HAITI'S "DIRT COOKIES" -- A RESPONSE

HAITI’S “DIRT COOKIES” – A RESPONSE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 28, 2009

“The truly sublime is always easy, and always natural.”

Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797), English statesman

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A READER WRITES:

Jim:

Powerful. THIS type of issue is why I started a think tank. Our preliminary steps may take us a while before we are in a position to address issues of global importance, but we'll get there!

Haiti is heartbreaking. While he is far from an idol of mine, I have cautious hope that Bill Clinton's appointment this week as UN representative to Haiti will help shed light on that troubled land, and bring it greater aid. Last year, I was on the board for a time with a nonprofit that was bringing laptops and education to orphans at a poor school in Haiti. I know the argument well that they don't need computers, they need food that isn't mud, but I counter that they need both - metaphorically speaking, they need fish to eat today, right now, but also fishing lessons so they can feed themselves with high-wage participation in the global economy in 10 years when these children are old enough to work in a meaningful career.

Anyway, I digress. My reply today is not about education, but fixing a broken culture - and I ask, is it even possible, and if so, where would "we" start? (I put "we" in quotes because, as you'll see below, one of my questions is, can well-meaning outsiders give freedom as a gift?)

I read recently that Haiti has been gauged by international bodies that monitor such things to siphon over 99% of its foreign aid to corrupt government officials and criminals. Basically, when a country or nonprofit gives money to Haiti's government, that money ends up in Switzerland and the Caymans, not with the poor it is intended to help. Direct aid to grass roots groups on the ground in Haiti, for instance from a US Rotary club to a Haitian Rotary club, seems to be the only effective method of delivery.

First question for an (amateur) armchair economist: Is corruption culturally based, and so inescapable?

Next, to address your comments on the failings of Democracy in Haiti. This same problem seems endemic to nations to which participative government is new, and not culturally based. Modern Democracy started in England in the 12th Century. The American Colonies were steeped in it from the very beginning. When the French gave it a try in 1789, they had much less luck - there was no tradition of Democracy there at all, on any level in their society. They finally have it down, but it took them most of a century. Russia is exhibiting the same growing pains today: from the Czars to the Communists, they never had one minute of freedom or participative government on any level of their society until 1989-91, when all of a sudden: ta-da! The communists closed up shop. In the case of Haiti, they may have had some form of so-called Democracy for generations, but the reality is that when the population is uneducated and cowed by violence and the officials corrupt, Democracy is a sham.

I believe firmly that the only legitimacy in government comes from the people. To probably misquote Churchill (sorry, Jim - I know he's not your favorite), Democracy is the worst possible system - except for all the others. So question #2, something I have wondered about my entire life: Is there a bridge form of government that can step in to introduce a nation to Democracy slowly and less painfully, or do Peoples simply need to take their lumps and experience all the horrors of fledgling Democracy on their own? We Anglo cultures had close to a millennium to ease into it, and there was still a lot of strife along the way. The fact may be that modern nations don't have that luxury. I honestly don't have an answer for this dilemma.

This brings us to a question (#3) that has been in the media plenty in recent years: can the UN or the US or anyone successfully "impose" freedom and Democracy on a nation that it "liberates?" We haven't had much luck in the past, but occasionally it has worked. We set up Democracy in our three defeated adversaries, the Axis nations, after WWII - Germany and Japan especially were authoritarian cultures as well as autocracies, and yet they have taken to Democracy quite well. South Korea is another example.

I don't believe it possible to help a nation such as Haiti in any meaningful way through aid alone, although they desperately need that so people do not continue to die of starvation, malnutrition, and disease. In order to have real impact, Haiti needs to free itself of corruption in its society - not just its government, but also its culture, which (as in many Third World cultures) tolerates graft, nepotism, and the like.

I think the long-term cure to Haiti's ills lie in Democracy and fairly regulated Capitalism. You don't get those in a cultural vacuum.
Ted
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DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

I am off to Alaska so I cannot give a long reply to your thoughtful response to this missive.

Edmund Burke is quoted as he had it right. I’ve often thought of Burke’s reflection with regard to the Post-WWII work of General Douglas McArthur in Japan and South Korea.

Imagine what the world would be like today if the good general had acted after that bloody war, which the Empire of Japan precipitated with its bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, as the Bush Administration has acted after 9/11.

General MacArthur was first in his class at West Point; George W. Bush was a “gentlemen ‘C’ student” at Yale. Intelligence is a powerful problem solving toolkit. Brains recognize problems can be controlled but not solved, as they are constantly maturating into new challenges. MacArthur put this mechanism in place.

MacArthur was arrogant, self-absorbed, opinionated, difficult, stubborn, a visionary, and a loner. We don’t elect people to high office like him. If you are thinking of General Eisenhower, think again, as Eisenhower was a similar student to Bush, and a personality and a presence.

Emperor Hirohito’s people treated him as a god. General MacArthur, who had spent much of his career in the Far East, was aware of that precedence and the subtleties in the Japanese culture. He used this knowledge, building a democratic republic infrastructure while maintaining the emperor as the titular head of the government and of the Japanese people.

This was 1945, a time of reconstruction of a defeated and decimated people and nation. The young emperor had already been on the throne for more than 20 years.

In 1921, at the age of twenty, he had already broken with tradition by being the first crown prince to leave his native shores, having been recalled from a six-month European tour in which he spent time with Edward VIII, the Prince of Wales to take control of the government from his mentally unstable father.

While touring Europe, Hirohito developed a taste for Western golf and bacon-and-egg breakfasts. In his 63-year reign, Japan went from a xenophobic nation and insular island kingdom to a modern world power, interrupted of course by the terrible defeat in WWII.

MacArthur, who professed always to be his own man, resisted the many voices who were calling for having Emperor Hirohito tried as a war criminal. He fortunately prevailed.

MacArthur didn’t change the culture he used it. He didn’t subjugate the Japanese people to draconian restrictions but introduced them to Western ways, including baseball. He systematically and strategically brought them along incrementally, not shutting down their war producing factories, but transforming them by bringing in American and European experts to convert them to peacetime purposes.

It was MacArthur, after all, who set in place the climate for W. Edwards Deming, J. M. Juran, and Peter Drucker to make Japan, Inc. the most powerful and most quality driven manufacturing center in the world.

To be fair, the Japanese were a vigorous people, and after a fashion, became responsive to this general’s vision, perception, understanding, and natural affinity for all things Japanese. He even spoke the language, which is the only way to truly enter another’s culture.

As I’ve said often, we are in a time of leaderless leaders. We were fortunate to have such leaders as General Douglas MacArthur, General George Marshall, and General Omar Bradley, as well as General Eisenhower, and of course, FDR during that challenging time.

You are correct. You build from within, not from without, and you build in the people’s timeframe, not yours, and the infrastructure that is created is natural to the people, not an imposition or denial of what is natural to them. Japan is a group culture. MacArthur epitomized individualism to the nth degree, and yet he adapted his intervention to accommodate the Japanese to what was natural for and to them, and not to his own lights.

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