Haiti is a failed state, not a single elected official is still in office.

 

A street vendor in Haiti. The Guardian/EPA.

Haiti is becoming a failed state with the last elected officials leaving office as their term expires. The Guardian. The last 10 Senators left the government at their term ended. There is no representation for Haitian citizens at any level of government. The government is not able to combat a growing gang crisis along with many other terrible problems. Haiti has not held elections since 2019 and the President was assassinated in 2021. The current President, Ariel Henry, is not seen as legitimate after taking over for Jovenel Moise without being ratified by law. With the legislature completely out of office and the Supreme Court down to five justices, all the power is now in the hands of Henry. With Haiti falling apart there are rumors that an international force could be deployed to restore order. 

My Comment:

Haiti is a good example of what happens when the government fails completely. The country has no real government now other than Ariel Henry and has been completely unable to solve any of its very serious problems. 

Haiti has never been much of a functioning country but the assassination of Jovenel Moise brought it to a level they have never seen before. And that killing has not yet been solved and it's unclear if things will get back to normal anytime soon. 

Things are complicated by a major gang war. With no government there doesn't seem to be much in the way of fighting the gangs that have taken over much of the country. Those gangs are mostly fighting each other which is causing a huge level of violence in an already violent country. 

I don't know how Haiti actually fixes any of this. I think if they did want to have elections it might help things as at least then they might be able do something but I don't think Henry will allow that. He wants to keep the power for himself and as long as that is the case nothing will change, at least not change for the better. 

There is an effort to deploy an US led force to try and restore order. I can tell you that I am opposed to this for pretty obvious reasons. America has a bad record with trying to nation build and Haiti is even worse than our previous experiments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sure, we don't have major terror groups in Haiti but the country is pretty much completely dysfunctional to a level that we didn't even see in Afghanistan. 

Would it help Haiti? I doubt it. In order to try and fix the country they would have to do something about the gangs and I don't see how you do that without heavy combat. Not only would we lose quite a few troops, a lot of Haitian civilians would die as well. 

Plus, there is essentially zero desire for Americans to get into another war. We are already bagged down in the Ukraine mess, a war we will probably lose, and we face threats from China and North Korea as well. Americans have war fatigue after our adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria and the last thing we need is another war in a country that is not a threat or a strategic asset.