Certain Habits

IMF structural adjustment is like Chapter 11 for countries. So is occupation (Nazi Germany, Japan, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq).

But what does Chapter 13 for countries look like? Are we about to find out with Haiti? If not, should we?

Thomas PM Barnett provides one answer:

The instinctive rush to flood the place with aid will accomplish almost nothing. We’d be better off simply annexing the entire country, which, if left with any sovereignty intact, will simply go on abusing itself ad infinitum, as it has for decade upon decade. How quickly this whole tragedy has become about the “great celebrities/humanitarians” who have made this cause their own. It all feels like one big Oscar race.

But Haiti goes nowhere so long as it remains a place where almost nobody wants to engage in profitable business–other than funneling aid. The government has been child-like in its response to date, victimized by the well-meaning efforts by outsiders for many years to do for Haitians what they cannot manage for themselves.