Aid State - by Jake Johnston

Book Synopsis

A dramatic inside account of how capitalism and politics drove the disastrous collapse of Haiti, from the 2010 earthquake to the nation's chaos today.

Haiti is a nation near-collapse: criminal gangs have overrun the country, nearly all government officials have fled after the 2021 assassination of President Moise, refugees desperately set out on boats to reach the United States and Latin America, and the economy reels from the cascading after-effects of natural disasters that destroyed much of Haiti's infrastructure.

How did this happen? How did a nation founded on liberation--a people that revolted against their colonizers and enslavers--come to such ruin?

In Aid State, journalist and Haiti expert Jake Johnston reveals how longstanding United States and European capitalist goals ensnared and re-enslaved Haiti under the guise of helping it. To the global West, Haiti is and always has been "open for business" a place where labor is cheap, politicians are compliant, and profits are to be made. Over the course of nearly 100 years, the United States has sought to control Haiti and its people with occupying police, military, and euphemistically peacekeeping forces, as well as hand-picked leaders, meant to quell uprisings and protect corporate interests. Earthquakes and hurricanes only further devastated a nation left helpless by the aid industrial complex.

Based on years of on-the-ground reporting in Haiti and interviews with politicians in America and Haiti, independent aid contractors, United Nations officials, and Haitians who struggle for their lives, homes, and families, Jake Johnston's Aid State is a compelling, conscience-searing book of witness.

Review Quotes

"Magisterial....Johnston's dogged and comprehensive research vividly underscores the role international actors have played in hurling Haiti toward its current morass of political intrigue, structural violence, and institutional collapse." --Dr. Robert Maguire, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University and former Representative for Haiti and the Caribbean of the Inter-American Foundation

"In Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti, Jake Johnston weaves together the voices of politicians, aid contractors, United Nations officials, and, most importantly, Haitians fighting for their country and for their lives. Through reporting, testimonials, and firsthand accounts, Johnston exposes the intricate webs of power surrounding Haiti from its revolutionary beginnings to today. With precision, empathy, and an engaging narrative style, Johnston shines a light on the relentless battle for and against Haiti, challenging readers to confront the injustices inflicted upon a nation that continues to resist against all odds." - Edwidge Danticat, author of Brother, I'm Dying

"Jake Johnston's Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti should be required reading for all world leaders before they even think about meddling in Haitian politics. Challenging popular notions of what it means to best support Haiti, and with decades-long experience reporting on Haitian affairs to support his succinct and always shrewd analyses, Johnston shines an uncomfortable light on the international community's contributions to Haiti's recent tragedies. In so doing, he dismantles the idea that aid after disaster has anything to do with humanitarianism, while never losing sight of Haiti's potential for self-recovery."
-Marlene L. Daut, Professor of French and African American Studies at Yale University, and author of Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution

"Jake Johnston's Aid State is a harrowing journey into the heart of modern neocolonial darkness, revealing the thick network of international organizations, including the United Nations, that have occupied Haiti for decades. In the name of humanitarian aid and development, the occupiers have brought sexual abuse, disease, and death. Johnston writes movingly about a country and its people that survives under permanent occupation. An indispensable book."
-Greg Grandin is a professor of history at Yale University and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fordlandia

" In Aid State, Johnston combines his prodigious research with first person accounts from interviews with a remarkably broad range of Haitian, US and other foreign actors. The result is a troubling portrait of US policy across Democratic and Republican administrations. . . Johnston's controversial thesis has implications far beyond one small country, suggesting the possibility that a new approach of respect for self-determination and encouragement of self-sufficiency in poor countries around the world could pave a much surer path to the spread of durable democracies we claim to seek." - former U.S. Congressman Andy Levin

" Powerful...This cri de coeur from an expert with firsthand knowledge of what ails Haiti is a must-read." - Publishers Weekly starred review

"Meticulous and searing...rivetingly told." --Laurent Dubois, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Magisterial" --The Nation

"An excellent debut about the social problems and distortions created by foreign aid. Readers who want a nuanced take on how foreign aid has hobbled Haiti for more than a century. . . will find an account that draws extensively from Haitians and foreigners in the main circles of money and power. Anyone who has visited or worked in Haiti over the past decades will find Johnston's book to be of great value as he labors to unravel the country's recent political miasma." - Foreign Policy

"Invaluable new book..."--Pooja Bhatia, New York Review of Books

"I've long admired Jake Johnston's stubborn commitment to tracking Haiti's struggles for a just recovery and real democracy -- and his deft narrative and investigative skills, which have played such an outsize role in bringing the story (and its many lessons) far and wide. This book project is timely and necessary, and I expect it to strike a nerve with readers around the world." --Naomi Klein, author of No is Not Enough and This Changes Everything

About the Author

JAKE JOHNSTON is Senior Research Associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. and has been the leading writer for the center's Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch website since February 2010, just weeks after a 7.0 earthquake devastated Haiti. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, ABC News, Boston Review, Truthout, and The Intercept, and elsewhere. He grew up in Portland, Maine and lives in Washington, D.C.