On August 15th, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the Spec. Ops commander for the military’s regional Southern Command to launch Joint Task Force-Haiti, upon the request of the USAID office.
Elements of the Haitian bourgeoisie have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Washington, D.C. lobbyists, reports the New York Times. These Haitian businessmen compete with one another for the promotion of one representative over another to be appointed President, a contest in which each side is vying for American support to decide the outcome.
Support for the future ruling political regime requires, and lobbies for, unrest in Haiti to be forcefully quelled.
Earlier this year, thousands of Haitians protested against the rampant criminal gangs which the government enables to function as an unaccountable police force.
Coming after the recent assassination of Haitian President Moïse, at least 53,000 people have lost their homes and thousands have lost their lives in the August 14th earthquake. This disaster has heralded a greater presence for direct American involvement in a delicate political climate which is seriously worrying the Haitian ruling class.
Since the 15th, the US has further reinforced the Haitian mission of USAID, an organization which is often used to facilitate covert repressive actions in foreign countries (such as the training of police and torture interrogation under the Office of Public Safety, a project also under Southern Command) with amphibious warships and planes from both the Navy and the Coast Guard, several U.S. Army and Air Force helicopters, and hundreds of Marines.
This renewed occupation must not be confused with a humanitarian mission, because it in fact fulfills an imperialist goal of returning to conditions in which international corporations can better loot the vulnerable nation. In the ongoing collapse of Haitian political and economic stability, the United States uses its military to refresh the local bourgeois dictatorship, which it had similarly supported with military action in past decades- most disastrously under the 1994 occupation.
With its vast financial and military capabilities, America will seek to establish a regime in Haiti led by whichever local elite can make the best promises to protect private property and capitalist profit.