23367: radtimes: When Turnabout Isn't Fair Play (Haiti-China) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

WHEN TURNABOUT ISN'T FAIR PLAY
By Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.)

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in
full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0410fairplay.html.)

Perry in Japan; Dewey at Manila Bay; the China Relief Expedition (Boxer
Rebellion)-the West met the East "over there."

Now, East-in the form of the Peoples Republic of China-seems about to meet
the West in the persons of Louis-Jodel Chamberlain and Jackson Joanis.
Should this particular meeting actually happen, it will be different from
the previous East-West encounters in one important detail: it will happen
"over here," specifically, in the Caribbean-more specifically, in Haiti. It
will come about because the unforeseen and unintended consequences of
earlier decisions are finally emerging to upset the calculations of
policymakers.

With Iraq and the U.S. election cycle dominating headlines, Haiti all but
fell off the front pages until Hurricane Jeanne struck, killing more than
1,550 (with another 900 unaccounted for and presumed dead), 300,000 left
homeless, and food, water and shelter in desperately short supply. For all
the misery it has and is causing, however, Jeanne is not at the root of
Haiti's latest problems in the way Chamberlain and Joanis are. In February
2000, these two and their followers seemed on the verge of seizing control
of Haiti when the U.S. stepped in and "induced" a regime change. Economic
activity plunged, rebuilding only slowly until devasted again by natural
disaster.

Moreover, the country remains factionalized and heavily armed despite the
presence of a UN peacekeeping mission numbering 3,000. UN commanders report
armed clashes as people fight over distribution of relief supplies. And
while overt combat is rare, many observers suspect that the more organized
armed factions are merely standing back, waiting until closer to the
elections to re-engage-violently.

In short, Haiti is the Western Hemisphere's chaotic if impoverished and
smaller counterpart to Afghanistan and Iraq, just over seven months
following the still-murky swirl of events that saw 300 Haitians die and
President Jean Bertrand Aristide depart Port-au-Prince on a U.S. aircraft
that finally deposited him in the Central African Republic.

Chamberlain, a notorious paramilitary leader, was one of two prominent
anti-Aristide leaders with pretensions to the Haitian presidency. But
advanced elements of a UN authorized, U.S.-led foreign military "coalition
of the willing" were already at the presidential palace when the rebel
forces arrived, thwarting an indigenous coup.

The 3,000 strong intervention force had one overriding goal: to provide
enough stability for the new interim government to allow it to restore
economic activity, reconstitute the police and justice systems, and prepare
for elections in November 2005 that will bring a new government to power in
February 2006. But time ran out. In late June, U.S. forces departed Haiti,
handing peacekeeping duties to the UN Stabilization Mission (MINUSTAH) led
by Brazil. Washington, battered by Iraq, was pleased to escape with no
fatalities.

Since then, there has been good and bad news. A provisional administration
was formed to govern the island and prepare for elections. In June,
flooding killed an estimated 1,300 people and rendered thousands homeless.
In July, a donors' conference pledged $1.09 billion in "new money" to
revitalize Haiti's economy. But the original goals of the intervention
remain unachieved.

And this is where China comes into the picture. For the first time, Beijing
is set to participate in a UN peacekeeping mission by contributing an
organized security unit-in this instance, 125-130 riot police.

What makes this move so interesting is that Haiti is one of only 26
countries worldwide that maintains formal diplomatic relations with
Beijing's "renegade" island-province of Taiwan. Many in Washington who
support Taiwan's independent stance as an evolving democracy see Beijing's
action as another inroad to the hegemonic 19th century "Monroe Doctrine"
reoriented to the East.

As much as Washington might be uneasy about this first ever Chinese unit
deployment in support of UN peacekeeping, it points to the reality of China
taking initial steps in assuming a truly global role in the 21st century.
Already, Beijing is affecting world oil markets as its energy demands
mushroom. It is also facilitating the six-party discussions on North
Korea's nuclear weapons program that involve past and present superpowers.

In the 19th century, Euro-centric U.S. apologists of imperialism "traced"
the gradual shift of dominant empires from east to west to explain and
justify U.S. expansion. As flawed as this theory was (and is), their vision
seems a reality today as the U.S. stands alone militarily and still
dominates world economics. But if history is any guide, this unipolar
dominance cannot last. Whether empire moves west-to the real East-or some
other direction, move it will.

That movement will be resisted regardless of who runs Washington. The
danger in this is two-fold: resistance will be military and thus
destructively unproductive, or it will persist for so long that most if not
all possibilities for a cooperative "soft landing" will be lost. The result
will be, as the 2003 Nobelist, John Michael Coetzee of South Africa noted
about earlier imperial realms in slow decline, a U.S. bedeviled by one
consuming thought: "How not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era."

(Dan Smith is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus,
online at www.fpif.org, a retired U.S. Army colonel and a senior fellow on
Military Affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.)

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