Geopolitics over jolted Haiti

IMPERIAL dream is impersonal and geopolitics does not sit idle during catastrophe. So, Haiti with dead, demolished structures, hungry and thirsty is now experiencing pressures and pushes of geopolitics.
   A world with ammunition capable of bypassing date trees and buildings and enter into its targeted room accurately, and with scientific and technological capacity to search water deep down in the moon is failing to provide water and food so many days after the land of the poor was devastated by an earthquake. A world order that can allocate billions within days to bail out speculating banks now finds it hard to find food for the Haitians hungry for days.

   The Associated Press reported:
   The World Food Programme said more than 250,000 ready-to-eat food rations had been distributed in Haiti by Tuesday, reaching a fraction of the 3 million people thought to be in desperate need. The program needs 100 million similar rations in the next 30 days, but it only had 16 million in the pipeline. A massive international aid effort has been struggling with logistical problems, and many Haitians are still desperate for food and water.
   It has been once again proved that military might of this world order can destroy cradle of civilisation, and can appropriate non-renewable energy from countries, but cannot deliver food to the hungry and medical aid to the critically wounded within days. This world saw in Europe in 1945, groups of armies being commanded and their logistics being arranged properly, timely and swiftly. The commanding generals including Patton described these. Otherwise, the war against the Nazis could not be won. Has the world forgotten the Berlin airlift episode? And, now, in a new millennium, with the lofty and great millennium development goals, a mighty machine fails to deliver bottles of water and packs of food to all the thirsty and hungry from sky, from choppers, the safe way of delivering relief to a mass being branded looters. And, thus one of the glorious feats of the dominating system is being written in the annals of humanity.
   These difficulties, logistic problems, etc are parts of a reality, a reality loaded with competition for dominance, a reality that plays with agony of humanity, in Darfur, in Congo, in Gaza, in the Pacific islands, that plays with earthquakes, with climate crisis, with sugarcane or bio fuels. So, Haiti, the land of high mountains, the first independent nation in Latin America, the first post-colonial independent black-led nation in the world, and the only nation gaining independence through a successful slave rebellion, now finds itself, with a non-functional government, amidst the whirlpool of geopolitics.
   The world now hears: The United Nations, CBS/AP reported, must investigate and clarify the dominant US role in earthquake ravaged Haiti, a French minister said, …claiming that international aid efforts were about helping Haiti, not occupying it. The French minister made the complaint after the US forces turned back a French aid plane carrying a field hospital from the airport in Port-au-Prince. The French foreign minister warned governments and aid groups not to squabble as they try to get their aid into Haiti. Haiti was occupied by the French from 1697 to 1804, the year Haiti gained independence. The US occupation of the country was from 1915 to 1934.
   Then Brazil said it would not voluntary relinquish any of its command duties in Haiti. There are 1,700 Brazilian soldiers in Haiti. Brazil also commands the UN Forces there since 2004. Brazil knows well that the US military does not take orders from foreign forces. Haiti, Gabriel Elizondo wrote, is considered a critical part of Brazilian foreign policy. Brazil, it is being claimed, would have a major presence in Haiti for at least the next five years. The emerging economy is taking a lead role in aid to Haiti. It is also carrying aid of other countries to Haiti. But a few days ago three Brazilian planes with supplies were not allowed to land in Haiti by the Americans. The Brazilian foreign minister talked to Hillary Clinton and asked that Brazilian planes be given priority.
   These describe a bit complicated equation as there is now a new French attitude to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and trade relations of Brazil are changing. There is ALBA, the new Latin American alliance that claims that the US is intolerant of the alliance. Daniel Ortega, president of Nicaragua, said the US has taken advantage of the earthquake and has deployed troops in Haiti. He denounced the deployment. Ortega said, according to Press TV (January 17), It seems that the bases (on Latin America) are not sufficient. It would be madness if we all began to send troops to Haiti. Chavez, the Venezuelan president, had the same tone. He accused the US of using the earthquake as a pretext to occupy the devastated country. He said: They are occupying the country undercover. He did not belittle the humanitarian role of the US, but questioned the need for the US troops there in Haiti. Planes from Venezuela were the first to arrive in Haiti. Several Venezuelan planes, according to a news report, went to Haiti with doctors, aid and some soldiers. There enters Russia. A Russia-Venezuela mission on Russian planes was scheduled to leave Venezuela. An active Iranian aid-move in Haiti should not surprise anyone. The US is facing a number of protesting voices.
   The jolt in Haiti, it seems, is creating space for manoeuvre in geopolitics while the Haitian people are victims, of both a natural disaster and of imperial onslaught – occupation and plunder. Spain exploited its gold. Poverty, a GDP per capita $790, is their regular feature of life there. Eighty per cent of its population lives in poverty. This land was never kept outside of imperial design. The Aristide episode is full of pain, deception, and conspiracy. Castro, in an article, said: Haiti is the net product of colonialism and imperialism, of more than one century of the employment of its human resources in the toughest forms of work, of military interventions, and the extraction of its natural resources. … Haiti constitutes the disgrace of our era, in a world where the exploitation and pillage of the vast majority of the planet’s inhabitants prevail. (GranmaInternational) Geopolitics over Haiti, once a haven for pirates, is not a new phenomenon. This small, geographically, country has experienced pains of geopolitics for long.
   The Empire can feel for a bolder presence with the changing socio-political reality in Latin America, with silently increasing presence of China in the Hemisphere, with the changes in the equilibrium in the OAS, with the Venezuela-Russia joint naval exercise. The Roosevelt corollary that reasserts the US position as protector of the Western Hemisphere can get awakened. Haiti is close to continental US, its largest trading partner. There are other reasons for its importance to the US. The Spaniards, as history tells, used the island (Haiti is the western part of it) as a lunching point to explore the Western Hemisphere. History does not repeat, but people take lessons from history. Histories of conquest and control are not excluded.
   Humanity, however, will push aside the forces of conquest and control. It is not Bismarck or Metternich that prevailed, but the contradictions, contradictions that take humanity forward. Haiti will put to test, wrote Fidel Castro, how much of the spirit of cooperation can endure before egotism, chauvinism, petty interests, and contempt for other nations prevail. Countries are taking a close look at all that is happening in Haiti. The world’s public opinion and people’s criticism will be ever harsher and unforgiving.