Saturday, January 16, 2010

Haiti relief

Tyler Cowen pointed out that Haiti is essentially not a functional country right now. So who is going to is going to rebuild the place?
The UN could take over, but hasn't Haiti already suffered enough over the past two hundred years?
I saw an op-ed by Tunku Varadarajan which says that France "must" shell out $22 billion as reparations for the 150 million francs France demanded (or extorted) from Haiti in 1825. This is obvious nonsense--France saw the 1825 amount as reparations for the loss of its property when Haiti revolted, so France will hardly feel an obligation to refund that amount.
Similarly, the Dominican Republic is right next door but is thinks less of Haiti than the US does of Mexico. Their main interest is going to be keeping refugees out.
The US has sent assault ship USS Bataan and aircraft carrier Carl Vinson plus escorts--which is to say, two towns worth of water and power utilities, medevac helicopters and hospitals, groceries, security, communications, etc--but that doesn't imply any lasting presence. I've seen a suggestion that the US take over administering Haiti, but I can't see any way that owning Haiti would be a benefit to us.
I've also seen a suggestion that Canada establish a protectorate, with a comment that there's a shared language, but that sounds equally implausible to me. Haiti's pre-quake population was about 30% of that of Canada; taking on responsibility for them would add a huge strain to Canada's economy, with no significant benefit.
One suggestion I haven't seen is that China might step in. China has been building infrastructure in Africa and there's no reason they can't do it in the Caribbean as well, particularly if they can leverage that into de jure or de facto control of the country. And if I were a Chinese military planner, I'd be interested in the strategic possibilities in having a base just off the US coast.

1 comment:

Lux Mentis said...

US has deployed (or is) 10K troops. We're sending about 1700 counting our sailors on the Athabaskan and the Halifax which are steaming there. Our DART team is already there and 450 of our soldiers will be a light battalion of 22ieme Regiment (Van Doos) who will speak french and 350-450 more engineering and support folks and a field hospital that the Van Doos will protect. Also, 3 water purification plants en route. Medecins Sans Frontiers, a Canadian NGO, is planning to send two field hospitals.

That's all just to say we're trying, but airspace at Port au Prince is pretty limited (90 flights per day, tower destroyed by quake, USAF taking control of airspace).

Long term? US and Canada and DR have an interest in getting them back on their feet. So does France, since they have a 'karmic debt' here that some of them acknowledge (though they are trying to get the real debt holders, mostly financial agencies and other countries, to forgive $78 million in debt).

The UN has an interest, but they seem stunned by the loss of their local human infrastructure - they lost an RCMP Superintendent who was head of the int'l policing operation, their head of mission, the assistant head of mission and a pile of their personel. They are stunned and its taking them some time to get organized (and, as you point out, they are the UN and that slows things down even more).

I think none of us have a direct interest in fixing them up 'right'. We have a minor interest in fixing them up to a 'somewhat basic' level (don't want to create another Afghanistan where terrorism might breed). After that, it'll be up to the Haitians, the NGOs, and maybe some slow long-term aid from the rest of the world.

China? Yeah, I expect they'll be in there. I expect the US might have an interest in fixing up Haiti just to avoid Russian or Chinese influences.

It's a rotten situation in a country that has had rotten scenarios for a long time.