Haiti Earthquake Aftermath

My latest WPR column is about ongoing political unrest in Haiti:

Ideally, the U.S.-led intervention was meant to go down as a Western-hemisphere version of the 2005 tsunami relief operation, in which the U.S. Navy saved thousands of lives and contributed to stability in the wake of disaster. During that effort, the U.S. military demonstrated both the capacity to help and the political acumen to appear as a supporting player, in a display that apparently embarrassed China. A similar intervention in Haiti, it was thought, could win friends, reassure allies, and quiet critics in Latin America. The intervention almost certainly did save lives: The situation in Haiti following the earthquake was desperate, and Haitian state capacity was extremely low. However, few will be likely to point to Haiti as a success story, as Haitian state institutions have still not recovered, and the effects of the earthquake remain depressingly apparent.