Imperial West shares the blame for woes of Haiti

Haitian children wait with bowls for food distributed by the government. Critics say Haiti's official relief efforts are inadequate.

Haiti, a tropical expression of poverty, corruption and natural disaster, once more intrudes on our conscience. Well before the country was shattered by a huge earthquake nearly two weeks ago, the facts of its decomposition were well known: it is the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, with a per-capita income of US$2 (Dh7.34) a day and a poverty rate of 80 per cent. Half its population is illiterate and the first thing its college graduates do upon matriculation is leave the country in search of jobs.

Even as the world rushes to aid this benighted state, there have been appeals, mostly from the political right, to condition aid and assistance on commitments from the Haitian government that it will reform itself. The lethality of the quake could have been lessened, it is argued, had building codes been enforced, and had hospitals and emergency medical teams been fully staffed and resourced. For a country that rests on one of the region's most active tectonic plates, to neglect such basic standards and services reveals a crisis of governance worthy of a failed state.

For many libertarians, particularly the Ayn Rand-styled true believers, the cause of Haiti's pathology is an abundance of good will. To habitually rescue a corrupt state is to sustain its reprobation. (The same could be said about Wall Street, of course.) An economist might see things differently, however, noting that Haiti throughout much of its history was the imperial possession or protectorate of malevolent foreign powers. Dating back to the 16th century, the country was plundered by Spain for its natural resources and settled by French pirates and sugar barons. For a while, it was shared by the two superpowers and run like a condominium fief.

Haitian independence, born of a slave revolt inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution, was followed by a century of foreign invasion, counter-rebellion and despotism. As late as the 1990s, western business interests, often in tandem with the US marines, frequently played a far more decisive role in Haiti's fate than ordinary Haitians. (The marines have returned to assist quake victims and not, as the Pentagon loudly protests, as an occupying force.)

On what grounds, the economist might ask, should a nation denied self-determination throughout so much of its history be held to account for its obligations as a sovereign state today? For Karl Marx, imperialism was the process by which nations or corporations controlled others states indirectly through exploitation rather than directly through military occupation. Haiti, of course, was subjected to generous helpings of both.

In 1902, the English economist John A Hobson averred ruefully that imperialism was not only the handmaiden of the free market, but its very salvation. Because capitalism generated more goods than consumers could afford to buy, he believed, its survival hinged on the creation of new markets abroad. It would require, he wrote, "the endeavour of the great controllers of industry to broaden the channel for the flow of their surplus wealth by seeking foreign markets and foreign investments to take off the goods and capital they cannot use at home".

This was an antiseptic way of referring to the small but destructive colonial wars of the Victorian era, the legacies of which - militarism, partition and authoritarianism - cast a long shadow on what is now known as the developing world. As late as 1953, the author and economist Robert Heilbroner wrote how, during the 19th century, one sixth of the world was rich and powerful, while the balance was "supine, defence-needy and gullible". Half a century later, he noted, the bottom five sixths was still poor, but also "angrily aggressive". Asia has turned away from Europe, while the Middle East was "bursting with the rage of the beggar who looks at the rich man and sees - the gross injustice of differing stations in life".

What followed were among the most convulsive decades the Third World has known. If many former colonies such as the blighted Haiti are to this day struggling with the consequences, no small share of responsibility lies with its imperial overlords. In his 1979 book, The Nature of Mass Poverty, the economist and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith wrote how imperialism creates an unhealthy dependency on the ruler by the ruled that will endure long after the occupier withdraws. Colonial rule, he wrote, "excluded the subject peoples from political decision - The exclusion operated against the masses of the people [and] - while colonial rule remained successful, there was no effective redress".

It is true that many former colonies, particularly those in Asia, are now economic powers, having harnessed the authoritarian energy of their former occupiers as fuel for development. What were the "tiger economies" of the 1970s and 1980s, after all, but an inversion of the dependency syndrome of which Mr Galbraith wrote? What is China - as powerful and influential as it is oppressive, mercantilist, and to its Muslim population at least, imperialist - but a titanic legacy of colonial aggrandisement?

By all means, Haitians should be held responsible for their misery. But the West should not delude itself as to the root cause of their malaise. @Email:[e-mail]