Why the United States Can’t Afford to Ignore Haiti’s Collapse: Key Questions

Fueled by an open flow of drugs and weapons trafficking, Haiti, as a failed state in the middle of the Caribbean, will undermine U.S. partners in the region. Without a robust policy engagement, the two baseline imperatives that frame U.S. thinking toward Haiti, (a) no U.S. boots on the ground, and (b) Haiti is a regional concern, not just a U.S. one, will become moot as the country implodes into a crisis with wider regional implications. In other words, the crisis in Haiti will not stay in Haiti.

Q1: What’s happening in Haiti now?

A1: 2025 began with the UN secretary general noting that Haiti’s capital could be overrun by criminal gangs if the international community did not step up aid to the security mission there. Since then, Haiti’s gangs have killed thousands of people, are increasingly operating as coalitions, and have widened the scope and scale of operations beyond Port-au-Prince. Despite being put in place with the support of the United States and others in April 2024, these developments have further exposed a very fragile transitional governance structure, splintered in part by corruption accusations. More than 1 million Haitians are now internally displaced, representing a 48 percent increase since just September 2024. By May 2025, assessments of Haiti’s reality draw attention to an understaffed and underfunded Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission in danger of collapsing, a worsening humanitarian crisis, and a lack of clarity in U.S. policy. The dilemma of U.S. policy may be that Haiti is viewed as a problem—not an opportunity—and therefore has not triggered the needed engagement for an administration preferring a transactional foreign policy.

Q2: What is the current U.S.-Haiti policy?

A2: U.S. policy is uneasily anchored to the maintenance of the current MSS led by Kenya, which was originally deployed to reenergize the Haitian National Police’s capacity to fight the gangs that operate with impunity in the capital, Port-au-Prince. The mission never deployed to its full 2,500–3,000 force, and it has operated under a shaky multilateral funding structure. Yet, for all of its failings, the MSS remains the main instrument to address Haiti’s expanding gang violence.

The Biden administration was actively exploring transitioning the MSS to a formal UN peacekeeping operation, an approach that would provide more structured and predictable budgetary and operational advantages. The White House’s guarded outlook toward multilateralism raises questions about such an approach and the viability of a successful effort in the UN Security Council (UNSC). All of this may be a moot point to the degree that the UNSC’s own Haiti recommendations to the UNSC do not contain a formal peacekeeping deployment. However, an alternative U.S. multilateral security strategy may be under consideration through the Organization of American States (OAS), which would boost the administration’s imperative that Haiti is a regional concern. This would emerge as a new OAS secretary general (Albert Ramdin) comes into office, facing an otherwise uncertain U.S. funding future for the organization.

One can discern two variations to the above scenarios, neither encouraging. One envisions the United States muddling through, regardless of the deepening humanitarian reality in Haiti, hoping that Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) holds, and border tensions with the Dominican Republic do not worsen. A more dramatic alternative envisions the United States focusing all its attention on a mitigation strategy, essentially a maritime and air surveillance barrier designed to prevent Haitian migration. Aside from taxing U.S. Coast Guard and other U.S. assets, this scenario may be outflanked by trouble at the Haiti-Dominican border, let alone being at the mercy of the region’s hurricane season and other natural disasters.

Q3: What principles guide U.S. policy thinking?

A3: There appear to be three guiding principles: First, the idea that U.S. leadership on Haiti does not imply U.S. boots on the ground or the direct engagement of U.S. military forces. Second, the crisis in Haiti must be perceived as a hemispheric responsibility to address, not just a U.S. concern. This underscores U.S. expectations of direct involvement by other hemispheric partners.

A third guiding principle may be the most important: a U.S. policy framed as much by foreign and security concerns as by U.S. domestic policy considerations. The latter highlights the importance of immigration and drug trafficking concerns. This envisions viewing solutions to Haiti’s security crisis as part of how U.S. priorities regarding immigration and drug trafficking are addressed. This does entail some buy-in and policy coordination from Haiti’s Caribbean neighbors.

Q4: Is Haiti’s crisis primarily a security issue?

A4: No—although, understandably, much of the attention over the past two years has focused on the dramatic rise in street violence, kidnappings, and generalized insecurity. This has paralyzed much of Haiti’s economic and social life, including its already stretched medical facilities and even battle-hardened international aid groups. Much of the employment and tax-generating sector is shut down.

The more alarming element emerging over the past year includes the expansion of violent zones beyond the capital, Port-au-Prince, and an increasingly more coordinated set of gang coalitions (led by Viv Ansamn: “living together”) targeting entire neighborhoods, small towns, and governmental institutions. An estimated 90 percent of Port-au-Prince is under some gang control, the southwestern peninsula of Haiti is essentially cut off, gangs control roads from Port-au-Prince towards the Dominican border, and are expanding a wave of mayhem into the north central Artibonite region of Haiti. At the human level, Haiti has become a country of displaced people fleeing violence, in tandem with growing acute food insecurity and hunger.

Countering this violence is an understaffed and under-resourced Haitian National Police, as well as a primarily Kenyan MSS deployment that is no match for the evolving battlefield environment. Worse, the depth of Haiti’s crisis emerges even more strikingly when also evaluating the state of political governance. This becomes important to the degree that the international community’s response, including the United States, has presumed the existence of a viable Haitian governmental partner.

Q5: What is the status of Haiti’s government?

A5: The TPC was set up in April 2024 with direct support from the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) and the United States. Coming in the wake of the July 2021 assassination of Haiti’s last president, and the total absence of any elected official at both national and local levels, this is a politically wobbly structure. Of the three tasks the TPC identified as priorities—constitutional reform and referendum, national elections, and a national security plan—little progress has been achieved on any of them.

The constitutional reform process involves an update of the 1987 constitution, a review process whose work has arguably already been mostly achieved through Haitian efforts and support from international donors. The problem now is operationalizing this into a credible referendum process. The original date for this was this spring, which has been postponed to this summer. At the same time, a national election remains on the calendar for later this fall, even though all observers agree that this is an unrealistic timetable. The timetable is politically significant, however, since it is linked to the April 2024 agreement that created the TPC, and has a specific sunset date of February 7, 2026, when the process is supposed to conclude with the emergence of an elected president and National Assembly.

The international community must avoid a scenario in which the TPC suddenly collapses. The fall of Port-au-Prince to increasingly determined gang coalitions and a deepening humanitarian crisis is not wild speculation. Then what? There are severe pressures within Haiti’s fractured political scene to replace what has been, admittedly, a poorly performing transitional governance structure. This might strengthen the argument that what Haiti needs is an iron-fisted presidential leadership. This has its adherents in Haiti and could find receptive ears elsewhere in the region and in Washington. But with no viable governmental and security capacity in place to impose such a strategy, and a civil society operating on life support, this likely condemns Haiti to an even more uncertain future.

Q6: What are the U.S. options to address Haiti’s crisis?

A6: Because some of the Haiti-related know-how may have been downgraded by the dismemberment of United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s funding capacity and the related uncertain Department of State reorganization, the way that U.S. policymakers deploy resources to address Haiti’s crisis will shape the TPC’s ability to address its third task—a national security plan. The outlook remains murky. The collapse of USAID’s funding capacity and ambiguous Department of State reforms leave key democracy and governance programming support in limbo. Some of this is also caught up in the broader contours of U.S. diplomacy toward the United Nations, the OAS, and U.S.–Western Hemisphere relations generally. Nonetheless, assuming the administration’s determination of no deployment of U.S. boots in Haiti, what are preferable policy alternatives than allowing Haiti to blow up?

1. The White House can ensure that appropriate staffing at the National Security Council with regard to Haiti is filled. The same applies to the Department of State’s Office of Caribbean Affairs, with expertise that combines functional and regional or country experience.
2. U.S. Southern Command’s superb planning capacity should be activated to sketch out specific operational scenarios and identify accessible U.S. and international and multilateral resources—in effect, gaming out possible implementation strategies, some of which likely already exist. This initially entails determining clearly the U.S. posture regarding the MSS. Likewise, discussions with Haitian authorities need to clarify the potential, let alone the politics of a reconstituted Haitian army (FadH—Forces Armées d'Haïti) as an indigenous military component (presently a force of about 2,500) to address the country’s insecurity.
3. U.S. policy labeling cartels as terrorist organizations is focused on Mexico and Central America. But operationalizing such a strategy towards Haiti is emerging with the administration’s designation of Viv Ansanm (a coalition of the G-9 and G-Pép gangs operating in Port-au-Prince) and Gran Grif (notoriously, a violent gang operating in the Artibonite region) as both foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists. The focus on Haiti could enable an anti-cartel and gang strategy to be downsized to a practical operational scale. In tandem, one can envision managing the “no U.S. boots on the ground” principle with a short-term rotation strategy of specialized U.S. security capabilities into Haiti, mixed with private contractor options, and complementary other assets from the hemisphere.
4. Action is required regarding arms trafficking flows into the Caribbean, particularly Haiti, much of it originating from the United States. The United States is coming under increasing political and legal pressure from the Caribbean, Mexico, and others. These criminal trafficking flows must be viewed as a U.S. national security priority.
5. Even if Haitian migrants’ Temporary Protective Status is not reinstated (although that would be preferable), the administration should call off any potential deportations back to Haiti. The notion of deporting human beings to a country with full violence is not politically viable.
6. There are also U.S. development tools for the “day-after” rebuilding scenarios that need to be energized with congressional action. This includes the Global Fragility Act (GFA), of which Haiti is a potential beneficiary, and which first emerged during the first Trump administration. The Act was reintroduced in April in a bipartisan manner in the House of Representatives. And even though the climate for trade with Haiti has shrunk because of the insecurity, the HOPE (Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity for Partnership Encouragement) and HELP (Haiti Economic Lift Program) preferential trade legislation needs to be renewed before September. Action now towards GFA and HOPE/HELP underscores the need to preserve what is left of Haiti’s economic and civil society institutions, without which rebuilding efforts will be even more costly.
7. Finally, building on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s April Caribbean visit, formalize a U.S.-CARICOM policy anchored by mutual strategic interests. This includes the southern Caribbean’s fossil fuel energy belt, management of the crisis with Venezuela, climate change transition technologies, and the practical reality that CARICOM also owns the Haitian crisis. Measurable success in this regional arena would, in turn, benefit U.S.–Latin American policy.
    

Georges Fauriol is a senior associate (non-resident) with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.