by ORIN GORDON

IN HAITI, which I've just visited, I've had cause to ask myself whether the United States today would take as much interest in the security of the country as it did not that long ago – first, in restoring Jean Bertrand Aristide with the help of an armed invasion in 1994, then in helping to usher him into exile ten years later.

Some legislators in Washington want America to take the Caribbean seriously not just as a trade partner but a national security one as well. I'll come to that a bit later.

United States presidents do not place Caribbean interests high on their list of priorities, period. And so far, there's nothing to suggest that Barack Obama would be any different if he's elected.

Ahead of widely trailed visits to Europe and the Middle East, the Democratic candidate has given what has been billed as a landmark foreign policy and security speech, along the same lines as big speeches on race and patriotism.

"As president, I will pursue a tough, smart and principled national security strategy – one that recognises that we have interests not just in Baghdad, but in Kandahar and Karachi, in Tokyo and London, in Beijing and Berlin," he told an audience in Washington.

Notice the absence of anything like a nod to this Hemisphere, let alone the Caribbean?

It's understandable. He's got bigger fish to fry trying to get elected, and once he's in. In foreign policy terms the road to the White House runs through Baghdad, not Barbados.

One of his first and most difficult jobs is an Iraq exit strategy. He's promised once that's done, to put more into fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and pursuing Osama bin Laden.

He needs to rebuild relations between America and her European allies.

He's got to convince skeptical Jews, in America and Israel, that he is a friend of the Jewish state. At the same time he's got to convince Palestinians that America is an honest, impartial broker in its dealings with Israel.

The relationship between the United States and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries especially has always been lopsided.

Diplomatically, American officials will be respectful to Caribbean countries in their actions and their utterances. But whatever they say, those brief White House encounters where the president receives a posse of prime ministers at a time underscore how Washington really regards the region.

Yet some on Capitol Hill want the next United States president to engage the Caribbean more closely, and are making a national security argument.

The Caribbean, argues Representative Yvette Clarke of the 11th Congressional District in Brooklyn, is a geographic extension of "The Homeland", and guarding the region against the drug and terror threat should be as natural and reflexive as guarding America's own border.

Haitians are a big bloc in her district in Flatbush and she takes an interest in Haiti in particular. She argues that the United States should try to help that country get a grip on its security and that of the wider Caribbean, for America's sake.

Problems in Haiti wash up on America's shores. The worse the security situation, the greater the number of people trying to leave illegally. The drug traffic flows from South America through places like Haiti, completely unpoliced. The threat is policed only marginally better in other Caribbean countries.

Other greater threats, potentially terror threats, the argument goes, could be brought home in the same way. America secures its borders by securing the Caribbean's. It does that by being more of a partner with Caribbean countries.

"The argument has got to be that if you make the Caribbean safer you make America safer," Clarke told me. She is convinced that it would resonate far more with the White House, than other arguments for engagement like free trade.

Clarke and Charles Rangel are the Caribbean's biggest champions on Capitol Hill. What they were as well were unwavering supporters of Hillary Clinton, Obama's defeated rival for the nomination. Will a President Obama hold that against them?

Or will he, son of Kenyan who spent a significant part of his childhood in Indonesia, be naturally more adept at engaging his geographic neighbours than his predecessors?

That may depend on how quickly he comes to grips with Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

* Orin Gordon is a London-based Caribbean journalist who works with the BBC, and has been covering the United States primaries. He blogs at www.gyaff.blogspot.com