Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
When barbados became the fourth English-speaking Caribbean country to achieve its constitutional independence, in November 1966, one of its prime responsibilities was to assume defense of the new state. How Barbados approached this problem of defense planning and policy-making in its first 22 years of nationhood (1966-1988) will be the focus of this study. No previous study devoted exclusively to this subject has been published in all this time, a most surprising omission.
Barbados defense policy may be divided into three phases which correspond, roughly, with the periods during which its two major parties — the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) and the Barbados Labor Party (BLP) — have alternated in power.