The Lead

The Neoliberal ‘Midas Touch’ Strikes Again: The Case of Haiti

by Stewart Battle (EIRNS) — Mar. 12, 2024

March 12, 2024 (EIRNS)—The evidence of the collapsing Anglo-American world system is everywhere one looks, cautioning anyone who would dare follow its dictates to urgently reconsider. The most recent example of this is taking place in Haiti, where rebel gangs have seized control of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and threaten to bring the entire nation spiraling into an abyss. Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced his resignation Monday, March 11, following increasing pressure from the gangs. However, assigning blame to either of the so-called “factions” in the country is a fool’s errand. Rather, the cause must be found outside, in the overriding system that has doomed Haiti to its current tragic state.

Maarten Boute, Director of Haiti’s Telecommunications agency Digicel, said the following regarding Haiti’s situation: “The U.S. must acknowledge its role in Haiti’s current crisis. Gangs involved in drug smuggling for U.S. consumption, armed with weapons from the U.S., have flourished due to disastrous U.S. foreign policy. Haiti is teetering on the edge of total collapse. It’s time to act.” That reality was echoed by Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez yesterday when she charged that the Western neocolonial model has “impacted our region … the most terrible example, from the humanitarian point of view, we see today in Haiti.…” She laid the blame directly on the U.S. and its Western allies, who have orchestrated the collapse of the economies throughout the region, “and that now constitutes the pretext which warrants a military intervention into Haiti.” Rodríguez noted that Western countries have imposed 26,000 unilateral sanctions, demanding the entire world abide by “U.S. domination for trade relations,” and that nations must instead work to form a “new financial architecture.”

The fate of Haiti is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather the writing on the wall for everywhere in the world if the Dark Age policies of the Anglo-Americans are not abolished. Take the case of Ukraine, which Pope Francis encouraged on March 9 to negotiate and end its war with Russia before it is too late. With some estimates that half a million soldiers have been killed after two years of conflict, consider the Pope’s question: “You may feel ashamed, but with how many deaths will it end?”

Pope Francis’s comments continue to be attacked and ridiculed as calling for Ukraine to surrender. In Brussels on March 11, alongside Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson—NATO’s newest member state—NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg insisted that war is peace, saying: “If we want a negotiated, peaceful, lasting solution, the way to get there is to provide military support to Ukraine.”

The same headstrong insanity is manifest across the West. The President and Prime Minister of Poland visited Washington today to ask for more U.S. troops to be stationed in Eastern Europe, and insist that NATO member states raise the minimum level of defense spending to 3% of GDP from the current 2%. And Germany continues to tiptoe around the decision to send long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, a decision which will be put up for a vote in the Bundestag later this week.

Similarly, Israel’s cold-blooded tactics in Gaza will only guarantee even worse bloodshed across the region and beyond if their ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is not stopped. Truly the only thing worse than being an enemy of the “rules-based order” crowd in the West, is to be a friend.

A new path is required, one that demands dignity and respect for every nation, and insists upon the principle of mankind’s unique creative capacity as the principle underlying all policy, no matter the structure of government. If we follow that star, rather than the degenerate “anything goes” of today’s drug-induced America, or the “less is more” depopulation mantra of the environmental doomsdayers, then mankind has a future. If not, Haiti’s fate may soon be on our doorstep, if a nuclear winter doesn’t arrive there first.

Have faith! The old tricks of the powerful are no longer working as they used to. A case in point is the failure of AIPAC’s heavily-funded campaign against a State Senator in California, where at least $4.6 million was spent to defeat him in a primary because he was not pro-Israel enough. He won his primary nonetheless.

The silver lining of the failing neoliberal system is that it presents an opportunity to communicate new and hopeful alternatives to an otherwise cynical and beaten-down population. Use the LaRouche movement’s proposals for an Oasis Plan for Southwest Asia and a New International Security and Development Architecture to organize and educate widely—reality is on our side. And build attendance for the April 13 online Schiller Institute conference.