Haiti’s problems go north

Biden is in Canada today for meetings with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Ahead of the trip, White House aides let everyone know that one of the big topics of discussion would be Haiti — specifically, Biden’s not-at-all secret plan to have Canada lead a “multilateral armed force” to combat the armed gangs that control Haiti’s capital and other major cities.

But by the time Air Force One had landed at Ottawa International, those plans were already “dashed,” as the New York Times put it. “Outside intervention, as we’ve done in the past, hasn’t worked to create long-term stability for Haiti,” Trudeau had told reporters, likely referencing Canada’s role in both the U.S.-led 2004 invasion of Haiti that followed a U.S.-backed coup d’état and the disastrous thirteen-year United Nations peacekeeping mission that followed. It was the failures of that latter mission — most notably the catastrophic cholera epidemic the peacekeepers started and tried to cover up — that led the White House to push for intervention outside the auspices of the U.N.

Undeterred, Biden is now circling back to — the exact same idea. The Miami Herald reports today that the administration is “shifting its strategy on Haiti away from a proposal for a multilateral armed force … to a push at the United Nations for a more traditional peacekeeping mission,” according to several unnamed sources.

Americans are unmatched in ignoring root causes in favor of ineffective yet violent solutions, and that goes double when it comes to Haiti. Let’s review the actual causes of Haiti’s current social and political crisis — and don’t be fooled, it is a crisis. Number one: There is no