Fort McNair, Washington DC –
The President of Guyana His Excellency Brigadier David Arthur Granger visited and spoke at NDU at the graduation ceremony for the Caribbean Defense and Security Course (CDSC) of the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies. The CDSC is a six-week security and defense course focused on the Caribbean region. This year’s course started its distance-learning phase on June 15 of this year. The in-residence phase, with 49 students from 17 countries, started on July 13 and concludes with the June 24th graduation ceremony.
President Granger, a Perry Center graduate in June 2000 and former adjunct professor through 2010, spoke on the importance of small state security to the region as a whole. President Granger said that collective security among all small states, both in the Caribbean and beyond, is the key to success in the fight against transnational threats such as terrorism and trafficking of drugs, persons, and weapons. At the conclusion of the graduation ceremony, President Granger exchanged gifts with the Perry Center Director, Mr. Mark Wilkins. All of the graduates of the CDSC course received copies of His Excellency’s Book, titled “Caribbean Geopolitics: Security, Stability, and Sovereignty in Small States.”