Haiti, Challenge for Obama

What will happen “after,” when the acute phase of the first weeks of humanitarian emergency is behind us, leaving behind a country economically, socially and politically devastated? Haiti was a notoriously failed state well before the catastrophe nine days ago, although it was convenient for everyone to pretend that President Rene Preval’s government exercised effective authority on the island. As the dust gradually settles on the ruins and on the dead, it becomes more difficult, however, to continue pretending. It’s even less probable that the local population is willing to acknowledge some legitimacy for the institutions of the Caribbean republic, crushed by the earthquake, along with the lives of the citizens of Port-au-Prince and their few belongings.

Beyond the bodies that may be identified, Haiti needs a takeover by the whole international community, for a period that will be anything but brief. Although among the immediate causes of Haitian instability (the earthquake being the least among these) one can count a civil war, occupation by a foreign power, ethnic cleansing or religious fanaticism, what is offered to the country is an intervention of air, of the length and consistency of those put into action in Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Unless you want to let the Haitian people slip into a hell similar to the Somali one, this is a challenge for the entire international community, which must succeed at demonstrating the know-how to intervene on behalf of humanity in general, setting aside unacceptable national rivalries. It is a test for anyone who feels that, while it is necessary to continue to face “typical” threats to security and international order, beginning from devastated Haiti it is possible to lay the foundation to build a different and better world. Beyond the obvious and immediate drama that characterizes the Haitian emergency, this crisis challenges the world’s capacity to go beyond talks and good intentions on the theme of global governance, as do global warming, the depletion of water, or death from hunger.

If this is true for all members of the international community, it is a little truer for the United States and its president, Barack Obama. In such a society and considering its position within the world, the U.S. has been — for more than 60 years — the major shareholder and principal sponsor [of global governance] and has seen its role grow with the end of the bipolar system*. In the Western Hemisphere, the United States has — since the time of the “Monroe Doctrine” (1823), when it first claimed [territorial rights] — continued to exercise exclusive influence, which is still predominant today. Since Haiti is the type of neighbor that the Americans would prefer not to have in their own “backyard,” the repeated [U.S.] military interventions on the island (1891, 1994, 2004-2005) and an occupation of almost twenty years (1915-1934), show how U.S. actions represented, and continue to represent, a question of “national interest” for Washington: yesterday to conserve the profits of its plantations, today to prevent flows of refugees — of biblical proportions — from descending upon Florida. A year after the establishment of his presidency, and a few weeks after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, which raised a lot of controversy, President Obama finds himself in a position where he must demonstrate that the hopes and expectations evoked by his brilliant rhetoric can find concrete application. And he must do it in a moment in which his star appears tarnished within the United States, after the sudden “humiliation” in Massachusetts, with Americans who are deeply worried about the financial crisis and unrelenting unemployment rates, and where the sirens of an anachronistic neo-isolationism return to sing…

If the U.S. is unsuccessful at exercising effective leadership in this crisis, garnering only suspicions and criticisms that are already beginning to circulate, the prestige of the president and American “soft power” could in fact end up tarnished. A couple of days ago, in Kabul, the Taliban reminded everyone that the old world continues, reminding the president, with brutality, of his role as commander in chief and of his capacity to settle past accounts. In the next months, in Port-au-Prince, Obama will raise a key challenge for everyone’s future, beginning with the “last”: to put American leadership at the service of a new and truly global model of governance.

*Editor’s Note: A bipolar system is defined as the period in time after World War II when the Soviet Union and the United States were the two world superpowers and the majority of Europe became aligned with one country or the other.