On 28th November, Bocchit Edmond, Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, urged the international community to send a strike force to help overwhelmed police quell unruly gangs in Port-au-Prince. These demands came a month after embattled Prime Minister Ariel Henry begged foreign leaders to deploy a “specialized armed force, in sufficient quantity” to prevent gangs from seizing ports and airports, as noted in Foreign Policy. Though the Biden Administration appears hesitant to spearhead another potentially calamitous incursion into Haiti, the White House may outsource its military hardware to an international coalition instead. This represents an opportunity for the Global North to further impinge on Haitian sovereignty and impose its will on a collapsing state—to the great detriment of its citizens.
Foreign interventions have plagued Haiti since the mid-19th century. Virtually every world power indulged in coercive “gunboat diplomacy” to meddle in Haitian domestic affairs. Christopher Young amply demonstrates that France, Britain, the United States, Canada, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and Norway sent warships to bully Port-au-Prince into submission on multiple occasions throughout the late 1800s. Washington, Paris, and especially Berlin could hardly conceal their disdain for an independent and black-majority nation.
In 1857, the United States illegally annexed Navassa Island—a territory claimed by Haitian constitutions. President James Buchanan dismissed these claims and handed the island over to an American phosphate company. Slave-like working conditions in phosphate mines pushed Black-American laborers to murder their overseers thirty years later. Navassa
— source normanfinkelstein.com | Dec 8, 2022