KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
As of early 2025, Haiti is still suffering from a multifaceted national crisis that has all but dismantled the country’s political governance, security and economic stability. This dismal result is frustrating, most certainly for Haitian themselves.
It is also, in varying ways, an indictment of the international community’s considerable and well-intentioned efforts, often led by the United States. In fact, the new Trump administration runs the danger that U.S.-Haiti policy dynamics could fail to satisfy the core elements of its three-tiered definition of policy success: Does it make America safer, stronger and more prosperous?
However, Washington still has an opportunity to alter Haiti’s spiraling crisis. Any policy shift would need to match the importance of Haiti and its crisis in the current geopolitical context. This could mean strong U.S. leadership led by a special envoy, expanded engagement to pull in other hemispheric actors (especially the neighboring Dominican Republic) to offer more support, and either transitioning the current Multinational Security Support (MSS) Mission in Haiti into a U.N. Peacekeeping operation or significantly bolstering its capacity with key U.S. assets and leadership.
Success in this arena would not just help bring stability to Haiti, it would energize U.S. policy engagement in the region and even beyond — and force China and Russia to take note. Alternatively, Haiti could fall off the precipice and experience a dramatic Somalia-style failure, upending U.S. policy ambitions not just in the Caribbean but throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan has had to respond to a succession of crises in Haiti. When Reagan’s secretary of state, George Shultz, stated in early February 1986 that Washington would prefer seeing a democratically elected government in Haiti, this doomed dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier’s political survival. But this aspirational vision did not translate into policy reality — and the unrealized potential of that historic moment reflects the self-defeating mix of hubris and inattentiveness that has undermined U.S. efforts toward Haiti ever since.
The unrealized potential of [1986] reflects the self-defeating mix of hubris and inattentiveness that has undermined U.S. efforts toward Haiti.
Such a critical assessment emerges despite U.S. policy responses over the past 40 years that have engaged the full panoply of security, economic, humanitarian and multilateral diplomacy mechanisms. This has included initiatives targeting modernization of Haiti’s national police and several layers of governance programming, including support for a succession of often inconclusive elections.
This overlaps with a nearly continuous U.N. presence in Haiti and several phases of peacekeeping operations from 1994 through 2017, the year that peacekeeping operations were downgraded after the Security Council optimistically determined that Haiti’s drawn-out electoral and governance transition process (from President Michel Martelly to President Jovenel Moïse) had been successful. Washington did not object to that interpretation.
In reality, however, Haiti was entering a new phase of crisis that has only worsened since — and current U.S. policy is clearly not achieving desirable results. The most immediate conceptual failings are worth noting, if only to avoid repeating them. This includes the ultimately nebulous notion of a “Haiti-led solution” to the evolving crisis. While no one disagrees with listening to Haitian voices and urging Haitian leadership on the issue, in practice this approach has mutated into dithering U.S. policy and often left Haitians with just enough “assistance” to freeze their own capacity to solve problems.
Another issue — the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support (MSS) Mission in Haiti — remains a work in progress. Authorized by the U.N. Security Council in October 2023 but not constituting a formal U.N. peacekeeping operation, it continues to hobble along without the previous peacekeeping operation’s built-in military, administrative and political outreach structure.
This has left the United States as the main diplomatic, financial and operational catalyst. While the Kenyan offer to lead this force has been borderline heroic — alongside a handful of other countries that have stepped in with some capacity — the firm decision of the United States to not be involved on the ground (even with the normal contracted personnel that would have been part of a U.S.-led mission) and the MSS’s inability to hit even modest targets in personnel and funding have left the mission incapable of making a real difference in security on the ground.
With a targeted focus, there are at least five areas where the U.S. can achieve measurable success going forward. These areas build on the shaky but not insignificant gains in governance, security and international support in recent years to create a sustainable formula that initially brings Haiti out of its current crisis and subsequently points it toward a full social, economic and political life.
1. A forward-looking strategy begins by placing Haiti policy firmly in its geopolitical context. This includes an extended “America First” strategic vision focused on achieving positive U.S. policy outcomes in the Western Hemisphere. The policy boundaries of the crisis in Haiti encompass components of both foreign and domestic U.S. policy considerations — including a sometimes-toxic mix of immigration and border control initiatives, as well as efforts to counter the influence of drug cartels and related criminal networks. Achieving needed success in these arenas includes altering the failing glidepath of existing Haiti-related initiatives.
2. A sustainable strategic approach should recognize U.S. leadership is essential to addressing Haiti’s crisis. Haiti’s geographical proximity, history and its current crisis’s overlap with core U.S. policy priorities (immigration and drug trafficking, notably) demand a thoughtful response. However, the assumption that direct U.S. engagement automatically means U.S. boots on the ground is mistaken.
3. However, Haiti’s crisis is not simply a U.S. responsibility to resolve — it requires a clear policy focus in connection with Haiti’s neighbors. U.S. expectations are that other hemispheric actors need to step up and do their part, and soon. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has downplayed expectations that Haiti’s crisis will once again be addressed by a U.S. military intervention (as was the case in 1994 and 2004). He has also recently called on the rest of the hemisphere to do more. This probably does not exclude the superb planning capacity that the U.S. military can provide, but it does imply a need to expand beyond a core group of countries that have been U.S. partners in Haiti over the last 30 years — mainly Canada, Brazil and Chile. Creative policymaking must incorporate the diverse logistical and technological assets that Argentina, El Salvador and others can provide.
For starters, with U.S. encouragement, there is a pressing need to overcome decades of tensions between Haiti and the Dominican Republic and replace it with a constructive role that the Dominican government can play in support of U.S. and regional efforts to address Haiti’s crises.
Likewise, one cannot underestimate the need to energize the role already being played by the Caribbean Community of states (CARICOM), of which Haiti is a member and whose membership also includes countries with a vested interest in effectively addressing Haiti’s multi-faceted crisis. This can also shape a more satisfactory engagement of multilateral institutions with relevant capabilities to address Haiti’s multilayered crises, such as: the Organization of American States, a supporting cast of financial institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank, and a diverse array of potential Haitian and multinational private sector actors.
4. The MSS mission has not altered the strategic situation on the ground. In fact, it has worsened since the initial deployment of the MSS mission in the summer of 2024. Nonetheless, before inventing yet another “solution” to Haiti’s crisis, the U.S. needs to explore two potentially overlapping options that both make clear Haiti is not simply a U.S. policy responsibility.
The outgoing Biden administration had envisioned transitioning the MSS into a formal U.N. peacekeeping mission. Despite possible bias against such a multilateral mechanism, the peacekeeping option broadens the strategic responsibility (including budgetary needs) for the crisis in Haiti beyond just U.S. efforts and brings with it a significant multinational operational infrastructure. And despite some of their flaws, there is also a deep well of experience available from past U.N. operations in Haiti.
A second option is to push ahead with a strategy that re-energizes the MSS and ensures it has more effective coordination with what is left of Haiti’s national police, Haiti’s small military capacity and Haiti’s national political leadership. This can be achieved in part through U.S.-led operational planning and other key U.S. capacities (such as air assets, intelligence and contracted quick-reaction forces) working alongside significant manpower, equipment and financial resources from other key actors.
5. All of the above requires a steady U.S. hand in order to align a diverse set of U.S. policy resources with the core notion of an “America First” regional strategy. Although the proliferation of special envoys is not advisable, there is arguably a strong case for one when applied to Haiti. Using a special envoy to coordinate layers of U.S. policy actions, from the White House on down, and maximize multiple channels of multilateral diplomacy with key Haitian institutions will not only refine U.S. actions but also minimize missteps.
The average Haitian desperately wants peace. But hopes that it can be achieved are diminishing as Haiti’s wobbly transitional governance structure struggles to meet its cornerstone goals of constitutional reform, holding elections by fall of 2025 and security reforms. As it stands, it is difficult to imagine how these priorities will be achieved.
Even worse, there is a real danger that any progress toward these goals will be fleeting amid a political-security setting dominated by armed gangs, which by most accounts now control 90 percent of Port-au-Prince and have expanded to other parts of the country.
Therefore, achieving peace must start by re-establishing security in Haiti. The above points suggest how this can be addressed. So rather than speculating whether the transition’s timetable can be met, the gang situation should be the starting point for U.S. policy engagement.
However, while achieving street-level security is a key variable toward success, Haiti’s political leadership must also be held accountable for fulfilling their part of the transitional governance arrangement agreed to in April 2024.
For starters, this entails a need to foster a durable political governance consensus, a factor so far lacking. Accountability also includes a swift resolution of the corruption charges facing three members of the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC). And while it was reassuring that the TPC recently reaffirmed its priorities (constitutional reform, holding elections by fall of 2025 and security reforms), it must activate clear-cut resource needs for each of its three priority sectors that require immediate action from Haiti’s international partners.
The rotating nature of leadership on the TPC can be cumbersome, but the upcoming rotation due in March is a timely opportunity to upgrade Haiti’s governance accountability — and ensure that this opportunity is internalized in Washington. The appointment of an effective Haitian ambassador to the U.S. will help in achieving these objectives.
For its part, U.S. policy success is achievable and the time to act is now. But unless policymakers activate a robust strategic vision — as outlined above — the repercussions will be felt beyond Haiti, and U.S. national interests will suffer.