PERHAPS it is too much to hope that Bermuda could present a united stance on a foreign policy issue. Although Bermuda's international relations are closely circumscribed as a result of its status as a British Overseas Territory, the ongoing debate as to whether Bermuda got the best deal it could as regards the abrogation of the US/UK bases agreement falls squarely into the foreign policy realm.

The matter cannot be viewed in any other way as it involved three-way negotiations involving Bermuda, Britain and the United States. Of course, Bermuda is not used to looking at its international relations in this manner since we have always expected others, principally Britain, to look after our foreign affairs.

It is all a bit paradoxical, really, when we consider that alone of all Britain's remaining Overseas Territories, Bermuda is the most advanced in terms of self-governance.

This alone should create a confidence, a self-awareness if you will, that we could hold our own on the world stage. After all our colonial status has not stopped us from forging invaluable economic links internationally. But, alas, our jealous defence of our political autonomy (such as it is) stops at the shore line, as we are limited - both constitutionally and in many ways mentally - when it comes to stepping into the global arena and identifying and pursuing our real international interests.

That's why it could be said in a sense that Bermuda "got played" in the final agreement to end the American land-lease agreement, if I can use the popular vernacular. But the conditions for this to happen were set in place a long time, long before the issue of the baselands emerged. In fact, the conditions have been building throughout most of our history.

We should not be as inward looking as we tend to be. While Bermudians are very proud of the fact that we are a well-travelled people, pyschologically we retain an insular mentality that we take with us even if we travel to far distant places.

This is another paradox given our past as a maritime-based economy. To be a seaman, you have to have an independent state of mind and confidence not only dealing with the sea but with the world as you see it. Somehow I think that the Bermudian character that emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries has been lost somewhere along the way and no longer influences the mentality of Bermudians today.

That's why I believe that Bermuda is taking a small step in the right direction - to start interacting with the world - by becoming an associate member of Caricom. Of course, some are quick to point out that Bermuda has a higher standard of living and more complex infrastructure than the other Caribbean Community members. They claim that forming links with Caricom will divert Bermuda's attention from its strategic economic relations with North America and Europe.

But I have already made the argument that the major pillars of our economy, of which we are so proud, are in fact not fully in our hands. The overwhelming majority of the capital that funds Bermuda's financial sector is controlled and subject to decisions that are made in boardrooms thousands of miles from our shores - decisions over which we have little or no control.

That too is a measure of our naivete as many of us do not delve beneath the thin veneer of our existence for fear of what that would reveal about the true state of our reality.

IN a sense perhaps many Bermudians are still in a state of denial when it comes to their inability to see their country acting at a higher level on the world stage. I wonder how far we are from the statement once made by former Premier Sir John Swan, who supposedly spoke in a simplistic way about the Bermudian reality in the late 1980s: "With the British to defend us and the Americans to feed us, why do we need Independence?"

Perhaps Sir John has moved on from that view and perhaps at the time that statement was made, it was easy for us to subscribe to such a limited vision. As long as we had the physical presence of those two Great Power benefactors (as most preferred to see them), then this seemed to confirm what most Bermudians desperately wanted to believe about our existence. But the American and British military presence has gone, thus removing a great psychological crutch. And given the corporate scandals in the post-9/11 environment, the spotlight has been turned on American businesses incorporated here, with Congress calling them unpatriotic by trying to benefit from a low tax jurisdiction.

Suddenly, any thought that Bermuda will benefit from the existence of a "special relationship" with the US has collapsed given the hard reality that countries will act in what they consider to be their core interest.

And Britain, our erstwhile mother country, has bluntly told us that it will not pick up the tab for the environmental mess left behind at the baselands from that period in our history when we were hosts to the American military.

London has said it will help us with technical advice when it comes to the baselands clean-up and even that grudging offer seems sufficient for some of us to continue to cling to our colonial dependency mentality - though exactly what form this British help will take is yet to be revealed.

Are we awake yet? All of these realities which Bermuda now finds itself having to contend with should serve to jolt us out of our national sleep and force us to look at the reality of our existence full in the face.

But we have made it to one more Cup Match, that two-day escape from everyday realities that could serve as a year-round metaphor for the way we view ourselves as a country in the 21st century.