In December 1983, when Raúl Alfonsín and his Radical party assumed responsibility for Argentina's transition from authoritarian dictatorship to democracy, the economy was mired in deep crisis. Rather than a repetition of the familiar “stop-go” cycles of previous decades, the mid-1980s crisis was more structural in nature, stemming from a perverse logic deeply rooted in contemporary Argentine capitalism. Few Argentines, regardless of ideological persuasion, doubted that major reforms were imperative if the country's post-1930 model of import-substitution industrialization was to avoid total collapse. For Argentina's fledgling democracy, the task at hand could not have been more daunting — to reverse what Alfonsín himself had referred to as “50 years of decadence.”

Mainstream economists blame the poor 1980s economic performance of most Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries on the poor economic policies followed by the region for the past several decades and recommend drastic policy changes including (a) elimination of many subsidies, (b) lowering tariffs and other obstacles to international trade, (c) privatization of many state enterprises, (d) liberalization of capital markets and interest rates, and so on — a policy package designed to lower greatly the government's intervention in the economy. This policy advice has been inspired, at least in part, by the generally accepted failure of the LAC governments to promote stable and fair growth through intervention.

However, in spite of pressures by multilateral and bilateral agencies, most governments find it very difficult to implement these policies, even when policymakers and their advisers fully understand the logic behind the policy recommendations and agree with them.

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.

Fully two and a half years before its advent, the year 1992 is progressively assuming an aura which is simultaneously hopeful and threatening, the end of one era and the beginning of another. The attitude which any individual country, or any group of countries adopts towards 1992 will, of course, be largely dependent upon the perspectives from which the events scheduled to take place in 1992 are viewed by the particular country or countries. Therefore it is apposite, if not essential, for those of us in the Caribbean to understand fully the meaning and implications of 1992 and, armed with such understanding, to fashion appropriate responses to the challenges which 1992 will present throughout the rest of this century and into the next.

Jaribbean scholars and analysts frequently point out that, despite its predominantly insular nature, it is not geography that accounts for the complexities and division of the Caribbean but, rather, history. Contemporary politics and international relations only confirm this judgment. As a result, and however unwillingly, we have become accustomed to viewing the region through narrow definitions and categories which, even though validated over time, contrast with the region's geographic, historical, political and economic reality.In the process, these limited views have given rise to persistent myths regarding both the region and its future.

Throughout its history, many names have been given to the area: from Antilles to West Indies to Caribbean Basin. The varying colonial contexts, as well as the diverse cultural and political assumptions of the main state actors involved in the area, have ascribed a wide variety of names to the region.

When speaking of the Caribbean, and taking into account the different historical assumptions and perceptions, three distinct definitions generally arise.