“Bread crumbs”(perhaps how you got here)

Tue, Jan 19, 2010

This is written while the disaster of the Haitian earthquake is still happening. At first, there was much talk in the news about damage to buildings and lives lost due to injuries, but now there is a growing awareness that the aftermath, when provision of food, water, shelter, and ongoing medical care is a serious issue.

I have seen estimates that as many as 200,000 people may die as a consequence of the earthquake. The exact number of casualties will probably never be known, since even before the earthquake the Haitian government lacked adequate resources that would permit a precise toll.

The World’s more fortunate nations have responded vigorously with aid, but the aid (in all forms, including military personnel to keep order) is slow to reach the necessary places because the transportation system is in tatters. The harbor at Port-au-Prince is ruined; the airport is now up and running, but it was a small airport. Here in Wickenburg (population maybe 7,000 in wintertime) we have an airport about the same size as the single commercial airport that served Haiti.

Last night I saw on television a man who has children that are believed to be trapped in the ruins of a hotel in Port-au-Prince. He demanded that there be “immediately” at least a thousand United States soldiers at that hotel to rescue his children and keep order around the hotel. This demand should be placed in context: there are, counting the U. N. personnel, something like 15,000 soldiers available in the entire country. While the gentleman’s concern for his children is natural, it is unreasonable and selfish to demand the deployment of such a large force.

This brings up a serious question: what is the military might of the United States for? (And, before going on, I might ask the same question of other large, modern military forces.)

One view of the military is that it should exist to defend America against foreign attacks. Lincoln used the military to suppress an insurrection. Another view is that public safety includes more than just defense against invasions or other warlike events. This second view holds that it is appropriate to deploy military personnel to keep order in disasters, or to assist nations in trouble - as in the case of Haiti.

Whatever one’s view of the purpose of the military, there can be no doubt that military forces were the only large, well-organized units available to help the Haitians. This raises an interesting question: why is this so? Perhaps it would be well for the United States to develop a true peace-keeping force, trained not so much in large-formation attacks and defenses as in maintaining public safety, restoring essential services, and rescuing the injured. How big should the force be? Perhaps the situation in Haiti gives us a rough idea - at present, it seems that something like 10,000 to 50,000 military and auxiliary personnel are needed.

Given the cost of deploying regular military forces (from every branch of the U. S. Armed Forces), it is hard to imagine that the cost of developing a true peace-keeping force would be prohibitive. In the long run it might be cheaper, and it might permit a higher level of performance, since (despite all the heroic efforts and good intentions) soldiers are not really trained to carry out the tasks encountered in large natural disasters.

Naturally, right-wing zealots in the United States will never stand for placing American forces, military or peace-keeping, under the command of a United Nations officer, but at least an American peace force could cooperate with U. N. personnel.

Oh, back to the issue of cost: a force of, say, 50,000 effectives would be roughly equivalent to two regular divisions in the Army (American divisions tend to be larger than European ones). The force would not require high-tech military equipment, such as stealth aircraft. What it would need would be construction equipment, light arms, good communications equipment, and a complete array of personnel of the specialties needed in disasters. That equipment is not likely to be so expensive as the cost of deploying regular armed forces for the same work.

There is one more cost-saving measure that emerges clearly from the disaster in Haiti: it is a lot cheaper (and more pleasant, etc.) to do things right the first time. In Haiti’s case, this would have meant that the Haitians would have a functional, honest, and responsive government that created or supervised effective law-enforcement, educational, transportation, and other modern infrastructure elements. It would probably have been cheaper for the United States simply to build most of that infrastructure than it will turn out to be for us to help the Haitians recover from the disaster. “Doing things right the first time” in this case almost means fixing the corruption and chaos that Haitians have endured for two centuries (more, actually, if you count the colonial era).

I said “almost means” - the very beginning of doing things right is education. It is vital that Haiti’s youth be given effective, free, public education; with an educated populace, Haiti can undertake modern economic development programs, and the conduct of public affairs will become much easier and more effective. In other words, the United States must not only take the lead in helping the Haitians recover in an immediate, material sense, it must also undertake to see that an effective infrastructure is provided, so that Haiti can eventually lift itself out of the appalling poverty in which they have been trapped for so long.

 All text on this page is the work of J W Durham and is licensed only under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Other licensing terms may be available. E-mail me