OECS … or Sub-regional Alliance?

The announcement that four Prime Ministers – of Trinidad & Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and our own St. Lucia – have signed a document undertaking to implement political and socio-economic integration among the four countries, is one that has been met with mixed feelings by the populace.
On the one hand, regional integration is a process that has been encouraged, practically unanimously, by all to whom the concept has been explained and the proof is evident in the fact that we have tried the ill-fated “West Indian Federation” and since its demise, have toyed with several loosely-configured concepts, whether within the Windward Islands or the wider OECS grouping.
Somehow however, we seem reticent to jump in and wholeheartedly take the plunge after the failure of the Federation and barely stick our toes into the water, with partial agreements and accommodations in the various aspects of our relationships with each other.

We seem to be deliberately taking our time, but definitely moving in the general direction of someday agreeing to bind our fortunes together in a strong union.
But, one may ask (on the other hand), if we have already signed and agreed to take steps that will result in all the countries of the OECS coming together, will not this agreement between the four countries, as beneficial as it may turn out to be in the short term for each of them individually, be putting a spoke in the wheel of OECS integration?
There may be a danger that, were the four-nation agreement to prove sufficiently advantageous to each of us, we would find it difficult to abandon a “tried and true” arrangement and venture out into something new that would be proposed to replace it.
But then again, if we look at our track record in the region, a crystallization of the OECS integration might just never come to pass … and we would be left indefinitely waiting, waiting in vain for a dream that would never become reality.
So for the present, perhaps it is best if we look at what has just taken place as a case of a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush.
It is a step – albeit a small enough one – in the right direction.