All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I'm the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism, and I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy, and all available for you at scotthorton.org.
You can sign up for the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthortonshow.
Hey, guys, on the line, I got Doug Bondo, and he's, of course, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in their foreign policy department there, and he writes for us as a regular columnist also at antiwar.com, and this one is called The Tragedy of Haiti, Washington Should Keep Its Troops at Home.
Welcome back to the show.
How's it going?
Happy to be on.
Good to hear.
Good to hear.
Good to talk to you.
Good to have you on again.
So tell me everything that you know about Haiti in chronological order, because it's such an interesting story, and it's one that, you know, I'm passingly familiar with from time to time, because it keeps coming up from time to time, but, of course, it goes back to the founding of the U.S. and that whole era, and America's, you know, long and torturous relationship with this one half of this little island here, man, so hit me.
Well, the big thing about Haiti is it's the one country that was founded by people escaping slavery, that, you know, it was a slave colony of the French.
The slaves rose in revolt throughout the French.
I mean, it was one of the most brutal experiences, and the population, it was something like, you know, 10 to 1, 9 to 1 slaves over masters, and you'd think that they would be smart enough to realize that that kind of number, you know, you are in real trouble, you know, if the slaves rise up.
So that goes back to the very early 1800s, and, of course, the U.S. being a slaveholding country wouldn't recognize them until 1862 in the middle of the Civil War.
But coming out of that, it's simply been, you know, 200 and some years of turmoil and tragedy.
I mean, the French showed up and wanted to retake the island and demanded that they be paid off for the indemnity because of the losses of the slaveholders.
There was fighting on the island itself.
Haiti shares the island with the Dominican Republic today.
It was a Spanish colony.
You know, there were fights between the colonies.
You know, Haiti has gone through, you know, coups.
It's gone through dictators.
It's gone through, you know, weak and strong presidents.
It's gone through, you know, conflict.
It's had American occupation before for about 20 years in the early 20th century.
And then we were back back in the 90s, and then the U.N. was in just left about four years ago.
So this is a country that's just gone through, I mean, the most horrible stuff you can imagine.
And the latest is that the president has been assassinated.
Nobody's quite sure by who, but there's a suspicion that his own guards were in on it because he was killed and they didn't fire a shot.
You kind of wonder what's going on there.
And the Haitians are certainly wondering that, you know, and at the moment they don't even really have a government because the president's gone and they have the interim, you know, prime minister who claims to be the acting president.
And then you have the guy who was nominated to become the interim prime minister, but hadn't been.
And you don't have a legislature in session because they haven't had elections for the lower house.
There are only 10 of the 30 senators are around in the Supreme Court had died of covid.
And I mean, it's just complete chaos.
God, well, they should just keep it like that with no state at all and see how they go with that, because it seems like their problem is their government all the time and fights over control of it.
Yeah, I mean, you have to say, you know, their government is no help.
I mean, the government is clearly not friendly from their standpoint.
This is not a regime made up for the people, unfortunately.
Yeah, they should just fire everybody and let the market sort it out.
You know, that's my take, my galaxy brain take the no state solution for Haiti.
Yeah, seriously.
OK, well, but since we don't get that, yeah, is President Joe Biden going to send the Marine Corps?
Well, probably not.
He does.
I think one of the good things here is that while he may very well get us into a war with China, he seems to understand that the endless wars of going into other places are not very popular.
And, you know, the way to get reelected is not, you know, from his standpoint to, you know, start wars and get us into conflicts and put us over in occupations.
So he has said he's not particularly interested.
He said there's no plan for that.
You know, the Haitian government, at least the existing authorities, if you want to call them that, have requested the U.S. go in almost certainly for their benefit.
That's the way these occupations normally turn out.
Yeah, it's certainly worth people telling the administration we don't want to do this just to make sure he knows the public's not in favor of it.
But at the moment, at least, we don't see any interest coming from this administration to put in troops in any serious way.
Well, so does that mean the U.N. is going to send the cholera brigades back instead or nobody?
Well, no one knows at this stage.
The Washington Post had an editorial that said, yeah, yeah, there may be reasons not to send in U.N. forces.
But does anybody have a better idea?
They're kind of reduced to that.
You know, why don't we have a nuclear war?
Nobody else has come up with a good idea.
That would be the slightly easier choice where you'd say it's not our problem, it's somebody else's.
You know, conceivably, they could just have the U.N. do it and not have any Americans involved at all.
The problem is they were involved from 2004 to 2017 and did not gain a very good reputation.
They managed to kill about 10,000 Haitians.
It's not really funny.
I mean, they caused a cholera epidemic.
This is the U.N. dumping manure and stuff into the water supply.
So it created a cholera epidemic, killed thousands of people.
And then there were quite a few episodes of sexual assault that were tied to the U.N. forces.
So understandably, the Haitian people themselves aren't overly enthusiastic about welcoming back, you know, such an occupation.
Yeah, well, and now so this guy that got couped, he was the American backed sock puppet.
And then but there's questions about whether the Americans were also the ones that did the coup against him, too, because you have all these American citizens and former FBI informants and DEA agents and Colombian mercenaries and whatever else involved.
Can you tell us what you know about the actual people involved in this and who you think was back and what?
Well, the U.S. recently, at least, has seemed to be much more into overt regime change.
So this would be a very, very much a change in policy.
So this was their guy previously, though, right?
No, no, no, no.
I think the critical that's right.
See, the critical thing is this was their guy who, as far as I can tell, didn't do anything to convince them not to make him their guy.
I mean, he wasn't doing anything overt against the U.S. and I think that if the U.S. is involved, they would have had somebody lined up, you know, who had a chance of taking over.
I mean, we really are in just a completely bizarre situation of there are at least three claimants to be the acting president.
There's the interim prime minister.
There's the appointed acting but not sworn in prime minister.
And then there's the guy put forth by the Senate, which they only have a third of their members and they have no authority.
But he's shown up now and says, well, he should be the acting president.
So the U.S. can be very incompetent at these things, but I think this they at least would have had their candidate ready.
And as far as I can tell, none of these people look like their candidate.
You know, the group that I mean, it's a very weird group.
There are two Haitian-Americans who lived in Florida.
There are around 20 or so Colombians, you know, all recent, you know, kind of retirees from the Colombian military, several trained by the U.S.
There was a guy they arrested down there who is Haitian, who spent time in Florida talking to people about his desire to become prime minister or president.
And it all seemed weird because nobody really knows who he is.
And he claimed to be a minister and a businessman and this, that and the other.
And of course, everybody he talked to says we never mentioned a coup.
We thought this is like part of an election or something.
I don't see a hand of the U.S. government in all this.
It certainly looks like somebody living in the U.S. did this.
And then the question is, did they have any official connections?
Were they encouraged by somebody?
You know, I mean, how was this because you're hiring even if these are Colombians.
I mean, you're going to hire that number of people.
I mean, somebody had to pay for it.
Somebody had to pay them.
They flew into the Dominican Republic and came in.
They were put up at some hotel or something and somebody was paying the bills.
This stuff wasn't very cheap.
And they have some invoices and stuff of this kind of minister guy, you know, supposedly getting loans from people.
And these people are saying, well, you didn't get all of them.
I mean, no, no one really does know what's going on.
It's it's clearly kind of mysterious.
There was a plot.
I mean, there was a conspiracy, but nobody's quite sure who.
I mean, there's even some argument that maybe his own guards did it.
And these other people were set up.
I mean, it's and I presume they must have guns of somebody who did because I mean, he was shot up, I don't know, a dozen times or something.
I mean, it's not as if there aren't bullets that they could do some testing on.
But we don't know how efficient, you know, they are down.
I mean, again, what the government they have at the moment is completely disorganized.
So who knows who's doing what?
Yeah, well, an armed guard might just also give up in the face of overwhelming force, too.
And I guess they said or I didn't watch it, but I supposedly there's video of this.
Right.
They said D.A., D.A. operation, everybody stand down or, you know, kind of thing, which is a good way to take some security guards by surprise.
Right.
But I better not shoot it out with these guys, you know.
But I don't know if the video had any of the gun.
So apparently they the regular guards, they've isolated to question and they apparently detained the head of the security detail.
I mean, the question is, well, how did they get in the place?
I mean, normally if you because he normally has a large security detail.
I don't know how big this one is, but when he travels around, it's fairly large.
You would think that his palace or wherever he's living would be somewhat secure.
So the question then is, how did they get in?
I mean, if the if the building's locked, you assume they you know, you don't just open the door because somebody's knocking on the door saying, hey, I'm D.A.
I want to come in.
You know, so and I'd love to see the video footage.
Apparently it shows them.
I don't think it shows anybody else.
So, again, all of these questions, nothing, nothing has been answered.
At least nothing's been released.
I assume somebody there knows something, but they haven't told anyone.
Yeah.
All right.
Sorry.
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All right.
Well, so I'm glad that you think that Biden is just going to be reluctant to intervene too heavily here.
But I guess, you know, I don't know.
Can the Haitians just work it out and everybody stay out?
Well, ultimately, that's really got to happen.
I mean, look, we've been doing this again and again.
You know, the idea is, well, heck, we go in and then they can fix it.
And the answer is, yeah, but we tried that.
I mean, we had a UN mission there for 13 years.
I mean, it left four years ago and this is where we're at.
I mean, the U.S. was in there back in the mid 90s.
I mean, the U.S. threatened.
I mean, there is evidence that the Bush administration was working against Aristide and then he was overthrown.
And then we showed then the Clinton administration threatened to send in the military against the coup guys, the generals.
So they left.
So the U.S. military showed up and then Aristide came back to power.
Then he was thrown out of power again.
And there was some evidence that the follow on Bush administration may have essentially kidnapped him and sent him to Africa, of all things.
I put him on a plane and, you know, he finds himself in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
And then he came back.
He got reelected, but then he was thrown.
I mean, so all of these episodes of us going in have never resulted in them getting their act together.
So there's no I think ultimately it's far better to let them do it as opposed to go through this again of I mean, the moment we're there, we take sides.
And if we take sides, you know, who are we helping?
Ourselves?
Yeah, I mean, our being the U.S. state, right?
I mean, that's the problem, right, is do you know much about this?
Where I know there was something to some scandal with the Clinton Foundation messing around down there after the earthquake.
And was it they had some business interests, some textile manufacturing?
Yeah, there was some financial something or other, which, you know, as you would expect from, you know, from them, it was not it was not a good deal.
You know, I mean, that's kind of the way it normally is.
Yeah.
I mean, can you tell us more about what happened with that?
I don't even remember where I read that was that in the WikiLeaks.
It might have.
I mean, I mean, the foundation was so squirrelly in so many ways.
I mean, you're secretary of state and you're out there raising money from the governments, the secretary of state is dealing with.
I mean, the whole thing pretty clearly was, you know, corrupt.
I mean, all of your friends are flying around the world first class and you're collecting money and stuff.
I mean, it was pretty evident that this this is a very dubious, very dubious enterprise.
Yeah, seriously.
All right.
Now here's my problem.
You write so much.
I can't keep up with it all.
But you mentioned China earlier.
And I know that, you know, it would be nice if I could speak English.
I know, you know, a thing or two or three about it and have been around and everything.
So let's talk about, say, for example, why you're so alarmist, because what you said was and I know you only kind of meant it, but you said, you know, yeah, it looks like Biden's good on one thing because he'd rather fight China.
And I don't know how big of a risk of conflict you really think there is there.
Well, I mean, I don't think that Biden wants war.
I mean, you know, he he's hardly my choice for president.
On the other hand, I don't think that he I mean, I don't think he's a true warmonger.
I mean, he's an interventionist.
I think on the issue of China, the pressure from the right is very strong.
And what we've seen in part because of the political situation is the right has joined the left to take a very confrontational position towards China.
Now, China doesn't want war either.
I mean, it would be a disaster.
It would be an utter catastrophe for both sides.
But what I worry is that if both sides are being confrontational, both sides are taking risks, both sides feel that they can't afford to step back because, you know, it's all this idea we have to maintain our credibility.
We have to show them how tough we are.
I mean, you get this on something like Taiwan.
As long as we make clear to the Chinese that we will fight them over Taiwan, they won't dare do anything.
You hear that?
Well, you know, they are probably saying the same thing.
As long as we make it very clear to the Americans that this is an issue we'll fight over, they won't dare do anything.
Well, guess what?
If both sides play that game, you get in real trouble.
And at the moment, Biden is being as hawkish on the issue as, frankly, everybody as the Republicans.
I mean, it's you would hope there'd be some real difference.
The left, I mean, the kind of the ideological left does not go along with that.
But the Democratic Party and certainly Blinken and Sullivan, I mean, all these these kind of guys, I mean, they all do.
And I think to me, that is a very real risk.
So I kind of joke about it.
But there is a seriousness there that I think we are playing a very dangerous game.
If you look at the territorial disputes and the kind of the maritime maneuvers, you see the U.S., both the U.S. and China, you know, fly flights around Taiwan to show how tough we are.
You know, this kind of the economic attempt to decouple.
I mean, on the economic side, the economics is one of the things that hold us together.
If you kind of cut everything away, then it becomes much easier to imagine people in both capitals saying, well, if we got to fight, let's go fight.
Yeah.
And that's the real problem.
You know, I never hear talk about this.
I just know it must be the thing, but I don't know who writes about this angle, about sort of the competition and lobbying between different business factions in America, essentially the civilians versus the arms dealers.
Because if you're selling the next generation long range bomber, then you've got everything at stake.
You do a coup to keep that thing going.
Right.
But if you're everybody else in business in America, including very big businesses, then.
At least they did have a lot at stake.
I think they still do have a lot at stake.
Billions of dollars worth of trade with China every year.
Although I guess the tariffs have made that, you know, not as much as it was before.
But are they fighting back at all about this?
Because it does sound like the kind of thing where.
You know, just like you're saying, if we don't have at least some billionaires who prefer the status quo, then the ones who are making money off of militarism could really dominate and could really cause a major problem here.
Well, the challenge here is, I mean, there's still a lot of businesses with a lot of, you know, kind of commerce over there.
However, China has, I think, in one of its blunders is China.
China does not play fair in this.
You know, I mean, the U.S. government doesn't either.
But China is quite overt in terms of how it's treated foreign companies, including American companies.
And in terms of everything from issues of intellectual property, but also their regulatory system, the way they use anti-monopoly laws.
There's a lot of ways that they if you get into a commercial dispute with a Chinese company, I mean, a lot of these things where American companies have gotten taken advantage of.
So what the result of that is that today versus, say, 20 years ago, a lot of American exporters are no longer nearly as, you know, kind of convinced that the market there matters hugely.
And a number of them supported Trump's trade war.
You know, their view was the only way we're going to get any fairness out of this is to kind of penalize them.
So what that means is that today you don't have the same sense of an alternative lobby out there saying, wait a minute, be careful what you're doing.
Some of those people who 10 years ago would have taken that position today are simply sitting aside saying, you know, we're not going to get involved in this.
I mean, you know, we're not making a lot of money.
They've been screwing us.
So, you know, we're going to let they deserve to have this happen to them.
That kind of a thing.
Yeah.
So you don't have the same countervailing influence that you once did.
And that makes it more dangerous, because otherwise almost everybody is more hostile to China.
That is what China's doing on human rights is far worse than it was 10 years ago.
So the human rights law has a lot more to go after.
Religious liberty, far greater attacks.
I mean, there's just so many of these things that are very real that have interests out there.
You know, the Chinese are more aggressive on the kind of the maritime stuff, more aggressive against a country like India.
Well, all of a sudden, you know, you see and they're very if you're Indian-American and you like India now, suddenly you think maybe the US and India should work together on military stuff that.
So you say what you find is, you know, the whole issue of the economics.
You know, Trump pushed a very protectionist agenda, which the, you know, the Democrats picked up on.
So labor unions and others, which have always been critical of China trade, now have much greater influence.
You know, so at the moment, the kind of there aren't very many folks speaking up.
I mean, it's hard to speak up on behalf of the Chinese government because it is doing bad things.
But it's harder to find people willing to speak up to say, look, we have to maintain kind of a civil relationship.
I mean, you may want to penalize certain things, but we can't afford to let this whole thing go down.
And we certainly don't want to go down to war.
Well, you know, I could see how Americans.
Well, OK, if we didn't have all this militarism, America didn't have anything at stake in the South China Sea of all places.
Then if like you describe Chinese businesses screwing over American ones and with such a pattern to it, that American businesses start coming home and saying, you know what costs more to do it over there, even despite the cheap, you know, less expensive labor over there and all that, then I think the American people would be happy with that.
So see some factories come home and that kind of thing.
But instead of sort of this self-correcting system in the market, instead, it's just tearing down the last barriers to real conflict.
Because if you don't have, I don't know, Wal-Mart's lobbyists keeping the peace or whoever it is, I'm making that up.
But whoever has major interest in regular civilian trade over there, then.
You know, all those other voices, as you're saying, you know, end up agreeing and stand unopposed.
That's something must be done, which I guess is the real question is, are the Chinese going to attack Taiwan?
Because the Americans don't really have a pretext to do anything very stupid unless that happens, right?
Now, look, I mean, no one in the U.S. government, I think, really wants war with China.
I mean, that this this would be I mean, I tell everybody just want a cold one.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, because I tell everybody, if if there's a war with China and the U.S. wins, it won't be only one war.
I mean, the Chinese aren't going to give up.
I mean, the Chinese will simply, you know, start arming again for the next next round.
It's kind of like Germany.
You know, you finish World War one and well, no, you know, the guys who lost are not going to go away.
The guys who lost, you want to get revenge.
I mean, I think the danger here is that, you know, the economic connection has always been the one that helped provide a basis.
You know, number one, basic kind of a profit basis.
So people gain from dealing with China.
Part of it was personal.
That is, you know, you meet.
I mean, if you engage in business, you meet Chinese.
You actually make friends.
I mean, I have good friends over there, primarily academia.
You know, more because I speak at universities and work with professors and stuff, you know, but there are folks over there.
I know I've known for a number of years.
I've spoken, you know, I've been over there a number of times, spoken to several different universities.
You know, so you create relationships.
I mean, all of this stuff.
Well, now that's all being torn away.
To me, that's the danger is you're losing that positive side.
And at the same time, the forces that want to get rough and confrontational are growing more powerful and are demanding, you know, punishment in a way that the Chinese.
I mean, this whole, you know, wolf warrior diplomacy.
There's this it's after this Chinese movie.
It's kind of the Chinese version of Rambo.
You know, the Chinese, you know, you're kind of soldier or, you know, kind of unofficial soldier who shows up and does the Yankees bad.
And he saves saves the world and the Chinese from the terrible Americans.
You know, he's the wolf warrior.
Well, I mean, you know, so they become much more confrontational even in their diplomacy, you know, so this you put all of that together.
And I think the issue here is kind of inadvertence, accident, mistake.
Nobody wants something, but it becomes hard for either side to back down.
I mean, it becomes a much more nervous.
A lot of people, I think, are much more nervous at the moment over this.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I got to go, man.
I'm sorry someone's going to interview me in a minute.
But thank you so much for coming back on the show, Doug.
You're great on everything, man.
Hey, well, thanks.
So I'm always happy to do it and good luck on your interview.
That's the great Doug Bondo from the Cato Institute and antiwar dot com.
The Scott Horton Show, antiwar radio can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
APS radio dot com, antiwar dot com.
Scott Horton dot org and Libertarian Institute dot org.
