Afghanistan, Haiti, and the Imperial History of Diplomatic Recognition

Yesterday morning President Joe Biden announced his decision to not extend the August 31 deadline for the U.S. military’s exit from Afghanistan while Vice President Kamala Harris—in the middle of her tour of Southeast Asia—sharply rebuked China for its unfounded claims to the South China Sea. Stories of the devastating earthquake in Haiti and the delta variant’s toll in countries formerly occupied by the U.S. filled the news as well.

These stories are interconnected and we must ask critical questions to examine their ties. Why did Harris—for her second trip abroad as Vice President—travel to the Indo-Pacific in the midst of Biden’s pullout from Afghanistan and a catastrophic earthquake in Haiti? What does this say about the U.S government’s priorities? How does U.S. executive diplomacy relate to what’s happening in Afghanistan, Haiti, and more?

First, the story of Biden’s decision to keep the exit deadline of August 31 points to multiple failures in diplomacy. The truth we can’t seem to face is that the U.S. exit from Afghanistan was bound to be a bloody mess since U.S. entry into Afghanistan. Biden failed to prioritize the lives of Afghans in his exit plan, despite his prior knowledge of impending chaos

But how does Biden’s deliberate decision to ignore Afghans in his exit plan relate to the Vice President’s tour of Southeast Asia? During a time when the U.S. could be admitting its pitfalls and putting all of its resources (namely the second most powerful human resource in the empire that is the Vice President) to securing Afghans’ exit, or earthquake relief in Haiti, Harris specifically traveled to the Indo-Pacific, the most contested geopolitical region for China. The point of this move was simple: while Biden takes care of the mess in Afghanistan, Harris was to reassure American allies nearest to China that the U.S. had everything under control; that the U.S. exit from Afghanistan did and will not entail Chinese success.

Biden’s decision to ignore previously issued warnings about the Taliban speaks volumes about the “democratic” empire’s policy toward non-Americans. Likewise, Harris’ decision to travel to the Indo-Pacific to save the image of the state—not humans dying from multiple disasters inspired or exacerbated by the U.S.—shows her inability to prioritize human lives. The U.S., in this sense, has consistently been an empire of mass death and diplomatic supremacy.

The priority of the U.S. government is clear and recalls the infamous quote by Joe Biden from 1994. when then president Bill Clinton invaded Haiti over a military coup that removed its first democratically elected president. Back then, Senator Biden commented on Clinton’s invasion: “If Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn’t matter a whole lot in terms of our interests.”

The long history of U.S. imperialism ties Afghanistan and Haiti together. A holistic and complete account of such a history will be impossible within this limited space. However, I will attempt to illustrate through the history of diplomatic recognition that the U.S. empire has historically been a force of destruction and destabilization, not a guardian of liberty and equality.

“The racist and imperial history of diplomatic recognition points to the fact that for Americans and their government, independent nation-states abroad and the people who constitute them have always remained an array of second-thoughts.”

Important parallels can be drawn between Afghanistan and Haiti through the history of diplomatic recognition by the U.S.. In the case of Haiti, thanks to Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. recognized the island state as an independent nation on July 12, 1862, in the midst of the U.S. Civil War. Haiti, however, had been independent since 1804. After 52 years of recognition withheld, what had changed? The answer lies with why Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862.

The objective of weakening and eventually defeating the Confederacy underlay both the recognition of Haiti and the decision to liberate enslaved people. Prevalent anxiety over enslaved peoples’ uprisings had prevented the U.S. from recognizing Haiti. Yet, in the midst of a war against the Southern half of the empire, it recognized Haiti, because the recognition aligned with its wartime goal of defeating the C.S.A. Recognition of Haiti, a republic of the formerly enslaved, had only become desirable enough during the empire’s own fight against slavery.

Similar parallels exist in U.S. recognition of Afghanistan. The U.S. granted Afghanistan recognition only when the latter presented something desirable enough for the empire, something that would provide a net positive. After three waves of border wars with the British that spanned two centuries, the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919 officially recognized Afghanistan as an independent state. Independent yet in need of economic power, Afghanistan made continued attempts to build diplomatic ties with the U.S. for 15 years following 1919.

Official recognition from the U.S., however, only came in 1934, a year after Kabul offered a significant oil concession to the Inland Exploration Oil Co., a consortium of companies which included Texaco and Seaboard. These companies wanted diplomatic ties as well as a civil aviation system designed by American airlines. President Roosevelt only decided to approve recognition of Afghanistan because of pressure from these U.S. business leaders. Roosevelt had deemed the penetration of U.S. businessmen into the Afghan oil industry to be a desirable enough outcome in the Great Depression.

But why did the U.S. hesitate to recognize Afghanistan in the first place? The answer can be summed up by a quote from Wallace Murray—the “expert” on the Middle East in the State Department during Roosevelt’s administration who wrote the following:

“Afghanistan is doubtless the most fanatic, hostile country in the world today. There are no capitulatory or extraterritorial rights to protect foreigners. There is no pretense of according to Christians equal rights with Moslems...The British have for years absolutely forbidden any white British subject from entering Afghanistan and though Nadir Shah is sound, he cannot control the tribes and will soon fall.”1

Misinformation and stereotypes coupled with dominant ideations of race produced Murray’s racist imagination of Afghanistan. As evidenced by Murray’s words, the American imperial administration’s fear of Afghans and their “fanatic” ways echoes the American slavocracy’s fear of Haitians and their “savage” ways.

The racist and imperial history of diplomatic recognition points to the fact that for Americans and their government, independent nation-states abroad and the people who constitute them have always remained an array of second-thoughts. Priority has always been socioeconomic and political interests of the U.S. empire.

If the U.S. is truly the human-centric country of liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness, it must now open borders to the Afghan and Haitian peoples who have been subjected to systemic racism and structural violence of the empire. It must center their stories and recognize them as blueprints of the future.

Moreover, in order to understand what is going on now and how we got here, we must examine the broader history of U.S. imperialism. The troubled history of diplomatic recognition is a helpful window into such a history, one that must necessarily begin with Indigenous peoples in the formation of the U.S. empire. Only by recognizing how long we have been habitualizing inequities and reproducing the violence of empire across the globe will we understand how thousands of lives in both Afghanistan and Haiti became an array of second thoughts.

Notes

Image Credit: “Haiti,” Historical Archive of USAID, Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS), https://www.dvidshub.net/image/3027125/haiti

Leon V. Poullada, “Afghanistan and the United States: The Crucial Years,” Middle East Journal 35, No. 2 (Spring, 1981), page 179, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4326198.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Aa2d4260bf16a47f978cb62011f7a8eb8.

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