Abe Lowenthal - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

'A responsible American leader today will realise that the relationship between the United States and its closest neighbours ... is of particular importance to the United States.'

One of the world's leading analysts on Latin American and Caribbean relations with the United States met with me on March 10. Married to eminent scholar Dr Jane S. Jaquette, Abraham Lowenthal says his visit to Jamaica after almost 20 years was due to a promise he made his wife that he would not set up a fourth think tank!

In addition to being the author of 12 books, more than 100 journal articles and some 150 newspaper articles, Dr Lowenthal is also founder and first CEO of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Latin American Program (1977-1983), the Inter-American Dialogue (1982-1992) and the Pacific Council on International Policy (1995-2005).

The price he paid for creating these successful organisations was to reduce his academic work and presence in Latin America and the Caribbean. To remedy that, he and his wife have already been to Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador researching how these places are different from what they were 15 years ago and why.

"In each country we've been meeting with a diverse cross section of people of leadership quality, who are articulate and well versed in their societies. We're trying to get variety and diversity in political perspective, in occupational vantage points, in generations, gender and so on." Lowenthal explains that everyone is asked what they would tell someone who awoke after being in a coma for 15 years. What has changed? What's important that's changed? Why did it change? What are the main things that haven't changed that are permanent reference points?

New book

He says: "It's amazing how much you can learn talking with the right kind of people with questions like that." The results will be a new book.

While he refused to reveal what he had thus far observed in Jamaica after meeting with two former prime ministers and a host of others, he spoke instead of US relations and the new Obama administration. I was particularly interested in what Obama's actions would be towards Cuba and how that would affect Jamaica. Replied Lowenthal:

"I'm sure that President Obama will reverse the hardening of the sanctions which his predecessor imposed on Cuba. He promised that he would make it easier for Cuban-Americans to visit relatives in Cuba more frequently and to send remittances to their relatives, which had been restricted. It might very well happen between now and the Summit of the Americas in mid-April. It's probably imminent.

"It's possible that the Obama administration will go considerably farther and change the objective of the United States' policy in Cuba that has been pursued now for 50 years, of regime change in Cuba, to one that concentrates on finding ways to cooperate with their government on issues of shared concerns, including narcotics, response to hurricanes, maritime issues, pollution, environmental questions, public health questions, etc. And to build the basis, through a cooperative approach, for having a constructive influence in the future as changes naturally occur in Cuba. Changes will certainly occur.

"Cuban policy in the United States has been dictated by a segment of the Cuban-American community in Miami; there's not unanimity in that community. But the dominant group has had a very hard-line policy towards Cuba. The results of the last election, in which Obama carried Florida, and in which the vote in the Cuban-American community was much more divided than it had been in the last several elections, suggest that there's much more space for President Obama to develop a sensible Cuban policy than in the past," he said.

Implications for Jamaica

"Now, on the implications for Jamaica, I remember at a think tank session in Jamaica sitting next to former Prime Minister Seaga. At the time - and this was quite a visionary statement, probably 20 years ago - he said Jamaica would have more to fear from a post-Communist, post-Castro government in Cuba than it would ever have to fear from a Castro Communist Cuba. Cuba will be a formidable competitor in a number of respects.

"It has some natural advantages and resources in scale and an educated and disciplined workforce. It will represent a challenge to Jamaica as Cuba enters into a functioning market economy, which is something that will happen one way or another in the future. Now, challenges are meant to be confronted, for example, in the tourism business there are ways of cooperating in multiple destination tourism. It's going to be an important question for Jamaica."

Lowenthal noted: "Many people around the world would agree that President Obama's first responsibility is to concentrate on trying to reverse the rapid deterioration of the American economy with its numerous effects on the world economy. That's what he's doing, and that's exactly what he should be doing.

On the other hand, a responsible American leader today will realise that the relationship between the United States and its closest neighbours - in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean - is of particular importance to the United States, not for the traditionally articulated reasons that we all grew up with of security, ideological and political concerns, but rather quotidian realities.

The daily lives of Americans are very influenced by the tremendous degree of interpenetration, accelerating over the last 20 years, between the US and its closest neighbours, a result largely of migration. But also by the way the economies are intertwined."

Foreign policy team

I asked who in the Obama administration actually knows anything about the Caribbean, as Obama himself has never visited the area. Lowenthal observed: "I don't know about special expertise outside of foreign service and governmental officers who have worked on it. They have been putting together a very good international affairs/foreign policy team: Secretary of State Clinton, National Security Advisor Jones, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg, who is a good friend and an accomplished former head of the foreign policy studies division at Brookings.

"I think the question is, what's the approach? The approach of the Obama administration in its broad outlines is becoming clear from an early stage, and that is one of understanding that there are a lot of issues on which international cooperation is crucial to the United States, and that cooperation cannot be imposed, demanded, or required for the rest of the world but has to be earned through a partnership approach.

"The last administration got into a pattern of thinking that unilateral or quasi-unilateral approaches would be enough to carry the day. It's become absolutely clear that that doesn't work, and the Obama administration, with the influence of Vice-President Biden, the secretary of state, and others, is approaching things in a very different way."

(Next: 'Intermestic' issues, and ethics in politics)