Donald Trump’s inauguration brings the possibility of a more peaceful world after four years of turmoil. In returning to the Oval Office, though, President Trump faces no shortages of international crises and flashpoints. After helping to usher the war in Gaza toward resolution, the Trump administration seeks to end the war in Ukraine and re-establish an equilibrium in the Indo-Pacific, among other consequential objectives. These problems require the utmost attention.
A looming disaster closer to the homeland, however, demands immediate action.
If the Trump administration’s primary aim is to stabilize the international order in favor of the United States, permitting Haiti to become a failed state would be antithetical to Trump’s goal of being “a peacemaker.” The collapse of Haiti would be the death rattle for greater Caribbean security.
Into the abyss
President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination on July 7, 2021, upended the nation, exacerbating the crisis that began in July 2018 with a furious outbreak of protests over fuel prices. In the aftermath, ongoing protests coincided with gang warfare to overwhelm the country. The capital of Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas fell, for the most part, into the hands of gangs. Warlord Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, who leads the Revolutionary Forces of the G9 Family and Allies, now dominates most of Haiti’s capital in his bid to topple the government.
The Haitian government risks completely losing control of the country. Widespread attacks on institutions and infrastructure paralyze Haiti. Gangs assault police stations, hospitals, ports, prisons, and even airports. In March 2024, gangs besieged prisons to release thousands of inmates and struck the Toussaint Louverture International Airport, preventing the acting prime minister, Ariel Henry, from returning after a visit to Kenya. With local airports not spared from the havoc, the Federal Aviation Administration placed a ban on US flights to Haiti until March 2025 because gangs continue to fire upon commercial aircraft.
Described as “apocalyptic” by William O’Neill, whom the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed its expert on Haiti, the country has suffered thousands of homicides as well as kidnappings, with rape a common occurrence. In addition to the violence, Haitians experience a constant lack of food, shelter, water, and medical services. All the necessities of a functioning state remain in disrepair. The humanitarian catastrophe has displaced more than five hundred thousand Haitians, a majority of whom are seeking entry into the United States, legally or not. More than three hundred thousand Haitians have been granted safe haven through the Temporary Protected Status program, as the Biden administration expanded program coverage last summer.
The political instability shows no sign of abating. Beleaguered interim prime minister Henry resigned in April 2024 after being unable to return home. After Henry’s resignation, Michel Patrick Boisvert and Garry Conille served as interim prime ministers before the Transitional Presidential Council appointed Alix Didier Fils-Aimé to the position until the country could hold elections. Yet an orderly election process depends on a Multinational Security Support mission (MSS) facilitated by a United Nations Security Council resolution, and funded by the United States. Prime Minister Henry formally asked in October 2022 for “the immediate deployment of a specialized armed force, in sufficient quantity,” but he did not receive it.
Instead, President Biden pledged over $300 million to underwrite and supply, but not oversee and conduct, what became the MSS effort. After ten months of acrimonious deliberations, Kenya finally volunteered to head the support mission. Despite Haiti’s deteriorating situation, Biden refused to commit American forces to such a leadership position on a Western Hemisphere security problem, even after Brazil and Canada proved unwilling to help Haiti. Eventually, the mission will comprise 2,500 officers and soldiers, but they will not come from countries most affected by the fallout in Haiti.
The gangs take over
The delay has been deadly. In June and July 2024, four hundred Kenyan police officers finally deployed to Haiti to assist the Haitian National Police in restoring order. Kenyan officers began guarding infrastructure and carrying out patrols in coordination with the police. Still, violence has plagued the capital. Reclaiming the country from gangs has been a grueling process, with only minor success. It requires more manpower and confrontation with the multitude of gangs operating around Port-au-Prince, where they control 85 percent of the area and have launched an escalating number of attacks across the city in spite of the foreign forces.
The brazen assaults persist. During a Christmas Eve ceremony to celebrate the reopening of Haiti’s General Hospital, gunmen murdered Marckendy Natoux, a beloved reporter, in a mass shooting targeting him and his journalist colleagues.
In response to the urgent need for more security forces, Kenya dispatched an additional 217 officers on January 18, 2025. These officers are part of the 1,000 personnel whom Kenya promised to deploy as head of the MSS. They joined a small contingent of soldiers from the Americas, which includes the Bahamas (6), Belize (2), El Salvador (8), Guatemala (150), and Jamaica (24). But 807 soldiers and military police will not suffice against well-armed and organized gangs, who appear untroubled by their presence.
The lack of US resolve only emboldens warlords and their minions. On January 20, a gang shot into a US embassy transport van with armor-piercing bullets, injuring a gardener who worked for the US government.
No easy way out
Trump has assembled a foreign policy team who understand the critical importance of the Western Hemisphere to the United States.
Trump chose Representative Mike Waltz (R-Florida) as national security adviser and Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) as secretary of state. In addition to Rubio and Waltz, Trump has nominated Christopher Landau, the former US ambassador to Mexico, as his deputy secretary of state, and selected Mauricio Claver-Carone, a former deputy assistant to the president and senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council, as the State Department’s special envoy for Latin America.
Of Trump’s Western Hemisphere–oriented foreign policy hands, Rubio is most acutely aware of Haiti’s grave circumstances and best positioned to address them. During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio noted that “there’s no easy answer” to the crisis in Haiti, “and it won’t come from US military intervention.” For the new secretary of state, a combination of diplomacy and collective force may be the solution: diplomatic engagement with Western Hemisphere countries and others around the globe could result in a larger continent of soldiers and police who can combat the gangs and allow the interim Haitian government to hold secure elections.
Rubio acknowledged disastrous consequences for the region if Haiti slides further into chaos, especially for the Dominican Republic, a strong partner of the United States and a country on the economic upswing. Dominican President Luis Abinader favors Rubio’s “collective solution” to the political instability in Haiti, for no state bears the burden more than the Dominican Republic, the other occupant of the island of Hispaniola. Despite Abinader building a 250-mile border wall, the crisis in Haiti affects every aspect of life in the Dominican Republic. Dominican government and community services struggle with the increased migration. In response, Abinader has increased deportations, removing more than 276,000 Haitian migrants from the country in 2024.
Two stark choices
Restoring order in Haiti will extract a greater cost than currently imagined if the United States fails to swiftly address the increasingly chaotic situation. With Cuba and Venezuela already teetering on the brink and drug cartels ravaging Mexico, the United States cannot abide a country in the Caribbean devolving into a full-blown failed state.
The thought of deploying US Marines to Haiti conjures up bad historical memories, to be sure. Declining to decisively act out of fear of escalation or domestic political blowback, however, will produce a nightmare scenario in which the Haitian government falls and gangs control the entire country, plunging a nation of nearly twelve million people into starvation and carnage. A spillover from the warfare would bring the Dominican Republic to the point of collapse as well. Upwards of a million or more Haitians would flee for the United States, potentially overwhelming neighboring countries in the process. Although Trump recently paused the US Refugee Admissions Program while bolstering border enforcement, the deluge of refugees fleeing a failed Haiti would pose an impossible challenge to the United States.
Waiting for further movement at the United Nations increases the likelihood of hemispheric disaster. Although the Biden administration sought in November to transform the multinational force into a UN peacekeeping mission, China and Russia partnered to stop it. Requested by Haiti, supported by Organization of American States, and pursued by the United States, a UN peacekeeping mission would still not be viable because of Chinese and Russian unwillingness to help prevent a failed state from destabilizing the Caribbean.
The United States must act in its own national interest. Four years of half measures have constrained the choices for Trump, who must now consider two realistic options.
One: American leadership. The United States cannot rent a foreign police force to rescue countries in its own hemisphere. Rather, Trump and Rubio must seek a “collective solution” whereby a coordinated coalition of Western Hemisphere forces, spearheaded by the United States, degrade and destroy the gangs and return security and stability to Haiti. A crucial aspect of peace through strength is knowing when to exercise strength to achieve peace. Because force and diplomacy work in tandem, Trump would need to coordinate regional partners and exercise force to bring about order and then peace in Haiti, a prerequisite for a proper rebuilding of the nation.
Two: America leads from behind, an approach former president Joe Biden took toward Haiti. Trump could focus his administration’s attention on pressing problems elsewhere and rely on the Kenyan-led initiative to solve the crisis. This may be the path of least political resistance, but continuing Biden’s policy invites a risk far greater than the reward.
Events have a peculiar way of overtaking new administrations and thwarting the best of presidential ambitions. Trump must respond decisively before events in Haiti have their say.
