Caribbean Security in the Age of Terror: Challenge and Change

The security issues which have come into prominence since the September 11 terrorist attack in the USA provide both the starting point and the focus for this comprehensive survey of contemporary security issues in the Caribbean. This volume assesses the impact of the 9/11 terrorist attack on Caribbean states and examines the institutional and operational terrorism response capacity of security agencies in the region. However, understanding security challenge and change in the Caribbean context requires a broad-based multidimensional approach; terrorism for the small, open and vulnerable nation states of the Caribbean region is a real security issue but even more so, is a range of untraditional threats like crime, drug trafficking, territorial disputes, environmental degradation and the rapid spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. How these states adapt policies and practices to adjust to the new regional and global circumstances represent the challenge and the change.

Ivelaw L. Griffith is Professor of Political Science and Dean of the Honours College, Florida International University. His previous publications include Drugs and Security in the Caribbean: Sovereignty Under Siege (Pennsylvania State University Press 1997) and Caribbean Security on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century (National Defense University Press 1996).