DBAHC: Balkanize the West Indies Federation

SinghKing

Banned
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to create a TL in which the West Indies Federation (the original name of the present-day Caribbean Federation, minus the states of Bahamas, Bermuda, Belize, Virgin Islands and Guyana, which only joined later on) balkanizes into a myriad of competing, fully independent nations. Bonus points if you can manage to pull this off peacefully, without any armed uprisings (Cuban-style) or wars between the new nations; and even more bonus points if your TL ends up with all of the 20 states in the CF (even Montserrat), becoming independently governed by the present day. Are you up for the challenge?
 

oreocruncher

SinghKing said:
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to create a TL in which the West Indies Federation (the original name of the present-day Caribbean Federation, minus the states of Bahamas, Bermuda, Belize, Virgin Islands and Guyana, which only joined later on) balkanizes into a myriad of competing, fully independent nations. Bonus points if you can manage to pull this off peacefully, without any armed uprisings (Cuban-style) or wars between the new nations; and even more bonus points if your TL ends up with all of the 20 states in the CF (even Montserrat), becoming independently governed by the present day. Are you up for the challenge?
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It already did...but it reformed in the form of Caricom OTL...
 

M79

This sounds more difficult than it is, the current states were independently governed as colonies when the WIF was proposed and it was all but a small miracle that they held together through the mid-1960s. With the various Communist revolutions/movements presenting a united front then the OPEC crisis reinforcing the "One Sea, One People" idea the younger generations have no idea how divided the islands were even after the WIF original states were founded.

Have Jamaica become sufficiently jealous of Trinidad at *any* point before 1971 and the federation falls apart quickly. Jamaica was the most prosperous state, it was not the capital. Give a handful of politicians as little as 5% of the vote in any number of elections and watch the federation die, especially before Grenada in 1983 when the WIF liberated *its own island* from a Soviet-backed coup on 48 hours notice. Or maybe have the Carib currency crash like that of Mexico in the early 1990s (remember when the states of Quintana Roo, Yucatan, and Campeche on the Yucatan peninsula tried to secede and join Belize?). Let Guatemala take Belize in the 1995 offensive instead of having the WIF rebound and take Guatemala City itself just in time for Carnival in 1996. And so on.
 

SinghKing

Banned
M79 said:
This sounds more difficult than it is, the current states were independently governed as colonies when the WIF was proposed and it was all but a small miracle that they held together through the mid-1960s. With the various Communist revolutions/movements presenting a united front then the OPEC crisis reinforcing the "One Sea, One People" idea the younger generations have no idea how divided the islands were even after the WIF original states were founded.

Have Jamaica become sufficiently jealous of Trinidad at *any* point before 1971 and the federation falls apart quickly. Jamaica was the most prosperous state, it was not the capital. Give a handful of politicians as little as 5% of the vote in any number of elections and watch the federation die, especially before Grenada in 1983 when the WIF liberated *its own island* from a Soviet-backed coup on 48 hours notice. Or maybe have the Carib currency crash like that of Mexico in the early 1990s (remember when the states of Quintana Roo, Yucatan, and Campeche on the Yucatan peninsula tried to secede and join Belize?). Let Guatemala take Belize in the 1995 offensive instead of having the WIF rebound and take Guatemala City itself just in time for Carnival in 1996. And so on.
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Really? I had no idea that it was as fragmented as that. Still, you'd still expect the core states of the West Indies Federation to keep some remnant of it together, wouldn't you? After all, it's hard to imagine how states as small as Cayman Islands, Turks & Caicos, St Kitts & Nevis and Montserrat could have possibly become viable nations. And especially with the communist armed uprisings sweeping through the region- after what happened in Cuba, it's hard to see how the USA could possibly allow the West Indies Federation to fall apart and balkanize without resorting to military intervention. It's right in their backyard. Unless, of course, the USA were to somehow lose the Cold War ITTL, and the WIF were to become the American equivalent of Yugoslavia...
 

Coiler

-Have one of the few "small" wars the WIF fought with Venezuela turn into one that's bigger and bloodier. I think it's worth noting that most of the WIF/CF's navy has been crewed by Trinidadians, while the army comes mostly from Jamaica and other islands.

This sort of "segregation" meant that in the historical wars it actually fought, the nature of each of them meant that a federation-wide backlash over casualties was avoided. In their war against Guatemala, the Navy lost only one helicopter crew to enemy fire while the Jamaican and Guyanese regiments did most of the fighting and took most of the casualties. Similarly, in the Venezuelan Wars, even when you had a ship sunk with 160 dead, 135 of those dead were from Trinidad itself.

So, I'd say have the Venezuelans follow through on one of their plans to land troops on Trinidad proper. They'd never succeed in taking the whole island, but have Jamaica face the unpleasant prospect of facing huge casualties to "defend" (read, play into Caracas' hands by yielding to local Trinidadian pressure by attacking their fortified positions) and you have a federation-breaker on your hands.
 

SinghKing

Banned
Coiler said:
-Have one of the few "small" wars the WIF fought with Venezuela turn into one that's bigger and bloodier. I think it's worth noting that most of the WIF/CF's navy has been crewed by Trinidadians, while the army comes mostly from Jamaica and other islands.

This sort of "segregation" meant that in the historical wars it actually fought, the nature of each of them meant that a federation-wide backlash over casualties was avoided. In their war against Guatemala, the Navy lost only one helicopter crew to enemy fire while the Jamaican and Guyanese regiments did most of the fighting and took most of the casualties. Similarly, in the Venezuelan Wars, even when you had a ship sunk with 160 dead, 135 of those dead were from Trinidad itself.

So, I'd say have the Venezuelans follow through on one of their plans to land troops on Trinidad proper. They'd never succeed in taking the whole island, but have Jamaica face the unpleasant prospect of facing huge casualties to "defend" (read, play into Caracas' hands by yielding to local Trinidadian pressure by attacking their fortified positions) and you have a federation-breaker on your hands.
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Hmm, I don't know about that. After all, the Venezuelans followed through on their plans to invade Guyana in 1983, deploying thousands of troops there as part of their invasion force. That didn't break the union- if anything, it made the union stronger. Although, the British were heavily involved IOTL, with a Royal Navy task force including the HMS Hermes not-too-subtly conducting joint "training" exercises with the CF Navy at the time. Perhaps if President Campins hadn't been so vocal in his support of the Argentinians in the Falklands War, the British mightn't have made that decision to get involved in the conflict, and the Venezuelans might have actually won, annexing Guyana, and starting to bring the Federation crumbling down? Although, given that the CF had already become a full member of NATO in 1982 (at the same time as Spain), it's highly unlikely that the other members of NATO, especially the USA, would have possibly allowed that to happen. It's not like Cyprus- there's no way that the annexation of a NATO member's sovereign territory by a non-NATO member could be allowed to stand without the whole of NATO collapsing along with it.
 

David T

If only the Montego Bay Conference in 1947 had resolved something to the effect that the political development of the "several units of the British Caribbean territories...must be pursued as an aim in itself, without prejudice *and in no way subordinate* to progress towards the federation" I think that the federation, though it might still come into existence, would not last long--let alone provide a basis for a larger Caribbean federation. Federation was seen by most West Indians primarily as the gateway to independence, and never as an end and an ideal in its own right. If the British had not made it clear that under no circumstances would the islands be granted independence unless a firm and unbreakable federation was formed first, I don't think the federation (even if it had come into existence) would have much future, given the disagreements among the islands on such questions as freedom of immigration (strongly supported by the small islands and opposed by Trindad) , free trade (some Jamaicans worried that with free trade, Trinidadian factories would sell their products below cost to prevent the growth of manufacturing in Jamaica), the basis of representation (oil-rich Trinidad wanted it to be on the basis of financial contributions eather than population) etc.

For a post written from an ATL where the Federation failed, see https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=335295
 

Coiler

SinghKing said:
Hmm, I don't know about that. After all, the Venezuelans followed through on their plans to invade Guyana in 1983, deploying thousands of troops there as part of their invasion force. That didn't break the union- if anything, it made the union stronger.
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-Well of course, the Guyanese invasion made the union stronger. The "invasion" force was little more than a probing attack with the intention to only go farther if two conditions were found to be the case:

-The Guyanese population wasn't extremely hostile to annexation (they were).
-The British would not intervene (They did).

The first part is essential, which is why it's doubtful that Venezuela would have tried to take over the whole country-what little irregular resistance existed was nightmarish enough already.

You'd be hard-pressed to come up with a more patriotism-inducing war. Just enough fighting to make the myth of a heroic victory real, but not enough to strain the federation. (Again, very few Jamaicans were actually deployed to Guyana during the crisis). When it became clear those were not the case, the 'invaders' went right back across the border as fast as they could.

Now contrast that with the later disputes. You have a lot of provocative intrusions into undisputed Venezuelan territorial waters, many instances where the first shots were fired by the West Indies, and a justified suspicion that Port-of-Spain was trying to induce a war and then call to NATO for help so that Venezuela would be permanently crushed.

The Pentagon suspected this as well, which is why they kept privately telling the WIF that they would not intervene. By this time, the newer Venezuelan leaders have learned their lesson and know how to play diplomatically.

So while Guyana was "Hooray, the British saved-we fought back" across the federation, a mass mobilization against a landing in Siparia would probably go "great, the Trinidadians poked the troupial and now they want us to bail them out."
 

thekingsguard

While I'm far from an expert on the region, why WOULDN'T such a union form? Aside from a few of the bigger islands or island chains like Jamaica or the Bahamas, most of the other islands seem far too small to be independent countries of any real worth or stature.

Collectively, the West Indies Federation is a regional power and one of the post WW2 economic success stories - how could a bunch of Antillean islands, many of which have populations smaller than an American suburb, be much more than a backwater dependent on tourism and development aid?
 
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