dissidents. 

The Howard University-trained scholar discerned three paradigms to have informed the doctrines and structures of the defense forces examined: the British Army-Orientation model based on the British military template; the Naval Orientation, which the Bahamas security establishment adopted; and the Hybrid paradigm, which reflects combined British and Soviet aspects. Guyana, Grenada, and Dominica reflected this at various stages of their development. Phillips also takes the bold—and risky—step in engaging in prognostication, looking ahead five years out. He identifies nearly a dozen mostly plausible realities that will define the defense forces, their operational environments, and pursuits. These include strengthened links between military and police forces; diminished likelihood of challenges to democratic rule by military officers; reduced U.S. security assistance, which will cause forces to rely more on internal resources; and expanded Chinese military and diplomatic engagement as well as enhanced Indian involvement.  

No book, especially one the size of Phillips’, is likely to be totally error-free. For instance, it is asserted erroneously on page 113 that the Royal Bahamas Dense Force (RBDF) “remains the only Commonwealth Caribbean defense force that routinely sends women to sea.” The older Jamaica Defense Force (JDF), which was created in July 1962, had been doing so long before the advent of the RBDF in March 1980. In fact, the strides there were such that in 1984, then Commander Antonette Wemyss-Gorman made history in becoming the first female commanding officer of Jamaica’s Coast Guard. She entered the history books again in 2002 when she assumed the role of commanding officer of the cutter Belmont Point, thereby becoming the first known female ship captain in the Caribbean. So it wasn’t entirely surprising that further trailblazing would be in the cards. In January 2022, she was promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral and became Jamaica’s—and the Caribbean’s—first female Chief of Defense Staff. 

There also is a missed opportunity in the valuable discussion on regional security cooperation and the Regional Security System (RSS). Although the author mentions the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI) en passant in the chapter on U.S. Caribbean Policy, the importance of the CBSI to the pursuits of the RSS and of military, police, and criminal justice establishments in the region since 2010 when the CBSI became operational, necessitated some substantive attention to it. Interestingly, the Congressional Research Service reported in December 2022 that the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI) Authorization Act passed by the House in April 2022 would have authorized $74.8 million for the CBSI for each fiscal year from FY2022 through FY2026. The legislation also would have required the State Department, USAID, and the Inter-American Foundation to submit a strategy to prioritize disaster response and resilience measures, matters to which defense (and disaster and other agencies) in the region are paying increased attention, as Phillips explains in the book. 

Overall, Dion Phillips is to be commended for producing a well-organized and prodigiously-researched study that has the added feature of being jargon-free and could be easily understood by specialist and non-specialist readers alike. The Military of the Caribbean is a work of scholarly heft that is fated to become required reading at the Caribbean Military Academy in Jamaica and at military training centers across the region. Moreover, it likely will command the attention of professors and students in security studies programs at institutions outside the region, such as at the William Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies in Washington, DC.

Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith is a Fellow with Global Americans and a founding member and Fellow of the Caribbean Policy Consortium. His next book, Challenged Sovereignty: The Impact of Drugs, Crime, Terrorism, and Cyber Threats in the Caribbean, will be published by the University of Illinois Press.

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Price USD $49.99 |152 pages 

One of the major issues facing the United States is migration from what is now called the Northern Triangle of Central America—composed of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. These three countries have a combined population of around 34 million, some of the lowest living standards in the Western Hemisphere. They also suffer from political corruption and high levels of violence. Neil Shenai, who served as the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Attaché in Mexico and Central America from 2016-2018, has written a book, Escaping the Governance Trap: Economic Reform in the Northern Triangle, which addresses what he regards as the main problem facing the Northern Tier countries—a failure in governance that has left the region bleeding people. 

According to Shenai, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala are entangled in a governance trap, which he defines as “a path-dependent equilibrium in which weak states with contested authority fail to penetrate civil society and achieve self-sustaining economic growth, resulting in states that undersupply political order and economic opportunity.” Central to Shenai’s governance trap framework are the following propositions:

• The state is an autonomous organization with a monopoly on the use of legitimate force;
• Northern Triangle countries have weak states due to their contested monopoly of violence and need to improve their “Weberian stateness,” the latter of which is a reference to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, where the development of states reflects a cost-benefit analysis of citizens seeking to avoid a Hobbesian “state of nature.”
• State capacity is a composite “of activities of a state’s scope of activities pursued and coercive ability.” Moreover, some combinations of state scope and strength are better at promoting high governance than others.
• Bad institutions and good institutions strongly exhibit path-dependent qualities. This means that initial conditions matter in putting a country down one developmental path or another.
• It is possible to “get to Denmark” with the right policy intervention. This, in many regards, is the critical message of the book. For Shenai, getting to Denmark–having a modern liberal democracy that balances the key institutions of the state, the rule of law, and accountable government—should be the endgame for any state as “states that are more responsive to the needs of the public are generally better at public goods provision than less responsive ones; that a minimum level of state strength is necessary for economic development; and that the rule of law is a key determinant of a country’s economic climate and thus its attractiveness as a destination and platform of economic development.”

Considering the poor governance record of the Northern Triangle countries, is it possible for them to get to Denmark? According to Shenai, “Northern Triangle countries can get to Demark (or achieve lasting economic and political development) with the right set of domestic and institutional factors, including by improving stateness, the rule of law, and accountability.” He is careful to note that there is no “silver bullet” in the developmental game, but that domestic reformers and their allies “should also expect politicians to behave rationally and should thus focus on altering their cost-benefit calculi to promote collective action over graft and patronage to mitigate the politician’s dilemma.”

Escaping the Governance Trap reviews fiscal policy, monetary and exchange rate policy, and structural reforms. Although measures such as greater transparency and disclosure in the fiscal process, reducing vulnerabilities, and safeguarding monetary and exchange rate stability will help get to Denmark, Shenai admits that the scope of work ahead is considerable. Additionally, international actors, friendly governments, and multilateral institutions can help these countries reach their targets.

One of the more noteworthy parts of the book is an annex to the second chapter, which discusses the Salvadorean government’s decision to adopt Bitcoin as the national currency in 2021. President Nayib Bukele’s reasoning for the change was to help reduce financial transaction fees, especially for cross-border transfers, and enhance financial access. While some heralded El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as the dawn of a new day, the reaction from the IMF, World Bank, and Moody’s rating agency was generally negative.

For Shenai, Bitcoin “is a speculative asset that derives its value from reflexive market dynamics in which market participants believe that other market participants believe holds value.” He warns that if Bitcoin underperforms or is poorly managed it could augment perceptions of El Salvador as a risky financial jurisdiction. Considering the high level of cryptocurrency volatility as well as the FTX debacle and the embarrassment it caused the Bahamas, there are considerable risks to adopting Bitcoin as the national currency. It probably does not bode well as a national policy considering that most Salvadoreans refuse to use it in their daily transactions, preferring the U.S. dollar. 

The book also dedicates space to external actors—such as Canada, the United States, and Mexico—as well as the diasporas of each country that can help enhance governance and economic development in the region. For the U.S., he believes that working through multilateral organizations has value, though in some cases a unilateral approach is a better option. On the latter, he points to money laundering as the U.S. often has better capacity in punishing bad actors, especially if they launder their money or stash their ill-gotten assets in the United States.  

The book has much to offer policymakers, but is heavily geared to an academic audience, with a considerable review of the literature pertaining to state development. The sections on Bitcoin in El Salvador and U.S. policy in Central America are well worth the read. However, the book could have used a brief chapter on Central America’s historical development. It would have provided a useful context to the rest of the book, which would have given its message more weight. History does play a role in how countries face development challenges, especially if they want to get to Denmark. Shenai ends on a hopeful, though hedged concluding comment: “Ultimately, the future will depend on the political will of the Northern Triangle populations and the willingness of international partners to grasp their outstretched hands.” This book is recommended to academic audiences and policymakers, especially those engaged in economic development and governance issues. 

Scott B. MacDonald is the chief economist at Smith’s Research & Gradings, Research Fellow at Global Americans, and founding director of the Caribbean Policy Consortium. His latest book, The New Cold War, China and the Caribbean, was recently published by Palgrave Macmillan.

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Price: USD 28.00 | 280 pages

Daniel Runde’s forthcoming book, The American Imperative: Reclaiming Global Leadership through Soft Power, is a sweeping examination of the U.S. role in international development. Runde, a Senior Vice President at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has worked on the front lines of development policy for the last two decades and, fittingly, draws on this experience to explain why U.S. rhetoric has so often differed from policy in recent years. Just as importantly, he charts a new course for U.S. leadership in development amid rising great power competition.

Runde divides his book into two sections—the first assessing the challenges in international development today and the second proposing tools to overcome these challenges. His view of international development is transformational, where outside assistance can catalyze internal reforms and lead to broad-based economic growth.

His view is also a political one. In a refreshingly candid analysis of U.S. aid, Runde not only accepts, but also endorses the combination of strategic and altruistic motives that drive foreign policy decisions.

In recounting the history of U.S. overseas assistance, Runde adds nuance to the narratives that many of us have previously heard. Many accounts of the East Asian economic miracle, for example, stress the role of domestic infrastructure investment. This was certainly a major factor in the success of the Four Asian Tiger economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. However, as Runde notes, outside help was also a significant catalyst. In the 1950s and 1960s, U.S. aid was roughly half of the public investment in Taiwan. For South Korea during the same period, U.S. scholarships provided high-quality, low-cost education to thousands of future leaders in business and government. These leaders drew on their educational experience to propel the country’s postwar economic boom. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) office in Seoul closed in 1980 and, by 2009, South Korea had joined the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Once an aid recipient, South Korea is now a major donor.

Runde’s book is at its strongest when he examines a puzzle from recent history. The Trump administration constantly questioned U.S. aid commitments, proposed a 30 percent budget cut for diplomacy and development, and even sought to subsume USAID under the Department of State. Yet, in the end, Trump’s time in office was not nearly as catastrophic for the United States’ global development posture as it could have been.

What explains this puzzle? In part, it was the advocacy of Runde and his conservative internationalist allies. When the White House sought to cut funding for USAID and the Department of State, Runde lobbied his Congressional colleagues in the Republican Party to prevent the move. When China advanced its favored candidate as head of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)—an obscure, but important multilateral body—it would have been easy for isolationists and unilateralists in the Trump administration to do nothing. Instead, Runde organized State Department officials to successfully back a pro-U.S. Singaporean candidate for the role. Runde’s advocacy not only limited the harms of the Trump administration, but also advanced new, positive initiatives, such as the launch of the U.S. Development Finance Corporation.

In both his advocacy with policymakers and his book, Runde roots his arguments for U.S. global leadership in the need to respond to China. Here, however, his analysis is on more contentious ground. At several instances in the book, Runde argues that China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a form of “debt-trap diplomacy,” a concept that has gained currency among foreign policy hands, but is disputed by leading BRI experts such as Deborah Brautigam, Meg Rithmire, and Jonathan Hillman. As I have previously written for Global Americans, choosing a Chinese loan over a U.S. or multilateral offer entails tradeoffs for any developing country. Leaders who accept a Chinese loan are not necessarily being tricked or taking bribes; rather they could be making the best choice for their people. This is particularly true in Latin America, which suffers from deep and persistent infrastructure gaps.

Whatever the shortcomings of Runde’s analysis of China’s foreign policy aims, he astutely recognizes the political benefits of framing the need for U.S. leadership in terms of U.S.-China competition. Runde’s success in advancing U.S. engagement is largely due to his argument that the United States is losing to China and that policymakers must do more to keep up. This argument has shown continued relevance in the Biden years, as Runde has successfully pushed for the confirmation of several ambassadorial nominees and marshaled support for a U.S. candidate to replace the Chinese head of the International Telecommunication Union.

With the continued influence of “America First” legislators in the U.S. Congress, Runde’s approach to garnering support for U.S. engagement will stay relevant. By emphasizing the benefits of diplomacy and development and framing them in a way that is compelling to policymakers across the ideological spectrum, Runde’s book could not have arrived at a more important time.

Robert (Bo) Carlson is a Research Associate at Global Americans and a MA candidate at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He has previously written for World Politics Review and The Diplomat. You can find him on Twitter: @bocarlson1.

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Price USD $ 149.99 | 295 pages

One of the more difficult international relations concepts to define is “security.” In the older Westphalian sense, it is implied the idea of the nation-state defending its borders from invaders. Over the past decade, however, security as an international relations term has radically shifted—casting its definitional net over not only traditional nation-state concerns, but also climate change, energy, migration, health, terrorism, drug trafficking, and cyberwarfare. These changes and the sliding definition scale are reshaping the security conversation. A strong effort in this direction is made by a new book edited by Georgina Chami, Jerome Teelucksingh, and Marlon Anatol.[1] In Managing New Security Threats in the Caribbean, they seek and succeed in addressing some of the gaps in these newer security themes as they relate to the Caribbean. 

The book’s guiding narrative is captured by Chami, Teelucksingh, and Anatol, who note that “The future of all island societies is threatened by the present mode of economic organization and the ensuing degradation of their natural environment. This has contributed to a large extent to the insecurities faced by many small states.”  However, as the authors note, Caribbean history has made the region unique—a geopolitical crossroads, where most economies are dependent on tourism, and particularly  vulnerable to climate change and energy price volatility. These points are emphasized in Ivelaw Griffith’s discussion of the contemporary security landscape which provides a useful methodological approach to security. Griffith notes that security “has never really been merely protection to military threats,” but rather “…the preservation of a people’s freedom from external military attack and coercion, from internal subversion, and from the erosion of cherished political, economic and social values.” He further highlights this point with his discussion on drugs, crime challenges, and terrorism.

Ambassador Phillips-Spencer’s essay provides a noteworthy addition to the literature on Caribbean international relations. It breaks new ground in providing an insightful view of the recalibration of U.S. foreign policy and how this impacts the Caribbean. He notes that U.S. foreign policy remains focused on Asia, Europe, and the Middle East—often through the lens of great-power competition with China and Russia. This exclusion leads to Phillips-Spencer to ask two key questions: how significant is the Western Hemisphere in the U.S. decision-making process when Washington considers its global role? And how do small developing countries in the Caribbean interpret and respond geopolitically to the preceding question? Phillips-Spencer posits that U.S. policy is in flux, seeking to find a new equilibrium as the country transitions from being a global hegemonic mediator to a more selective and strategic approach. Therefore, Caribbean countries need to be more proactive and strategic in the pursuit of their own collective and individual geopolitical interests rather than “reactive followers of extra-regional powers and their allies.”

Nalanda Roy places the Caribbean within the great power competition of the 21^st century—exploring China’s growing role in the Caribbean. She notes that China is driven by a combination of factors, including its attraction to the Caribbean’s natural resources and markets, its growing geopolitical influence, efforts to reduce Taiwan’s diplomatic standing, and boosting its own material prosperity (defined by the China Dream). She concludes, “…the question remains of whether the Caribbean Community will soon turn out to be China’s backyard and resemble the South China Sea. Anti-American sentiments are growing and are an indication that China’s diplomatic forays in the Caribbean in the light of the Belt and Road Initiative are successful.”

While Roy focuses on more traditional great power politics, the next two chapters examine very different types of security concerns. The first, by Raghunath Mahabir, reflects on the mix of migration, violent extremism, and gang violence stemming from Trinidad and Tobago’s experience with the influx of Venezuelan refugees. This is followed by Marlon Anatol, Sacha Joseph-Mathews, and Amanda Anatol’s discussion about human trafficking in the CARICOM region (with a focus on Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Suriname). Both are robust studies of the complex, multidimensional issue of transnational crime that many Caribbean countries face.

Brian Cockburn and Georgina Chami take yet another approach to security threats in the Caribbean—discussing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education (mainly at Trinidad and Tobago’s University of the West Indies). Critically, the authors highlight the need for higher education institutions to reposition themselves to adequately prepare workforces to respond to future disasters of a similar scale.

Relatedly, Vijay Kumar Chattu, Leonard Peruski, and W. Andy Knight’s chapter focuses on health diplomacy in the CARICOM region. It is a welcome addition as it reflects the changing perception of security. Indeed, globalization has made disease a greater risk. Travel has become easier for larger numbers of people, many of whom flock to one of the world’s major tourist attractions: the Caribbean. This creates particular risks for the region and CARICOM countries must strengthen partnerships to tackle these threats.

Anthony Bryan discusses energy security, which is undergoing a seismic shift. Most Caribbean countries remain dependent on oil as their main source of energy, but the need to transit to renewables is underway despite underfunding and delays. He notes that the transition process will not be smooth and highlights the need “…for a broader, widely encompassing holistic approach to energy security; one that brings together actions taken at the technical, economic and political levels, to maximize the degree of short- and long-term security in a context that simultaneously comprises energy transitions, cyber threats and climate impacts.” He also notes that the southern Caribbean oil and natural gas producers can play a crucial role in the transition. Further complicating traditional definitions of international security, Christopher Brown discusses the pressing need for good governance, public service reform, and democratic legitimacy. Anthony Gonzales’ analysis of the implementation deficit in CARICOM and its disappointing progress on regional integration further emphasize the importance of these issues to the security debate.

Chami, Teelucksingh, and Anatol have produced a timely and thought-provoking book that has taken a step forward in pulling together broad strands of international developments that are redefining the international security landscape and the Caribbean’s place in these shifts. This book is strongly recommended for university audiences, policymakers, security analysts, and other interested parties.

Scott B. MacDonald is Chief Economist at Smith’s Research & Gradings, Research Fellow at Global Americans, and Founding Member of the Caribbean Policy Consortium. His latest book, The New Cold War, China and the Caribbean, was recently published by Palgrave Macmillan.

[1] The editors work out of Trinidad and Tobago’s University of the West Indies, St. Augustine and the Cipriani School of Labour and Cooperative Studies, St. Joseph.

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Price: USD $ 98.99 | 319 pages

Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison once said, “if there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.” Scott MacDonald seems to have taken Morrison’s wisdom to heart in researching and writing The New Cold War, China, and the Caribbean, not only in writing a ground-breaking book but one that many other individuals would have liked to read—and write.

In just over 300 pages, MacDonald combines his intimate familiarity with the Caribbean, his training as an economist, and his conversance with strategic studies and China studies, to produce a book that is as perceptive as it is timely, with appropriate forays into history in order to explain contemporary developments. The author explains his intent to examine the slide into a new Cold War in the Caribbean, his primary argument being that the region’s “geopolitics have shifted from a period of relative great power disinterest in the aftermath of the Cold War to a gradual movement into a new Cold War in which a global rivalry between the United States and China is acted out regionally.”

MacDonald does acknowledge that there is a debate about whether or not there is a new Cold War, and he concedes that this new iteration of the Cold War is not an exact replication of the previous one. For him, though, the new Cold War involves “the geopolitical and economic rivalry between a set of Western liberal democratic and market-oriented countries and their competitors who represent an alternative set of guiding political principles which embrace authoritarian or autocratic regimes and usually favor a large state role in the economy …” In this respect, the main protagonists are the United States and China, with other countries drawn into the competing camps. Moreover, a central proposition of the study is the eminently supportable contention that “the global political economy is seen through the lenses of competition between countries, which can veer into outright rivalry and at times conflict.”

The book’s definition of the region goes beyond the archipelago Caribbean. While not encompassing the entire Caribbean Basin, its ambit includes Belize and Panama in the Central American isthmus, along with Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana in northern South America. MacDonald, who dates his venturing into the Caribbean to the late 1960s with a family visit to U.S. Virgin Islands, offers 10 chuck-full-of-value chapters with fascinating titles, including “China’s Caribbean Adventure,” “China, Venezuela, and Cuba: the New Cold War,” “China and the English-speaking Caribbean and Suriname,” “Caribbean States and the New Landscape,” “The China-Taiwan Duel: Caribbean Echoes,” “Realignments, Tensions, and Asymmetry: Russia and Iran,” “Europe, Canada, and the Caribbean, and the New Cold War,” and “U.S. Policy in a Choppy Caribbean Sea.”

Quite rightly, MacDonald, whose day job is chief economist for Smith’s Research and Gradings, a Virginia-based financial credit grading company that conducts research and provides credit reports using its own trademarked grading system, argues that with the new Cold War Caribbean countries run the risk of being in the middle of two hegemonic powers. Discussion of several flashpoints serves to reinforce this point.

According to the author, “the major potential flashpoints are the potential for the Chinese to establish military bases or the selling of high caliber missiles (capable of reaching the United States) to Cuba or Venezuela. It is one thing for China and, for that matter, Russia, and Iran to send their ships to the Caribbean. It is something very different to put offensive weapons with the capacity of causing massive damage in the continental United States into the hands of hostile forces.” Other flashpoints are Panama, Venezuela, and Guyana. In relation to Venezuela and Guyana, mindful of China’s silence on Venezuela’s claim against its eastern neighbor, the author asks perceptively: “What happens if Venezuela actually makes a military attempt to occupy part of the disputed area? Would China back Venezuela? It [China] is, after all, one of the major international economic props for the Caracas regime.”

The author, who also is a Fellow with Global Americans and the Caribbean Policy Consortium, raises some crucial questions, including whether Caribbean countries can “navigate between Chinese largesse, behind which possibly loom the debt traps and loss of control over parts of their economies and the power of the United States, which has ‘re-discovered’ the region and is seeking to re-engage?” 

But the foregoing is just part of the richness of MacDonald’s book; part of its richness lies in the fact that, with a mind to the future, it ponders three future scenarios: a China Above All Scenario, a China Fade Scenario, and a Muddle-Through Scenario. The book’s final words also are worth capturing here: “Although it is difficult to maintain unity, there is advantage to strength in numbers. Indeed, the words of Haiti’s revolutionary hero, Toussaint Louverture, are worth noting: ‘Unite; for combination is stronger than witchcraft.” It is good to be stronger than witchcraft, especially in a cold war. And as we look toward to the rest of the 2020s and into the 2030s, the new Cold War is likely to be less of a debating point and more of a reality.”

Overall, MacDonald examines some of the crucial dynamics of the contemporary Caribbean in the global post-Cold War context, offering a rich and provocative analysis of the region as both the subject and object of global power politics that is characterized as a new Cold War. He pays appropriate attention to the policies and pursuits of global-level actors such as China, the United States, Russia, and Iran. Thus, this book offers an exceptional study of contemporary Caribbean geopolitics and geoeconomics, with appropriate attention to historical antecedents. As such, it makes an invaluable contribution to the literature on the international politics of the Caribbean.

In addition to engaging existing scholarship regarding the international dynamics of United States-Caribbean and China-Caribbean relations, it extends the discourse to under-studied pursuits of Iran in the region. Scott MacDonald offers a timely, well-thought-out study with sound organization and lucid writing devoid of jargon. This conduces to its readability for various readership constituencies; not just to students, but also to analysts and policy wonks within the Caribbean, in the United States and the other global level actors jockeying to increase their geopolitical and geoeconomic market share in the Caribbean, and in the multilateral organizations that deal with the region. The New Cold War, China, and the Caribbean is a must-read for people in these constituencies.

Ivelaw Griffith is a Fellow with Global Americans and a founding member and Fellow of the Caribbean Policy Consortium. His next book, Challenged Sovereignty in the Caribbean, will be published by the University of Illinois Press.

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Price: USD $15.99 | 307 pages

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (1754-1838), one of France’s most notable statesmen, once stated: “One’s reputation is like a shadow, it is gigantic when it precedes you, and a pigmy in proportion when it follows.” This is perhaps how history will judge Jair Bolsonaro, who unexpectedly won Brazil’s presidency in 2018: he entered office casting a long shadow, but as he struggles to be re-elected in 2022, he may come off more of smaller stature than many initially perceived. That said, he has kept the byzantine game of Brazilian politics captivating as he has consistently questioned Brazil’s electronic voting system, raising concerns about his willingness to accept any results other than his victory. If he loses, will Bolsonaro risk putting Latin America’s largest economy and democracy into political turmoil like that which occurred in the aftermath of the 2020 U.S. election? Or will he gracefully acknowledge the results? Or, in the unlikely event that he wins, will he uphold Brazil’s democracy?   

These questions necessitate an in-depth understanding of Bolsonaro. Fortunately, Richard Lapper, a veteran journalist for the Financial Times, produced Beef, Bible and Bullets: Brazil in the Age of Bolsonaro. Originally published in 2021 (and updated with a January 2022 epilogue), it is a must-read for anyone grappling with understanding how this former army captain and congressional backbencher became Brazil’s most powerful man.

In pulling together the strands of how Bolsonaro assumed the presidency in 2019, Lapper delves into the past two decades, providing a readable tale of how Brazil made a historic shift in 2003, when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the Workers’ Party (PT) came to office, ushering in a period of 13 years of center-left governance. Despite initial concerns among the military, business, and middle classes, the Lula years were a high point for Brazil in recent history. The country benefited from a commodities super-cycle, revenues from which helped the government to target social programs to lift some of the poorest Brazilians out of extreme poverty, expand the middle class, and give the economy a strong growth spurt. Lula served two terms and in 2011 handed over the presidency to his associate Dilma Rousseff, who served until she was impeached in 2016.

While the economy expanded through the Lula period, societal divides became more manifest, especially during the Rousseff years. Support for the PT frayed among a number of constituencies, with three groups emerging to form what would be the Bolsonaro base. The first was Brazil’s rapidly growing and influential evangelical churches, which became disenchanted with the PT due to its pursuit of identity politics; many church groups were alarmed by deepening social liberalism and remained opposed to abortion, gay marriage, LGBTQ rights and sex education in the schools. Bolsonaro’s defense of family values and often crude comments about the LGBTQ community found a ready echo chamber.

A second group was the so-called beef lobby (mainly agricultural groups but also small artisanal miners called garimpeiros), who favor economically developing the Amazon, which puts them at odds with indigenous groups, local environmentalists, NGOs, and international organizations. Bolsonaro’s questioning of climate change and willingness to let large swaths of the Amazon burn (as farmers clear the forest for fields) easily made this group a constituency.  

The last part of the Bolsonaro base, bullets, came from a rise in violent crime. While increased drug-related crime eroded public support for the PT, Lapper does an excellent job of providing an understanding as to how the police (with links to militias) emerged as “an aggressive and noisy political lobby.” Indeed, one Brazilian researcher referred to the rise of right-wing policemen as “Bolsonaro’s shock troops.” The appointment of ex-police and military persons to his administration only reinforced the ties between the Brazilian leader and law and order forces.  

What helped coalesce the three groups behind Bolsonaro and propel him to the presidency was the country’s recession during 2014-2016, which was the worst in modern history for Brazilians. What made this difficult for many Brazilians was that the sharp downturn in economic fortunes (caused in large part by the end of the commodity super-cycle and poor policy responses by the government) came on the heels of a period of increasing national wealth and personal incomes. People blamed the Rousseff government.

Equally important in helping Bolsonaro’s rise was that the country’s economic deterioration coincided with a highly public scandal (Operation Car Wash or Operação Lava Jato). The scandal exposed the corrupt relationship between state-owned companies, politicians, and private construction firms. The PT was revealed to be as equally corrupt as any other party. Indeed, Lula would eventually be convicted of corruption and serve time, while Rousseff was impeached. As Lapper notes: “For many, Rousseff was at the center of a corrupt and ineffective administration. As the economy contracted and unemployment increased, anger at the PT government’s involvement in the Lava Jato corruption scandal grew.”  

The result of a brutal economic downturn and massive corruption scandal was the election of a social media-savvy political outsider, Bolsonaro. Although far right in his political rhetoric, he gained the support of enough Brazilians to give him a solid majority in the 2018 elections.

Who did Brazil elect? According to Lapper, “I label him a populist—rather than a fascist—because it seems to me, at least so far, that Bolsonaro has yet to develop the kind of political machine or introduce the institutional capacity that he would need to bring fascism into being.” While he embodies some fascistic elements, the Brazilian leader failed to create a viable political movement, has been unable to muzzle the press or incapacitate the judiciary, and lacks any national paramilitary force. Lapper boils Bolsonaro down to “a politician who seeks to reduce complex problems to simple choices.” He adds, “…I see Bolsonaro in this book as an extreme right-wing populist, as someone similar to leaders such as Donald Trump, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, or Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines.”

Perhaps The Economist best summed up international concerns over the 2022 election, with its cover of the September 10-16, 2022 edition: “The Man Who Would Be Trump: Bolsonaro Prepares His Big Lie in Brazil.” In his epilogue, Lapper leans in the direction that Bolsonaro will not win in 2022. He believes that his base of support, beef, bible, and bullets groups, has fractured under the pressures of an eroded standard of living, a poor COVID-19 pandemic response, more corruption scandals, and stalled economic reforms. Significantly, in Brazil’s 1964 coup, the armed forces, business community, and much of the middle class were supportive of halting the country’s leftist tilt, but the same cannot be said today. Indeed, much of Brazilian civic society is braced for any potential upheaval along the lines of the U.S. in January 2021.

Lapper’s Beef, Bible and Bullets provides an excellent guide through Brazil’s current political complexities and the man who would be Trump. It is strongly recommended.

Scott B. MacDonald is Chief Economist at Smith’s Research & Gradings, Research Fellow at Global Americans, and Founding Member of the Caribbean Policy Consortium. His latest book, The New Cold War, China and the Caribbean, was recently published by Palgrave Macmillan.

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Price: USD $29.99 | 352 pages

William Neuman’s Things Are So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela is a welcome addition to the chronicles of Venezuela’s Chavista experiment. In many ways, it makes a very readable sequel to Raúl Gallegos’ excellent Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela (2016), which provided a gritty read on the rise and fall of oil in Venezuela, and the state’s ensuing economic mismanagement. Neuman’s book incorporates many of those themes but significantly provides one of the more comprehensive profiles of Nicolás Maduro, who succeeded Hugo Chávez and remains in power.

Neuman is well-qualified to write on Venezuela, considering he has been a reporter for The New York Times for more than 15 years, including a stint serving as the paper’s bureau chief while based in Caracas. He knows his subject, filling the pages with insightful interviews of regime supporters and detractors. The book’s name came about after Neuman talked with a Venezuelan woman who has seen her country’s fortunes go from bad to worse but reserves her opinion that things can deteriorate further. That sense of pessimism resonates with most Venezuelans, especially the over five million who have left the country.   

Neuman embraces the oil-as-a-national shaper argument. He states, “It’s not so much that Venezuela produced oil; it’s that oil produced Venezuela. The country that emerged from the depths of this underdevelopment was in almost every way shaped by the economics of oil and the social and political relations that oil imposed on it.” Neuman supports his assessment by chronicling the atrophy of the country’s other economic sectors, taking to heart the words of Venezuela’s first democratic oil minister who stated that oil is “the devil’s excrement.” In Venezuela’s case (as in so many other petrostates), the country’s fixation on oil translated into widespread corruption and a heightened vulnerability to external shocks tied to the rollercoaster-like ride of international oil prices and the related dangers of the “Dutch Disease.”

In Venezuela, the relationship between oil money and public spending has gone hand-in-hand. Neuman writes, “In the eyes of its citizens the Venezuelan state is little more than an ATM—the magic box that stands between the oil in the ground and the outstretched palm, the device that performs the alchemy of turning oil into money in my pocket.” During much of Chávez’s time in office (1999-2013), oil prices were buoyant; the country’s charismatic leader was able to grandiosely direct money to his pet projects (many of them white elephants), target the lower classes for government largesse (which helped build support for the regime), and buy weapons from the Chinese and Russians to help him quell domestic discontent.

The about-face for the regime came when Chávez died of cancer in 2013, leaving the Bolivarian legacy to Maduro, who, despite considerable adversity and a painful economic decline, has remained in power. While the collapse of international oil prices in 2014 was a major blow to Venezuela, so was Maduro’s inability to make decisions. Neuman noted, “One of the things that everyone noticed about Maduro, after he became president, was that he seemed to hate to make decisions. The warning lights were flashing, the economy was deteriorating, but Maduro refused to change the policies that he’d inherited from Chávez.”

Readers then arrive at the question of why Chávez picked Maduro as his successor? Neuman offers various viewpoints: that the vice president was picked because the Cuban advisors thought that they could control him; Maduro and his wife (a formidable politician within Chavista circles) maneuvered him into being an indispensable man for the ailing president; Chávez needed to pick a non-military man to maintain the political balance within the regime; and Chávez had made certain that he derailed other potential rivals to his dominance, leaving only his vice president. Observers and readers alike can still speculate which theory they find most compelling, yet what is certain is that Maduro is still in power, and if he reaches 2023 in office, he will have lasted a decade.

Maduro’s ruling style, characterized by a willingness to use force and putting off decisions, has hurt the country, especially when oil prices went into freefall in 2014 and stayed low over the next several years. Neuman notes, “For Maduro, governing was about survival. He focused on proving to the doubters that he was up to the task.” Those doubters included those from within the regime’s ranks, some of whom likely wanted his job, and others from the opposition who accused him of winning his first election through fraud. The result meant that Maduro’s government approached each problem with short-term solutions.

Neuman quotes Temir Porras, a former high-ranking Chavista, to illustrate how even the faithful became disillusioned with the country’s direction under Maduro: “Maduro governs week by week. One week after another he goes about building an administration that might wind up lasting twelve years. It’s like a guy who battles day after day to stay in power and finally he’s there for years, but in the end, those are lost years, because they were all spent in this state of immediacy, of short-term thinking.” 

Maduro’s failure to tackle economic issues led to the erosion of legitimate commerce and promoted the development of illicit economic activities. Small and medium-sized mining enterprises in the country’s interior were especially vulnerable, and their assets have largely fallen into the hands of criminal syndicates or groups willing to work with corrupt military officials. Neuman points to the hierarchy of the illicit gold industry: “Everyone knew their place in the great flow of riches. The dirt-poor miners at the bottom, the sindicato tough guys, the privates and the officers in the National Guard, the pranes, and far away, where they didn’t have to get their boots dirty, the government officials who received their portion.”

The book does have just a few weaknesses (which are minimal)—the Cuban, Chinese and Russian roles in Venezuela’s decline are limited to near-cameo appearances (despite the billions of dollars the two extra-regional actors pumped into the country and Havana’s security role). Neuman portrays the U.S. role as negative, without much discussion beyond the ham-fisted nature of the Trump administration. Moreover, the criminal activities of the Venezuelan elite (including the military) are at times glossed over.

All in all, Neuman’s Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse is a welcome contribution to the literature on Venezuela’s time of troubles under the hands of Presidents Chávez and Maduro. He has done an excellent job in capturing the grittiness of a country that has gone off the developmental tracks. I highly recommend this book to anyone that has an interest in Venezuela.  

Scott B. MacDonald is the chief economist at Smith’s Research & Gradings, Research Fellow at Global Americans, and founding director of the Caribbean Policy Consortium. His latest book, The New Cold War, China and the Caribbean, is forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan.

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