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12 million desperate neighbors

We can’t just turn our backs on Haiti, regardless of who is to blame for the country’s crisis


On March 17, a plane carrying refugees from Haiti landed in South Florida. These were American citizens, evacuated by the State Department, but it may not be long before other Haitian refugees show up on U.S. soil—only arriving by boat and in far more desperate straits. As one of America’s closest neighbors spirals into outright anarchy and starvation, it is tempting to simply avert our eyes from the horrifying spectacle, the latest episode in what seems an unending saga of woe.

In just the past generation, Haiti has seen multiple civil wars, international interventions, and one of the worst natural disasters in history—a period of poverty, instability, and misery so unrelenting that the three-decade dictatorship of the Duvaliers (1957-1986) seems almost pleasant by comparison. And further back, the picture gets no brighter: Poverty, corruption, civil wars, assassinations seem to make up most of Haiti’s history since the brutally violent slave uprising and revolution that gave birth to the country in the 1790s. Is Haiti simply condemned to perpetual wretchedness, or is there something we should do to help?

In the face of such misery, we are tempted to render the suffering comprehensible by providing a simplified narrative, one with clear good guys and bad guys. Thus, some have blamed all of Haiti’s troubles on the exploitation of foreign creditors—and not without good reason. In 1825, the French sent a fleet to demand at gunpoint that Haiti pay a massive indemnity to its former slave owners, an indemnity financed by French banks.

This set off a chain of ruinous foreign debt, first to France and then to the United States. Haiti did not finish paying it off until 1947, crippling the country’s economic development—to the tune of $21 billion, according to The New York Times, which published an extensive exposé in 2022. The Times further alleges that Wall Street bankers were behind the United States’s 1915 occupation of Haiti, and that former Haitian President Aristide was ousted by France and the United States in a 2004 for daring to suggest that his country was owed reparations.

Haiti is an unpleasant reminder of just how bad things can get in a fallen world, and just how hard it can be to set them right again.

But of course, the story is more complicated. Haiti might have found it easier to pay down its debt if so much money hadn’t been sequestered by corrupt public officials or spent on military invasions of its neighbor, the Dominican Republic. And since 1947, the flow of funds has largely reversed, as the United States and many other countries have poured aid money and humanitarian resources into the country, with little to show for it but more corruption and unrest. It is easy to tell a tale of foreign interventions into Haiti as brutal wealth extractions, or to spin an equally plausible narrative of well-intentioned humanitarian efforts to stop violence and provide stability in a nation that seems unable to govern itself. Both tales would probably have some truth in them.

As America today eyes the spectacle of 12 million desperate neighbors facing disease and starvation, some will probably make the case for again sending in troops to restore order, while others will be sure to denounce any such action as just another imperialist depredation serving big business interests. And even the best-intentioned intervention seems almost sure to go awry, if past experience is any guide. Haiti is an unpleasant reminder of just how bad things can get in a fallen world, and just how hard it can be to set them right again.

It is probably impossible to answer in the abstract whether America should again put boots on the ground in Haiti. It can be argued that we do bear some moral responsibility for the country’s current state of affairs, and if there is a way to set our suffering neighbors on a path to stable self-government and prosperity, we should offer whatever resources we can to help.

Whatever we do, however, we must resist the temptation to simply turn away and close our hearts to the suffering. In a world where we are inundated by images of suffering around the globe every day, we are apt to feel that if we cannot do anything about a problem, we would rather ignore it. As Christians, however, there is always at least one thing we can do, trite as it may sound: pray. Even as policymakers wrestle with how to respond, we should lift up our suffering neighbors to the Lord and pray that He will provide them a path to peace.


Brad Littlejohn

Brad (Ph.D., University of Edinburgh) is a fellow in the Evangelicals and Civic Life program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He founded and served for 10 years as president of The Davenant Institute and currently serves as a professor of Christian history at Davenant Hall and an adjunct professor of government at Regent University. He has published and lectured extensively in the fields of Reformation history, Christian ethics, and political theology. You can find more of his writing at Substack. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife, Rachel, and four children.


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Carolyn Richardson

It is overwhelming just to think about Haiti and where to even start with help that won't be redirected into someone's pocket. But God......He is never overwhelmed and always is fully capable of throwing down corrupt rulers and raising up those that will glorify Him. He is the one that will need to make a change in Haiti as well as here in the US and the rest of the world. It is never trite to pray and as Christians, this should always be the very first thing we do.

philoxfordal

Agreed. Throwing money at Haiti is not the answer. Millions, if not billions were sent to Haiti after the hurricanes of 2008. A year later a videographer doing a documentary noted the piles of debris, stone and demolished buildings in the same places they were a year ago!! Where did all the money go?!!

No doubt, the country is in a crisis and there is a definite need for immediate help. There is also a need for a long term solution that focuses on the hearts of the people. Hearts need to be made ready for self-government. This can only be done by encouraging internal moral restraint that is rooted in the created order and the Creator!

Remember the take down of Berlin's wall in the 80's? The people did not know what to do with their freedom. The West was shocked! We take our freedom for granted. We no longer recognize the ideas that are necessary for a free society!!

We've lost our way. How can we help others??

I realize my response is also insufficient!!! LORD, with the rise of the internet I see suffering all over the world!!! My heart is overwhelmed. Haiti is our neighbor. We, who are your people carry the Spirit of God in this world and You have called us to be Your hands and feet. I'm in Texas, LORD, I am not in Haiti, but I can send my prayers!!!

Thanks, Brad, for the reminder that we can pray.

Jason Maas

I agree that other nations should step in to help. I wish the US was still up to the task of being a helpful regional police force, but sadly I don't think we are anymore as Sean McGrew explains below.

I think another nation is going to have to take over Haiti and completely run it for several decades to bring any lasting change. Throwing money or "support" at the nation isn't enough.

Sean McGrew

American Christians should be praying for the people of Haiti. However, Americans have not shown any inclination to regulate their behavior, so we have no business telling Haitians how to regulate theirs. We should be thinking about how Haiti became the post-apocalyptic hellscape that it is, and realize that we are heading down the same road.

The question of which comes first, liberty or order, has been wrongly assumed to be liberty by our culture today. But what the proponents of abortion, legalized drugs, gambling, and so many other destructive practices miss is that their autonomy isn't liberty--it's license. And we are not granted license to do as we please by our Creator. Recently El Salvador's leader Nayib Bukele threw off any pretense of liberty for its people when he rounded up 57,000 people and threw them in prison for crimes related to the drug cartels that had turned that country into another post-apocalyptic hellscape. The people, not surprisingly, are behind their leader, even though he eliminated much of their liberties. This is because when the theory of liberty bumps against the reality that you can't leave your house to buy food if there were any to be bought, the reality that order must be established before anyone can live long enough to enjoy liberty wins.

President Nayib Bukele has offered to help restore order in Haiti, and we should let him. The only help that our nation would provide would be that we'd borrow trillions of dollars from my grandchildren to build abortion clinics there and send teams of DEI activists there to help bring trans-appreciation into the spotlight. The only help we can give them is our prayers. And we should remember to pray for our nation while we're at it because where we're heading makes downtown Portland and San Francisco look like Grover's Corners.

Jason MaasSean McGrew

I had a sinking feeling while reading your analysis, because you're right and I wish that you weren't. The USA used to be capable of helping in a situation like Haiti's if we really wanted to. But you're right that we'd pursue all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons these days. And that makes me sad. You're also correct that liberty without order is useless. Well said.