Well there is a tacit assumption that the president serves at the pleasure of extraterritorial American forces.
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I mean… it’s possible.
Why not? It’s not like he’s adverse the maintaining American hegemony.
We all are. Nothing really wrong with that…
It will, either now via leaks or in a few decades via declassification.
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You don’t usually have to wait that long. Smirking threats from US agents don’t take too long to emerge while formal denial is still in effect, e.g. Chile and Jakarta.
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Sure but it’s always nice to have the documentary evidence from the official archives, too.
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True, but I don’t see how assassinating Haiti’s President helps maintain American hegemony, especially to the point of such a drastic measure vs the amount of political ill will it will cause him in the US.
YMMV
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This book lays out the case as to why chaos is now the preferred imperial strategy to the Cold War era need for order, via the case of Yemen (comparing it since the 1990s to the late Ottoman period and how they sought to rule the country).
You see this now all over the world, or at least aspects of it, that a chaotic situation allows for continued western exploitation. Once the global north figured out that people in former colonies were going to run things the way they wanted to run them rather than how the west wanted them to be run, it became much more common to destabilize those that refuse to play by the rules of the west.
If you want something out of a country, and they don’t want you to have control of that resource, then what better way to get what you want than to fuel endless war and pay some militias to spirit whatever it is out of the country (the Congo, which has rare earth minerals important to the global tech trade). As for Haiti specifically, I could not say, but the US has long sought a greater degree of control over the entire hemisphere, so there is precedent there to consider.
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At a glance, the recent record of foreign interference in Haiti just makes things even murkier:
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I don’t know if he had anything to do with this, but I certainly can see him approving things exactly like this. He was silent as VP during the Honduras coup and didn’t exactly speak out against any of our US backed coups during his time on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
If the determination was made that the current protests made him less useful as an asset, they might have been happy to toss him to curry favor with the next up and comer. Historically there is essentially zero domestic cost to a plausibly deniable overthrow of another government. Every modern American president has overseen some similar activity with only a handful of them resulting in meaningful scandals.
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But remaining silent or not condemning a coup isn’t the same as approving/planning/performing a coup (unlike other events.)
I don’t think the US views Haiti or the previous presdient as an asset. I could be wrong.
Not that I put it past Neo-Liberals to do something like this, but with everything else going on, and Haiti not even being on the map of current political problems in the US, I am still not connecting any dots as to why he would do this. While I am not ruling it out, I am just going to need some evidence before I am going to seriously entertain the notion.
I guarantee that if there is any way this can be put on Biden - plausibly or implausibly, the right will beat their war drums with, “Biden calls Jan. 6th a coup attempt, yet is actively ordering coups in other countries. This dangerous madman must be stopped at any cost.”
I’d rather not let undue speculation fuel that. YMMV.
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We have long been involved in Haitian affairs. Whenever we do that, it’s never because we give a shit about the people there or their welfare. There is always an ulterior motive for intervention. Of course it remains to be seen how and why the US is involved here, but there is a long history OF our involvement there.
Here is a list of books on the topic of relations between Haiti and the US that might answer the long question. I’m guessing you can find some of them available at archive.org or from your local book store or library.
Here is a short reading on relations going back to Jefferson…
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I agree, I am just trying to figure out what the ulterior motive would be.
Thanks for the links!
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Regional hegemony, I’d guess primarily. There is a reason for the Monroe doctrine still being a key part of our regional foreign policy. It isn’t always just about what we can get from a place… sometimes it’s about perceived security needs and ensure ready markets for American goods.
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I think they have a problem where no Prime Minister is properly sworn in, and there’s no Chief Justice, putting them in the Constitutional situation of “you’re fucked!” (The President was playing dictator games, keeping key positions vacant and staying in office after his term was over.)
It was a testament to Haiti’s fragile political situation that Joseph, a protégé of Moïse who was only supposed to be prime minister temporarily, found himself in charge.
But Haiti appears to have few other options. The Supreme Court’s chief justice, who might be expected to help provide stability in a crisis, died recently of COVID-19.
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Thanks for this thread. I have only a vague comprehension of Haitian leadership beyond “chaos and corruption”. Came here to be educated on the subject and was happily obliged, as usual. Thanks to @Mindysan33 and @Mister44, especially for the thoughtful and non-reactionary discourse with plenty of reading material.
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It’s kind of amazing how little many people know about a country so nearby that we have such a long and complex history with - there is a lot more we could all learn, myself included, about Haiti and much of the Caribbean. I hope some of what I said was helpful.
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It definitely had major long term impacts on their economy.
So did racism and foreign interventionism. I’d say much more so than geography. Plenty of countries overcame geography to thrive.
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Agreed. Like Rwanda, Botswana, and Nigeria for example.
The UK, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Japan… your point here is?
Racism is a real force in history that has had real world consequences. Haiti is a prime example of that. Just looking at how the history of the two countries on the same island unfolded is evidence of that.
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I completely agree. I just love how Rwanda, Botswana, and Nigeria have overcome that racism to the point where they are thriving. Some day, hopefully Haiti will be able to do the same.
