Mia Mottley

I said, okay, that's not a wise thing to do, but we talked for a year, 18 months, and eventually they said, we're going to do it anyhow.

What happens?

Nature abhors a vacuum.

China, who never had any relationship with any of the militaries in the region really, then stepped in and developed a relationship and provided training and equipment and things thereafter.

Does that make sense to a country that is so frightened for China?

See, when you're saying that, I wish more people understood, especially Western nations, you know, quote unquote.

I wish they understood how many of the problems they're experiencing are created in a cycle.

So friends and I were talking the other day, you can't talk about 9-11 without talking about Osama Bin Laden.

You can't talk about it without talking about Al-Qaeda.

But then you can't talk about it without talking about the CIA, which you then can't talk about without talking about the US and what it was trying to do about communism.

And now many of those people go, oh, we did the wrong thing.

But the effects are felt so many years later.

what you're saying is the same.

If you watch the news in America, if you watch the news in the UK, let's say the BBC, they'll very quickly say China's expanding.

We've seen China here and China's in Africa and China's in the Caribbean, China's doing this, China's... But I don't think I've seen any news reports that say, well, the US opened the door for China and the US reneged.

The North Atlantic countries...

have not necessarily treated to the issue of development in the post-colonial era as well as they could have.

We talk about official development assistance being 0.7% of GDP.

Most countries don't even observe that.

As in that's a portion that they're supposed to contribute to developing nations.