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Jeff Frazier
Hey, everybody. Welcome back. This is Jeff Frazier. Those of you who joined us on the previous episode, we talked heavily about the Trump Rubio effect on Haiti in the long term. But what will be the Trump Rubio effect in the here and now? And that will of course, need to be about security and good governance. So that's what we'll talk about today right here on the Stimpak podcast. Thanks for joining. Foreign okay, so to get started on this, we're of course going to have to speculate heavily about what Secretary Rubio and President Trump will do in Haiti in order to assist Haiti in, in moving forward in both security and good governance. But before we get there, let's back up a little bit. Of course, we always try to get to the first principles of a matter, both strategically and in some cases philosophically. And so we'll, we'll delve into that space today into the ethics and mor reality of Haiti and what should be done in Haiti and who should do it, who's obligated to do it. And so in order to get there, I want to give you a little analogy that I partially ripped off from a philosopher named Peter Singer. Imagine that you're walking down a road and you pass a pond, small pond, and you see there's a child inside that pond and that child is drowning. And you have the ability to simply reach down and pull the child out of the pond and, and save his or her life. And we would all argue from an ethical standpoint that you are absolutely obligated to pick up that child or reach down and pull them out. And that's because of the cost benefit, right? The cost is near zero to you. And the benefit to that child is, of course, massive. And so we, we all know that you're obligated to do that. Well, let's change that cost benefit equation a little bit. Let's say that you're wearing thousand dollars shoes and you don't have time, the time to take the shoes off. And so by implication, you're going to wade into this mudd and destroy your beautiful shoes. And so I think we would all still agree, go save the kid. Right? Because of course, a life is worth more than a thousand dollars. But we can significantly complicate that equation in your head by increasing the cost of those shoes, figuratively speaking. Or maybe we can change the metaphor to, to be maybe it's a backpack that you don't have time, the time to take off. And there's a bunch of medicines in that backpack. And those medicines we're going to go to save lives down the road. Right down the literal road. And so now it's not just about money. Now it's about opportunity cost. Right? Do I save this life or do I save those lives? Right. And so the, these obligation equations can get quite complex. Sometimes they're simple, but sometimes they're quite complex. And so how do we apply that to Haiti? Well, you know, I, I got a message from a listener recently. He was a young father, and he listened to the past episode, which was largely about this lazy giving versus power giving. And power giving is a lot of work, right? It's a lot of effort. You have to do a lot research and really understand a situation before you can solve it. And so his concern was, hey, I'm a young father and I'm tapped on money and I'm tapped on time. What do you want me to do? Right? You, you want me to go down to Haiti and start figuring out how to, how to solve Haiti like you did, Jeff? Not everybody can retire and go do that. And of course that's true. And so, so what's the answer for him? What is he obligated to do in his cost benefit analysis? Well, he's going to have to decide if he has the time to research other organ that are power giving, Right. Or are they lazy giving? So he has the time to get educated on what power giving and lazy giving is, at least in the abstract, to the point where he can choose where his dollars go. Right. But he's in essence going to be outsourcing the hard work of actually doing the power giving. Right. And so that, and all of you as listeners, I, I would imagine are doing a similar equation in your head. I get the coolest messages from you guys when you are kind enough to let us know that you are inspired by our story, my wife's and mine, and you've gone and done something generous and power gave in some way. And that is so fun. So thank you and please keep sending those messages. But I would imagine you're all doing that cost benefit analysis in your head. What can I do? Little old me, right? And that's going to be different for all of you. So please never feel guilty about what you're doing, your modest contribution or massive contribution. Just know that there's an equation to be done. And so you as an individual, are going to make that choice. All right? So, so what does that have to do with the Trump Rubio effect in Haiti? What does it have to do with what the United States should be doing in Haiti? Well, I hinted at it a little bit in the last episode. And it's really important for you to understand the difference between what the country does in what you do, the benevolence that you feel and altruism that you feel inside, the ache that you feel that I feel that wants to come to the aid of Haitians and lift their burden. And I've been commanded to. Right. My, my Christianity dictates that I must be my brother's keeper. Okay, great. So how do I actually do that? Well, we've talked about the difficulty of actually doing that. Right. And putting the work in to do that and do that well. And I as an individual, absolutely feel that burden. But is my government the right entity to be solving that problem in Haiti or anywhere else? And you could probably feel this coming. My assertion is absolutely not. The methodology, the techniques that we've discovered at Stimpak, some of which, at least in principle, I've shared with you thus far, maybe we'll talk a lot about that later, explaining the, the techniques that we use and ought to be deployed to lifting, lifting Haiti. But you've, you've heard the principles. This give nothing but opportunity to expect USAID or any other government entity to become world class at that is just, to me, naive. Organizations are hard to run, but you can get pretty good at running them if you understand their purpose. And of course, the fewer purposes that they have, the better, the more laser focused an organization can get on its purpose, the better it can get at providing that value to the world or to the individual it's serving. And the US Government or any other government for that matter, is going to have a really hard time doing the kinds of things that it takes to actually lift Haiti and lift the families, lift the communities, lift the nation. And so what is the role of a nation in humanitarian aid, of lifting the poor? I don't know. Maybe we can talk about that a little bit. But the point I hope you'll get at this point is that just because you love to help other people doesn't mean that we must be doing heavy foreign aid as a nation. So I want you to forever divorce those ideas. You know, I love social programs in the US and abroad. There's a lot of really cool programs. I wish that I had been able to partake in more of them growing up. I probably would have been a less stupid child that got into a lot of trouble. And I, I love those programs. I have some buddies who, who run them here in the States after school programs and you know, there are thousands of programs, halfway houses, women's shelters, you name it. There are awesome social programs, including welfare, but almost none of them are run by the government. The ones that are running well at a world class level, at a way at a level where you would be happy for your dollars to be put to work in that manner. Those organizations not only are few, they're never government organizations. Why is that? I believe it's because of the distance between the donor and the recipient. When the donor is close to the recipient, they care a lot about how their hard earned dollars are deployed. That's the nice thing about self funding your own NGOs. You can determine exactly how those dollars are spent. And in dramatic contrast to that, you have a taxpayer way over here and the recipient way over here, and all the many hands that it comes into contact in between. That's where the fraud, waste and abuse comes from. Right? Even if they don't intend to. It's just the nature of massive organizations. And governments are inherently massive and the distance between taxpayers and recipients are inherently huge at their great distances. And so I, I love social services, but I want to give those social services myself. I don't want my government to do that. I've always been surprised that no politician has ever brought up the idea of opt out taxes. Of course that sounds ridiculous because you think that I mean all taxes, but how about opt out, opting out of some of them? Meaning you over here, you want these 10 social programs and so you want higher taxes to cover those 10 social programs. Great, you can opt those. But I don't want to pay for those. I don't like those programs. How about I get to opt out of those? Right? I always kind of, I shouldn't say I'm surprised. I'm not surprised. But wouldn't that be a fun thing? Right? And, and then I can give in my way to the social programs that I care about. And of course you couldn't do that for the core benefit everyone things. So imagine a common defense of basic infrastructure, those kinds of things. But I hope you can start to see this idea of separating the federal government from the obligation to rescue people and to do social services, whether domestically or abroad. Okay, so we've discussed this idea of separating the government from giving. We've talked about the ways that we can give, we've talked about obligation to give. So what is my ethical and moral responsibility to help someone else? Now let's get into this security and governance thing. So why is the US interested in security in Haiti at all. Right. Why are we considering spending millions and millions of dollars in coming to the rescue of Haitians from a security standpoint? Well, there's what I call the big four. So the first reason that you would want, and absolutely the most significant reason, is to thwart the influence of our enemies in our region. I've talked about it before, that China and Russia want to have heavy influence in the Caribbean. Why is that? Because they want another Cuba. Having a eastern ally in the Caribbean just off our coast is incredibly attractive to them. I want it to sink deep in your head that there is no neutral ground on this planet. Any sort of ground that we concede will be absolutely filled by China and Russia immediately. So right now we, the US and France and Canada and a number of western countries are heavily involved in donating to Haiti from a security standpoint. And that is why, to ensure security in Haiti so that we can keep China and Russia out of the Caribbean. That's the most important reason, number two, and a significant one is immigration. Mass migration. Right. So if things are going terrible in Haiti, where do they come? They come north and other countries too, but a lot of them come to Florida. Third, and this is a big one, tons of weapons, ammunition, drugs, human trafficking of all kinds go back and forth between Haiti and the US coming in and out of Miami and other places. But that's a big one. Nobody wants that. Anarchy in Haiti makes that really easy. And it's huge now and then the last one is an opportunity and that's economic trade between the US and Haiti. And we've written extensively on that. You can check out our blog articles. But there's all kinds of huge opportunities for the US to do business in Haiti. Imagine the basic concept is near shoring. We've talked about offshoring for many, many years and that was typically China and India. And China's obviously a massive near peer enemy right now. And so now we're in the process as a nation of reshoring a lot of things. Well, not everything can get reshored, meaning the cost of labor is still way too high for some things to be brought back to the U.S. well, partners like Haiti who really want to play ball with us and replace China and India and even Mexico as a trade part, that that's a big opportunity for the U.S. so of course it's a big opportunity for Haiti. But from a US perspective, these four things, resisting the advance of China and Russia in the Caribbean, stopping mass migration into the US Stopping the flow of guns, ammo and drugs into the U.S. and then, of course, economic development. Those four reasons is why the U.S. from an America first standpoint, which, of course, is what President Trump and Secretary Rubio are interested in, is why the US Is interest in reestablishing security in Haiti. So have that in your. Your head as. As why we're interested in Haiti at all, why we would make any efforts to contribute. Why not just let them be them? Right. This idea of America first is a really important one to understand to. To get what President Trump and Secretary Rubio are trying to do. And that. That might sound like a isolationist perspective, but it's not it. I would highly recommend you read Secretary Rubio's book, Decade of Decadence. But there's whole chapters in there on this idea of how we as a nation should be playing on the global stage. And Secretary Ruby is no fool. He. He knows this idea of there is no neutral ground in the world, and so we have to be we. This we changes a lot. Sometimes I'm talking about we as individuals. Sometimes I'm talking about we as my family or my church or in this case, my country. So I'm a huge patriot that you'll often hear me disassociate myself from my country so that I can talk about my obligations as an individual as a distinction from my obligations as an American with a government that represents me, and. And my opinions on how my government represents me as an individual, I can get a little. Little confusing. But the we that I'm talking about right now is we as an American. And we as Americans should absolutely care about what happens to Haiti for those big four reasons. And those four reasons is why I believe. So back to our question of what will be the Trump Rubio effect in Haiti? Those four reasons is why I believe they will be actively engaged in helping Haiti to reestablish security right away. And here's what brings me to believe that the current. The current situation in Haiti is that the gangs are progressively taking over. They continue to take more and more land. They're up to about 90% of the port au Prince metropolitan area. They have almost everything that matters, except, like, this corridor by the airport, which is actually shut down. And then the. Where the US Embassy is, it's like the slice. And then there's this row of hotels that is. Is secure, and then a number of neighborhoods up at the top of the hill that are still secure. But the gangs are coming closer and closer almost by the week. Right. It's crazy. I pay attention to it every day. And it feels like they grab a new neighborhood every day. It's wild. The MSS and the hmp, the Haitian National Police and the mss, that's the multinational security support mission that the foreign troops did an offensive operation a few days ago and hit barbecue and his kind of stronghold. And then I'm going to stop naming gangsters because I hate making them celebrities. But another big gangster who actually got shot a little bit, caught some shrapnel, probably a ricochet in two spots on his forehead and his chest. But the fact that they're making offensive moves at all is, is awesome. I have almost seen none of that in the past almost two years, no year and change that they've been there. But all of the trajectory, with the exception of those couple of operations, has just been the gangs grabbing more and more territory. And there's no one who watches Haiti that, that doesn't think that if something doesn't change, the gang just wins. So what's the solution to that? I've got lots of those solutions. They're all security related and military related. I won't share those here for hope. What is, hopefully obvious reasons. You know, a couple years ago I supported the mss. I in many ways lobbied for it. You know, we were in this situation where Haiti was just going down and down and further and further. And I'm a big believer in a good plan today versus a perfect plan tomorrow. And the previous administration came out with this plan, this mss, and I basically said, okay, sure, you know, that we'll do that. It's better than nothing, right? Because at that point we had nothing and the Kings were taking land fast. And that was, I think, naivete on my part. Not to say that it was better than nothing, but to think that it would actually solve the problem at that and that the way that the MSS would be executed would be so absurd and half baked. And it was supposed to be 25 to 3,500 soldiers, which already would have been not nearly enough, but probably enough to figure it out. The United States, when, when I was a soldier, before anyone would be deployed into battle, we would insist on overwhelming force. And that was typically a 3 to 1 ratio. 3 to 1 soldiers attacking soldiers to defending soldiers. The United States doesn't go and do anything unless we have overwhelming force. That's that three to one. And the MSS was going to come in with 3,500 people. Well, a while back, he had 3,000 maybe, maybe 3,500 prisoners break out of the main prisoner prison in Port Au Prince. I'd been inside that prison, it full of very bad guys. And so to, to add those nearly 4,000 soldiers on top of the probably 12 to 18,000 existing gang soldiers that were already deployed against the Haitian National Police. To think that 3,500 soldiers was going to be enough to stave off that disaster was errant. But I was hopeful that the MSS would be the beginning and that, that maybe we'd have some sort of competitive advantage that would be sufficient to, to help these guys out and, and get it done. And so I was on board for this. 3,500 soldiers as better than nothing, but it would have been problematic even then. But Instead of the 3,500 soldiers, what we really got was I think to date we're up to 870 soldiers. And so you can see the, that that's not even close to enough to combat this, what is probably somewhere around 15,000 gang soldiers. And so, you know, I would call it a quagmire, but a quagmire infers a, a standoff or a stalemate that is essentially even. And you can't even say that it's that because the MSS and the Agent B only continue to lose ground to these gangs. So that's the situation we're in. That 3 to 3 to 1 ratio went the wrong way. So what will be the Trump Rubio effect in the very near term on the security situation in Haiti? I don't know, but it'll be something. I can't imagine a world where the Trump administration is okay with the quagmire, and that's what we've got right now. So what will it be? I don't know, but I'm looking forward to it. We need it. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks for coming to learn something about something hard that is about others and about taking care of our fellow men here on earth. Good for you for, for being willing to do that. Hey, welcome to all the new listeners. The last episode did really well and we, we went from like 250 subscribers on YouTube to like 8,000 subscribers, which is still a tiny number for, but for a little niche of the, the Internet. We're, we're happy to have you. So welcome to. For all the new listeners. You've got a lot of catching up to do. Go check out 43 Days to Freedom and then hopefully the rest of season three. Skip season one. I've told you guys that a million times before. But anyway, thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you next time.