At the Corner, Mark Krikorian proposes one possible explanation for Haiti’s woes:

My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough. The ancestors of today’s Haitians, like elsewhere in the Caribbean, experienced the dislocation of de-tribalization, which disrupted the natural ties of family and clan and ethnicity. They also suffered the brutality of sugar-plantation slavery, which was so deadly that the majority of slaves at the time of independence were African-born, because their predecessors hadn’t lived long enough to reproduce.

But, unlike Jamaicans and Bajans and Guadeloupeans, et al., after experiencing the worst of tropical colonial slavery, the Haitians didn’t stick around long enough to benefit from it. (Haiti became independent in 1804.). And by benefit I mean develop a local culture significantly shaped by the more-advanced civilization of the colonizers.

It is tempting, I think, to dismiss this as warmed-over neo-colonialism. However, you often hear similar arguments from foreign policy commentators like Max Boot and Niall Ferguson, so it’s worth addressing Krikorian’s points head-on.

First, the track record of non-Western countries that did not experience prolonged European occupation presents a more complicated picture than a narrow look at Haiti’s post-colonial experience. Japan, arguably the most successful non-Western country of the modern era, is notable for freezing out Western influence until the mid-19th century, when it suddenly embarked on a policy of indigenous modernization. Other non-Western states that largely escaped colonization include China and Turkey, which suggests that imperialism does very little to create the preconditions for successful statehood. In the Caribbean, Cuba was one of the oldest continually-occupied colonial territories in the Western hemisphere, but that history has done precious little for the island’s impoverished citizens.

Second, the conservative critique of foreign aid (a critique I largely agree with) is also applicable to just about any colonial administration throughout history. If generous foreign aid programs breed dependency and discourage indigenous development, a foreign occupier who assumes control of all vital state functions should create similar problems.

I’m not the first person to make this connection, either: William Easterly, a development expert from NYU, devotes an entire chapter of The White Man’s Burden to the parallels between colonialism and “postmodern imperialism” (from page 284):

I compare the non-colonies to European colonies that were not settled by Europeans . . . The non-colonies had more rapid increases in secondary education from 1960 to 2001. Growth per capita from 1950 to 2001 was 1.7 percentage points higher in the non-colonies than the non-settlement colonies, a huge difference for a fifty-one-year period. By 2001, income was 2.4 times higher in the non-colonies than in the former non-settlement colonies.

Brown University economist Louis Putterman argues that having a long history of statehood (which was one thing that prevented colonization in many cases) was favorable for seizing economic opportunities in the postwar era, and that may be the reason for the different outcomes in the non-colonies compared with the colonies. Naturally formed states outperformed artificial colonial creations.

Easterly also discusses colonial administrators’ lack of familiarity with local conditions and their tendency to delegate power to fictitious or unreliable indigenous proxies. Sound familiar? It should, because the United States’ experience in both Iraq and Afghanistan has been characterized by similar problems.

Easterly’s conclusion is similarly damning:

The West should learn from its colonial history when it indulges neo-imperialist fantasies. They didn’t work before and they won’t work now.

Indeed.

I mean, really, what else explains this latest column? For all his faults, I had at least taken Buchanan as a principled opponent of unnecessary foreign wars. Now he goes off and writes one long enconium to Polk’s massive land grab.

While I took much issue with the Obama Administration’s initial response to the Honduran crisis in July, and especially the severe sanctions imposed, which achieve little more than hurting an already desperately poor population, I must admit that I’ve been quite happy with their actions in recent weeks.  To be sure, the deal they helped negotiate was far from perfect from my admittedly distant perspective, but it appeared to be a fairly good faith attempt to recognize that even if the Michelletti regime has not covered itself in glory and acted illegally in forcing Zelaya into exile, the Constitutional concerns that gave rise to Zelaya’s ouster were very real and legitimate rather than manufactured power grab. 

But today, that deal appears to have fallen apart in a deluge of finger-pointing.  This fact leaves a whole host of thorny questions for the diplomatic community with massive implications for millions of Hondurans.  First, who is to blame for the deal’s apparent collapse?  Is this just kabuki theater on Zelaya’s part? On Michelletti’s?  On both?  Can the deal be salvaged?  And most importantly, should any of this matter, especially if the elections at the end of the month turn out to be in accordance with international standards, or at least more in accordance with international standards than the “re-election” of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan?

From my distant perspective, this looks like it’s all just a chess match between Zelaya and Michelletti, in which neither side was particularly happy with the deal nor had much interest in complying with its spirit, even if they were willing to comply with its letter.  Certainly, it looks like Michelletti’s attempts to seek Zelaya’s input on a short-term unity government were half-hearted at best, undertaken solely out of the desire to appease the international community.  While I have no idea whether the deal required a vote on Zelaya’s reinstatement by yesterday, the delay in holding such a vote can only be described as spiteful and contrary to the spirit of the deal.  At most, a vote restoring Zelaya to the Presidency by yesterday would enable Zelaya to be a lame duck President for a few months at a time when all the branches of government, including the military, have made clear that their loyalties lay with Michelletti’s faction.  Zelaya will simply not have the time required to re-establish a power base within the government, and if he attempts to do so by dismissing the leadership of those other branches of government and replacing it with those loyal to him, he will quickly see the non-Chavez international community turn on him.

Meanwhile, Zelaya has to be largely aware of all of the above.   Indeed, Zelaya probably never had much interest in seeing the deal fulfilled, which is why he refused to respond to Michelletti’s half-hearted attempts to form a unity government.  What interest could Zelaya have in returning to the Presidency for perhaps a few months as a complete and utter lame duck?  Better to ensure that the deal falls through, make a plausible case for blaming the international pariah Michelletti for that fact, and watch as the international community refuses to recognize the results of the elections.  Once the elections have passed, Zelaya’s negotiating strength will likely increase dramatically as the new regime deals with widespread sanctions and intensifying international pressure and isolation. 

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Deeper minds than mine are taking on the imperialism question around the b’sphere–Freddie provides not only a deft human touch to the question but also all the links you’ll need on the subject.

This is not a criticism of the writers involved (Millman, Poulos, Larison)–rather it’s my lack of processing capacity on this one–but as I discussed in my Great Powers reviews, the notion of these discussions taking place minus a corresponding technological-economic discussion I find too abstract.  Again all players make some heavy duty philosophical points, worth reading. So I would like to add these thoughts more as another point of view into the mix than one that takes sides or trump the others.

e.g. A (the core?) question in this debate is whether a republic can survive the expansion of itself domestically and/or internationally.

This question brings to mind my other favorite foreign policy text Bounding Power by Daniel Deudney.  [The conversation comes somewhat full circle as I had written a review of that book that James P. was going to edit for Culture11 before its demise].  A very positive review of the work by John Ikenberry here.

Deudney refers to himself as a liberal (i.e. non-Marxist) historical materialist. That puts him in a very similar trajectory to a Barnett, though Deudney puts more emphasis on government and its philosophical platforms/commitments.  In Deudney’s understanding there are two fundamental questions (“problematiques”):  the question of violence/security and the question of scope (not necessarily size) of government.

He then creates a grid based on these two questions.  States/entities that can not control violence become anarchic.  A number of states pass this threshold moving onto the second question: how will the government be formed that will prevent said violence.

Deudney says basically one of two options to this second question:  hierarchical (i.e. authoritarian, imperial) and republican (small ‘r’).

DD then correlates eras of technological history across the grid which creates levels/layers of this twofold phenomena.  [I'm not doing him justice, it's a totally brilliant work].

e.g. Continental sized government that ends internal anarchic violence but is hierarchical and not republican think Napoleonic Europe  versus the republican form of England.  [Though to be fair, England has its own hierarchical governance  abroad and arguably the US since WWII has as well].

The emergent levels refer to the reach/scope of power than can be exercised.  Bounding Power as a title refers to his dual sense of the move of history and his political aim:  Power is bounding across the planet on one hand.  On the other, we seek to bound power as in bind it (the republican option at any level of scope).  The ability of the power to be bounding is of course in large (though not total) part a technological question. [Read more →]