Global Disaster Response to Haitian Earthquake a Prelude to Moves toward Unification?

The Indian Ocean and Asian earthquake and tsunami of December 2004, which claimed about 230,000 lives and probably more from the East African coast to the Indian subcontinent to Indonesia and Thailand, caused the entire planet to vibrate. It also elicited the first truly global response to a humanitarian disaster. We even saw two former American presidents of opposing political parties, George H. W. Bush the Republican and Bill Clinton the Democrat, working together and working together as friends to help lead the relief and reconstruction efforts. The May 2008 Typhoon Nargis disaster in Myanmar/Burma was a potential international aid response but was thwarted by the military junta in power. There were and have been other significant disasters, many that did elicit aid from different countries responding to a crisis in another, including famines, but nothing of the scale of the global response to the 2004 tsunami.

In Haiti in the wake of the devastating January 2010 earthquake we see it again and in a more evolved fashion. The response to the quake was immediate, far more immediate by the United States, for example, than it’s response to its own 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster. In fact strong aftershocks continue as I write. Our response to Haiti’s crisis is beyond international; it is global. Fellow human beings from around the planet have rallied to support their own in a small nation-state ravaged even before the giant quake by decades of poverty, dictatorship, coups and low-level civil wars, military occupation, economic exploitation, and environmental destruction. This planet-wide response is just beginning to be noticed as we are still in the thick of it all. Reasons for the rapid and global response range from the ease of new technology to U.S. President Obama’s charisma and decisiveness to geographical ease of access (as opposed to the difficulties of helping remote areas of conflict-addled Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and China in the 2005 Kashmir earthquake.)

The Haitian earthquake is catastrophic and heart wrenching. The outpouring of aid is almost as overwhelming in its generosity and scale. Of course, controversies abound. Concerns are expressed about the militarization of aid, the intervention of American armed forces, outside exploitation by transnational corporations to rebuild Haiti on their terms instead of Haitian ideals, how to address environmental ruin, how to address political, drug, and gang violence and endemic corruption, and on and on. There is also infighting between different organizations. These are legitimate concerns even as much good is being done right now by some of the organizations others are denouncing. For the most part relief efforts appear to be running as smoothly as possible considering the horrendous challenges amid collapsed infrastructure and mounting death, injury, and disease tolls. It seems horror unites us in a crisis.

Many of the political, military, economic, and environmental issues raised in the wake of the Haitian earthquake would be non-issues if we had an established, democratic world government with an integral democratic capitalist economic system. Instead of nation-states and big corporations and lawless gangs jostling for power and influence we would have one unified planetary government responding with unified institutions all under world law. We would have an integrated global response to such a calamity just as China or America respond internally to their own local or regional disasters. We would be able as a democratic world government to go into areas that would otherwise be torn by warfare between countries, tribes, and religious groups. And as a planet with unified economic and financial systems based upon principles of integral, democratic, sustainable capitalism that are social and environmental responsible we would minimize any corporate exploitation or local corruption.

In Haiti, too, we have the collapse of yet another so-called “independent” nation-state. As a unified, democratic, federal planetary republic where we build interdependence that is transparent and effective. Of course, we have a long ways to go to achieve those goals. And more disasters will strike and often strike without warning. The world-wide self-awareness of global unity that stems from first the Indian Ocean tsunami and now the Haitian earthquake are promising steps on the way to achieve democratic world government.


William Dudley Bass
January 21, 2010


© by William Dudley Bass