hankyoreh

Suh Jae-jung

By Suh Jae-jung, professor of political science and international relations at the International Christian University in Tokyo

"Don't hurt me a lot / just hurt me a little."

It's a universal truth that every meeting has a parting, and it's typical to feel sad about saying goodbye. So, the poet Seo Jeong-ju sought to assuage that sadness by allowing his feelings to linger.

In his poetry, the idea of reincarnation offers ultimate salvation, but he isn't firm about ending connections with others. Even a small amount of lingering attachment can be painful and sow the seeds of future misfortune.

This also has implications for international relations. A hostile relationship tends to breed more hostility.

While it may be impossible to overcome karma in the cycle of death and rebirth, failing to resolutely sever our ties to the past will only bring more pain.

The Biden administration seems reluctant to make a clean break with various countries around the world, such as Haiti, Afghanistan and North Korea. Can those lingering feelings help the US "build back a better world"?

A funeral was held for late Haitian President Jovenel Moïse on Friday. But even his journey to the next life wasn't peaceful. Gunshots were heard outside the venue.

A US delegation had to evacuate the venue just 30 minutes into the funeral. They ended up leaving the country and returning to the US.

Moïse was assassinated by a group of mercenaries who broke into the presidential mansion in the early hours of July 7. It's still unclear who was behind his assassination, and the truth could remain hidden for a long time.

The Haitian police arrested Haitian-American Christian Emmanuel Sanon, who has ties to Florida, but many questions remain. While the police accuse Sanon of hiring mercenaries to assassinate the president, some think the police are barking up the wrong tree.

Indeed, Haitian police chief Léon Charles, who is leading the investigation, is himself under suspicion. Others wonder where the president's security guards were at the time of the assassination and what they were doing.

Martine Moïse, wife of the late president, said during her husband's funeral that "blood-sucking vampires" are all around her in a blanket accusation against Haiti's ruling class.

Haiti had been on the verge of an eruption. The problem was endemic corruption that went all the way up to Moïse himself.

When US$2 billion vanished from the PetroCaribe fund, Moïse cooled his heels instead of investigating the people implicated in the scandal. The angry citizens organized heated demonstrations against the government, which Moïse used the police to put down.

At the same time, he did nothing to crackdown on organized crime. The streets became scenes of anarchy and violence, with homes and shops burning to the ground.

But that's not all. Moïse delayed the election by decree, extending his time in office by over a year. Even as demonstrators continued demanding that Moïse step down, he had Supreme Court justices and others arrested in mass, claiming they'd been trying to launch a coup.

Moïse also pushed through a referendum on constitutional reform despite pushback from the opposition.

Haiti was moving toward a critical point as the referendum and presidential election approached in September. And then, right before everything blew up, Moïse was assassinated.

During this crisis, the Biden administration opted to maintain the status quo. There was no evidence of American "values-oriented diplomacy," such as advocacy for human rights and democracy, in Haiti. The US firmly backed President Moïse.

Even members of Congress called for a change of policy out of concern about a collapse of democracy in Haiti. But Juan Gonzalez, senior director for the Western Hemisphere on the White House National Security Council, opposed intervention, noting that all previous American attempts to solve problems in Haiti had failed.

"The solutions to Haiti's challenges are not in Washington. They are in Port-au-Prince," Gonzalez said, referring to the Haitian capital.

But the US decision to maintain the status quo through its support of Moïse can itself be seen as a form of intervention. Washington's lingering attachment and its inability to cut ties with the past resulted in Moïse's assassination and even greater chaos.

There are also echoes of Seo Jeong-ju in the rhetoric of US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. Following a meeting with the South Korean and Japanese foreign ministers in Tokyo on Wednesday, Sherman said the US has "some" patience," but "not much," for North Korea. That is, the US plans to have "some patience," rather than the "strategic patience" of the Obama administration.

That also suggests that the US will only use some diplomacy rather than fully embracing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as former President Donald Trump did. Since previous US administrations haven't been able to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue, the Biden administration intends to stick with the status quo as much as possible.

Does that mean that Biden is reluctant to boldly declare an end to the Korean War more than 70 years after it broke out?

Of course, there's an internal logic to the Biden administration's global strategy. Rather than expending resources on interventions around the world, Biden wants to focus the US' strength on the "main enemy" of China.

But Haiti teaches us a different lesson. Maintaining the status quo can lead to even bigger problems unless we get to the heart of the problem and get rid of any lingering attachment to the status quo.

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]