Generational Dynamics
	Forecasting America's Destiny ... and the World's
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Haiti: Heading for possible rebellion and anarchy

Haiti is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, and is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, with the average income at about $3.50 per day per person. In addition, Haiti has the least water availability per capita of any nation in the world.

Poor neighborhood in Haiti

It wasn't supposed to be this way. When America pulled its armed forces out of Haiti in 1994, it started sending in huge amounts of financial aid to alleviate the poverty and raise the standard of living. But just a glance at some of the poorer neighborhoods of Haiti (see adjacent pictures) show that it hasn't done much good.

In fact the discovery that Aristide had hidden away vast amounts of wealth for himself indicates that a high level of corruption prevented the American aid money from ever reaching the Haitian people.

History of Haiti

Haiti is following a familiar historical pattern, and a recent generational change makes the Haiti situation extremely dangerous today.

Haiti is one-third of the island of Hispaniola, which was "discovered" by Christopher Columbus in 1492. France later colonized the island as well. After centuries of conflict, the island was partitioned into French-oriented Haiti and Spanish-oriented Dominican Republic.

During the 1700s, the island was an extremely wealthy French colony, thanks to crops sugar, rum, coffee and cotton -- and thanks to the efforts of 500,000 slaves that the French had imported from Africa.

A violent slave rebellion in 1791 led to a 13-year civil war and formal recognition, in 1804, of Haiti as the second Republic in the Western hemisphere. However, the United States didn't grant Haiti diplomatic recognition until 1862 -- when Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed America's slaves during the Civil War.

Over time, Haiti's population has evolved into two major groups:

• The French-speaking light-skinned mulattoes, resulting from intermixing of French and slave bloods.
• The Creole-speaking blacks (noirs). (The Haitian Creole language is a mixture of French and African language elements. Other variations of Creole are spoken throughout the Caribbean, including parts of Louisiana.)

Today, the mulattoes are a "market-dominant minority" (using the phrase of Yale Professor Amy Chua). They're under 5% of the population, but they control well over 50% of the nation's wealth.

There have been dozens of coups in Haiti's history since independence. (See list of Haitian presidents below.) Historically, civil unrest in Haiti dating back to the 1800s has followed a certain formula and pattern:

• The President and high government officials of Haiti work with the wealthy mulattoes to maintain order.
• A rebellion from the majority blacks results in a coup replacing the President with someone new, usually someone black, who vows to alleviate poverty.
• Alleviating poverty turns out to be impossible, because there's no infrastructure to fight the corruption, and so the new President liaisons with the mulattoes to preserve public order, repeating the previous pattern.

The 1915 crisis rebellion

Although there have been many coups in Haiti's history, the 1915 coup turned into a major crisis rebellion. US Armed Forces had frequently landed in Haiti to protect American interests during numerous minor rebellions, but this time total anarchy was breaking out, and President Woodrow Wilson eventually felt it necessary to take complete control of all governmental and financial institutions in Haiti. The American armed forces remained for 20 years, withdrawing only in 1934.

Since 1934, there have been two periods of major violence:

• In 1937, General Raphael Leonidas Trujilo of the Dominican Republic massacred about 20,000 Haitians living in the Dominican Republic.
• In the 1960s, Haiti president Dr. Francois Duvalier executed tens of thousands of Haitians.

(For those interested in the theoretical aspects of Generational Dynamics, these were mid-cycle periods of violence, not crisis rebellions, because the violence came from the political leaders rather than from the people.)

Haiti: 2004 versus 1915

If you've read my book, you know that history repeats itself, and that you can understand the future if you know where to look in the past, and generational dynamics tells you where in the past to look. It appears that Haiti is seeing a repeat of the 1915 violence experience, unless a huge American (or international) army is inserted to force the rebels to stand down, and to provide food, water and other necessities. But with America heavily committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the Balkans, Korea and other places, that that isn't going to happen, unless France decides to make a much larger commitment.

Haiti appears to be in its first generational crisis period since 1915. This indicates that the violence and anarchy are going to continue and increase. The fact that the US is about to intervene again pushes this fact over the line to irony.

It's current US policy to intervene for a short period, to allow the country to stabilize. However, generational dynamics indicates that stabilization is not in the cards for a period of years. If America intervenes heavily, then anarchy might be averted temporarily; but without massive American intervention, the issues (especially poverty) that were leading to anarchy last week are no different this week.

Implications for US foreign policy and politics

Because of the danger of Haitian "boat people" refugees reaching our shores in Florida, and because Haiti is the only Western hemisphere country run by blacks, there is a great deal of pressure for the US to intervene in Haiti, to stabilize the situation. Fortunately, America isn't forced to do it alone, as France and Canada are also sending some troops.

As we discussed in our book, America's greatest danger during the coming period is taking on too many commitments. America's armed forces are heavily committed in Afghanistan and Iraq, with additional committments in Bosnia, Korea, Germany and other locations. Now we're taking on an additional commitment in Haiti, and it's going to be long-term. There seems to be no way for America to say "No," but as these international crises continue to develop, America will have to learn to do so.

Investment opportunities

It seems pretty clear that a lot of money will be spent in Haiti in the next few months to try to alleviate poverty. This presents two kinds of opportunities:

• Those who can supply goods and services to the Haitian people can take advantage of this funding to gain new business. Despite the attraction of all that money, obviously you have to worry about the safety of you and your employees, and the protection of your assets (vehicles, buildings, goods, etc.). For that reason, you should bundle a great deal of protection into the expense side of your business plan.
• Those who wish to invest their own money to help the Haitian people cannot just give money to any available charity that claims it has programs in Haiti. Long history has shown that most money invested in Haiti ends up being wasted in governmental corruption. You should plan on spending a good deal of time to make sure that any money you invest actually helps real Haitian people.

Appendix: Sources of information on Haiti

I was surprised how hard it was to get the necessary information for this report. I found the usual historical summaries and timelines on the Internet, but I wanted more -- journals, opinion pieces, and so on that tell what really went on. I can find them for most countries, but nothing for Haiti.

Contents - This page History of Haiti The 1915 crisis rebellion Haiti: 2004 versus 1915 Implications for US foreign policy and politics Investment opportunities Appendix: Sources of information on Haiti Appendix: List of Haitian Presidents

Then I went to my local Barnes & Noble. I found books on the history of almost every North American country, including the Dominican Republic, but nothing on Haiti. Finally I found something In a book I already have, Max Boot's 2002 book, The Savage Wars of Peace - Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, which discussed the 1915-34 American occupation in detail.

But I found the dearth of information on Haiti to be very peculiar. It's probably just one more sign of the level of poverty in Haiti: with little internet access in Haiti, there's little opportunity for Haitian citizens to generate a lot of content. If the Haitian diaspora in America would like to help Haiti, one way would be to make an effort to set up more Haitian information on the web.

Appendix: List of Haitian Presidents since Independence

The thing that's interesting about the following list of Haitian Presidents is that it graphically demonstrates how often coups have occurred:

President	Year(s) in Office	Notes about term
Jean Jacques Dessalines	1804-1806	assassinated
Henri Christophe	1807-1820	suicide
Alexander Petion	1807-1818	died in office
Jean Pierre Boyer	1818-1843	overthrown
Riviere Riviere-Herard	1843-1844	overthrown
Philippe Guerrier	1844-1845	died in office
Jean Louis Pierrot	1845-1846	overthrown
Jean Baptiste Riche	1847-1847	died in office
Faustin Soulouque	1847-1859	overthrown
Fabre Nicholas Geffrard	1859-1867	overthrown
Sylvain Salnave	1867-1869	executed
Saget Nissage	1870-1874	full term
Michel Domingue	1874-1876	overthrown
Canal Boisrond	1876-1879	overthrown
Lysius Felicite Salomon	1879-1888	overthrown
Francois Legitime	1888-1889	overthrown
Florvil Hyppolite	1889-1896	died in office
Tiresias Simon Sam	1896-1902	full term
Alexis Nord	1902-1908	overthrown
Antoine Simon	1908-1911	overthrown
Cincinnatus Leconte	1911-1912	died in office
Tancrede Auguste	1912-1913	died in office
Michel Oreste	1913-1914	overthrown
Oreste Zamor	1914	overthrown
Davilmar Theodore	1914-1915	overthrown
Vilbrun Sam	1915	assassinated
Sudre Dartiguevave	1915-1922	full term (1st US Occupation)
Louis Borno	1922-1930	full term (1st US Occupation)
Eugene Roy	1930	full term (1st US occupation)
Sternio Vincent	1930-1941	full term (occupation until 1934)
Élie Lescot	1941-1946	overthrown
Franck Lavaud	1946
Dumarsais Estimé	1946-1950	overthrown
Paul Eugène Magloire	1950-1956	overthrown
Joseph Nemours Pierre-Louis	1956-1957
Franck Sylvain	1957
Executive Government Council	1957
Antonio Thrasybule Kebreau	1957
François Duvalier	1957-1971	died in office
Jean-Claude Duvalier	1971-1986	overthrown
Henri Namphy	1986-1987	full term
Lesli Manigat	1988	overthrown
Henri Namphy	1988-1989	overthrown
Prosper Avril	1989-1990	overthrown
Etha Pascal-Trouillot	1990-1991	full term
Jean-Bertrand Aristide	1991
Joseph Nerette	1991-1992
Marc Bazin	1992-1993
Jean-Bertrand Aristide	1993-1994
Émile Jonassaint	1994
Jean-Bertrand Aristide	1994-1996
Rene Preval	1996-2000	full term
Jean-Bertrand Aristide	2000-2004

(Source: http://www.travelinghaiti.com/history.asp - this site is quite anti-American.)