Haiti: Double standards of the "international community"

In a speech last year, Tony Blair, leading exponent of the modern concept of global responsibility, urged nations to act collectively to promote shared beliefs and so defeat the common threat of chaos. "The values we stand for - freedom, human rights, the rule of law, democracy - are all universal values," he said. "But they have to be pursued alongside another value: justice, the belief in opportunity for all." Mr Blair is right, in theory. In practice, in Haiti as elsewhere, the words ring hollow. Haitians surely aspire to all the values he listed. But they are wholly absent from their lives, not just now but throughout their mostly miserable past. Universality passes them by. What they possess, in abundance, is chaos. Yet what, at this moment of dire need, have the powers done about it? Nothing much is the answer. For all their doctrines and declarations, they have dithered and debated, ducked and dodged, and danced that old, slow diplomatic shuffle. Something should be done; on that all agree. Quite what, and how, and by whom, they have little idea.

Haiti's agony raises a wider question of humanitarian intervention. Rwanda and Bosnia were seen as cautionary lessons; in future, it was said, such things would be nipped in the bud. After Kosovo, East Timor and Sierra Leone, the west has lately begun to think itself well versed in dealing with such problems. But poor, tiny, impoverished Haiti, has no strategic or economic importance. It has no strong colonial ties, although France, for reasons not unconnected to its rivalry with the US, displays a vestigial proprietary interest. Despite what Mr Aristide says, Haiti has no terrorists, no al-Qaida cells, as in Afghanistan. In Haiti, there is nothing to pre-empt save human suffering. In Haiti, there is no glory, only hard, costly work. In Haiti, there is no oil. So the White House talks of regional initiatives and UN policemen, even as it bars the refugee door and checks the Florida polls.

Haiti's agony raises the question of democracy, that much advertised and endorsed third world panacea, guaranteed to cure all ills. Mr Aristide has not been a good president. But he was democratically elected. On that basis, Colin Powell has argued (although he is wobbling) that he should be supported. This was not the US stance in Venezuela when the elected, anti-American Hugo Chavez faced a popular revolt; in Georgia, when Eduard Shevardnadze ruled; long ago, in Chile; or right now, in Yasser Arafat's Palestine. Yet the US gets by quite happily without democratic interlocutors in the steppes of central Asia, in China, the Gulf, and even (we dare say) in Russia. Global democracy is George Bush's proclaimed holy grail. But even in the US itself, he and others subvert it with corporate cash and gerrymandering. The question is not whether Mr Aristide is a democrat. It is, rather, a question that colonialists down the ages would recognise (and Machiavelli, too): is he "our" democrat? If he ceases to suit US interests, then, elected or not, he is gone.

Haiti's agony, ultimately, is a question of will. A few companies of professional combat soldiers could probably stop the fighting, allowing space for dialogue. But who will send them? And is it now too late? Mr Bush wants no part of it. His Iraqi interventionist brother-in-arms, Mr Blair, keeps his head down. The French gesticulate impressively; the neighbours fret; the UN has a meeting. It sometimes seems that the only truly universal value is hypocrisy. As Sir John Junor used to say: pass the sick bag, Alice.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1158137,00.html