Guh

[bcholmes]

This is rant-inducing. Some pseudo-Think Tank is talking about invoking "Responsibility to Protect" in Haiti:

Politically speaking, some interventions will likely stir the pot at the Security Council. China, for instance, would likely veto such actions in Sudan (where Beijing has heavy investments) or Burma (which is in its "sphere of influence"). While R2P intrusions in some places will require significant diplomatic muscle, other interventions may be less divisive. Would any Security Council member object to humanitarian assistance to Haiti, for example? Haiti is of no strategic importance to the realist leaders in the Security Council. Who then would object? The Haitian government? Where there may be little disagreement in invoking R2P, such as in Haiti, humanitarian assistance should commence immediately.

So, um. A few things. First, Denis Paradis was all over the idea of using R2P back when he was talking up the "Canada has to do something about this Aristide dude" line. Past efforts at associating R2P with Haiti haven't really worked out all that well for the country.

I'm open to the idea that R2P might be a good policy in some circumstances. Probably the ones that we'll never get to use it, like Darfur (I still don't feel like I understand the whole Darfur thing well enough). We'll never get a chance to try R2P in Darfur because the Sudan in an oil source for China, and China will veto any R2P intervention there.

I think that it's a distraction to talk about R2P in terms of "should we invoke it or not?" when, really, the more important terms of the conversation should be "if we invoke R2P, what's keeping the protectors honest and on the level." Like if, by chance, we invoked R2P in Sudan, what's gonna stop the U.S. from quietly taking control of Sudan oil reserves while they're there? 'Cause once we've got soldiers in another country, we don't seem to get much honest reporting about what they're doing.

Second, let's unpack the whole "Haiti is of no strategic importance to the realist leaders in the Security Council" bit. Don't you remember that there's no way that Vietnam can have any strategic importance to the U.S. And Grenada. No strategic importance. And yet Western countries keep finding themselves there, overthrowing governments and blowin' shit up. I think that the idea that these places nothing is part of the discourse used to distract people from the exploitation that's going on.

Finally, we don't need to use a policy like R2P to bring humanitarian aid to a place like Haiti. Just write a cheque. If you're thinking about using R2P for humanitarian purposes, you're implicitly saying, "we believe that the current government has to go, and we're gonna send in soldiers to make that happen." And if that's what you're thinking, have the guts to be honest about that. Make your case. Me, I don't think these guys have a case, 'cause I don't think they know anything beyond a superficial understanding of what's going on in Haiti. And that's what keeps getting Haiti fucked over.