Dickson C. Igwe. Photo: VINO/File

Uncle Sam. Photo: Provided

One positive is the relative security of the region. The US nuclear umbrella and vast military have kept the skies and seas relatively safe. The other side of that coin is that no island can enter into dispute with the USA valid or not without consequences that will spell suffering and worse for its people.

OK. The dawn of a Second Donald Trump Term has clearly focused minds and hearts in the region on the vastly more powerful neighbour next door. The cliché states that a hiccup up north results in a tidal wave down south.

The USA is further able to use its hegemony to borrow from investors cheaply, while the world, especially countries that depend on the Dollar for existence, pay higher costs and interest rates for the use of that Dollar. The Caribbean included. 

Now, the USA turned from a surplus to a deficit economy in the early 1970s. The Richard Nixon effect. Nixon ended the Gold Standard and devalued the Dollar. There was consequently the great paradox where the USA grew its hegemonic power as it grew its deficit. 

This was a first in history. Past empires depended on surpluses to grow their hegemony. When these surpluses turned into deficits, these empires declined. The strength of the empire depended on maintaining a surplus economy.

The US went in the opposite direction. It succeeded in this twist of economics owing to the fact that the Dollar hegemony was vast and absolute. Post World Wars One and Two, the USA ruled the world economy both with the Dollar and industrially. 

Countries had no choice but to conform and fund the American deficit as the Nixon Government demanded. The powerful Dollar was a noose around the neck of the world economy, and if the US decided it could impose sanctions on a non-cooperative country at will, bringing social and economic destruction to that land, as it did in Cuba in the 1960s.