Leading Caribbean intellectuals had found it necessary to warn us not to expect much, if anything, from the new American administration on the basis of the Summit of the Americas due to open in Port of Spain tomorrow.

In fact, there was not much expectation in some of these quarters that Barack Obama would have committed to attend the summit at all. He was being excused in advance for having too much of a more important agenda of his own, one that would have put hemispheric issues off his priority list.

Speaking about expectations which he said may not only have been ’too high,’’ but also ’unreasonable’’ the president of the Caribbean Development Bank said in March that here was ’a new president with a very large agenda’’ of domestic and international problems.

Prof Compton Bourne further interestingly colourised those presumed ’expectations’’ to suggest that what the Caribbean in particular may have been seeking from the US was aid and financial assistance. ’Here is a country,’’ he told a reporter, ’that for a long period of time-at least 20 years-has been gradually reducing its aid to the Caricom region. I see no reason for assuming that President Obama can turn that around or might want to turn that around in short order.’’

The CBD president occupies a privileged position from where he ought to be aware of thinking at the highest level in the region, on matters of policy and tactics in matters of this sort. Are Caricom countries seeking aid as part of their desire to engineer a new relationship with Washington? He should know. He introduced the issue of ’hand-outs’’ also in his caution about those ’expectations’’ for a new US-Caribbean relationship. The region’s leaders should not expect those either, he said, as if to say this is part of what was being proposed.

When he went north across the border in February for that six-hour meeting with the Canadian prime Minister, however, President Obama provided public confirmation of his determination to attend the Port of Spain event. He said he was looking forward to the opportunity to engage with his counterparts from across the hemisphere.

That went contrary to conventional wisdom among many who pronounce on the way the world works.

From what we have been told, it is tantamount to waiting in line. The Caribbean’s concerns don’t matter. There is no issue of national security for the US here. No geopolitical need wanting immediate attention.

Nothing was to be drawn from the fact that this is the region closest to the United States, where most of the countries have cherished generations of the most protected relationships in which the US has overwhelmingly been the market of choice for goods and services, and to which the vast majority of its peoples have gravitated.

So even if he were coming, it would not be more than symbolism, however powerful that in itself may be in fact. So we were again being encouraged to accept.

As if there are issues, such as migration, such as crime and violence driven by drugs and guns, such as energy safety and security and such as environmental sustainability and its connection to continued industrial development, that are critical to the survival of most of our countries, and about which partnerships with US public and private interests are not crucial to that survival.

Nothing here reads like an automatic appeal for ’aid’’ or for ’handouts.’’

His attendance at the summit then is going to be much more than highly symbolic for the US president. He is down to deliver one of the addresses at the opening ceremony tomorrow afternoon.

By his addresses at the G-20 Summit in London two weeks ago, his town hall meeting in Strasbourg, France, and his significant address to the Turkish parliament, Barack Obama has established that an administration under him can put the world in better perspective.

He has established that no region is less important than another, and that US relations with Latin America and the Caribbean remain just as vital as any other.

He had signalled it even before now. He was asked by editors at Time magazine in December about what would be his marching orders to Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. He stayed away from specifics then. But one of the four things he did allow was that ’we have neglected our neighbours for too long’’. In mid-2007 during the campaign for the presidency, he said in a television interview that US assistance to the region was less than a week’s worth of what the war in Iraq was costing.

That, he said then, created the kind of ground upon which people like Hugo Chavez were whipping up anti-American sentiment across Latin America.

It stands perfectly to reason then, that President Obama would want to use his address at tomorrow’s opening ceremony, and then his participation at the summit, to outline how he plans to lead a correction of such a picture.