China Forces Concessions from Myanmar Rebels as Haiti Nears Collapse

The world’s geopolitical fault lines are shifting on multiple fronts simultaneously. In Myanmar, China has begun directly intervening in the nation’s civil war, forcing rebel groups to abandon hard-won territory to protect Beijing’s strategic infrastructure. In Poland, a razor-thin presidential election has installed a hard-right leader whose stance on Ukraine and NATO could complicate European security at a critical moment.

And in Haiti, the capital city of Port-au-Prince stands on the verge of falling entirely to armed gangs, with the last government holdout under siege and no credible international intervention in sight. Each of these developments carries implications that extend far beyond their immediate borders, reshaping the calculus of power in their respective regions.

China Forces Concessions from Myanmar Rebels

In the dense jungles of Myanmar, the nation’s long civil war seems to be at a turning point. But although Myanmar’s patchwork rebel alliance still controls most of the country, and although the nation’s military regime is still nowhere close to mounting a large-scale counteroffensive, the new turning point in Myanmar is decidedly worse news for the rebels than the state of the conflict might suggest. Myanmar’s most powerful neighbor, China, is stepping in, and it’s taking a stance in the military regime’s favor.

To understand what has just happened in Myanmar requires turning back the clock to last summer. After about a month of intense battles between Myanmar’s powerful military, the Tatmadaw, and a rebel offensive led by a coalition called the Three Brotherhood Alliance, Myanmar’s rebels captured the major city of Lashio. The capital of Myanmar’s northern Shan State, estimated at a pre-war population above 130,000, Lashio had been the Tatmadaw’s last holdout in Shan State before the battle began.

After the resistance had overwhelmed the surrounding towns and overrun the Tatmadaw’s many outposts in the countryside, they besieged Lashio and pounded it with artillery and unmanned drones relentlessly. Then, they worked their way into the city, took an ever-growing list of important targets in fierce urban battles, and ultimately raised their flag over the Tatmadaw’s headquarters of its Northeastern Command. The capture of the city represented an immense victory for Myanmar’s rebel coalition, especially the resistance group that had led the charge, known best as the MNDAA.

But fast forward to April of 2025, and something strange happened in the rebel-controlled city of Lashio. Without a battle, without public protest, and without even the threat of a direct attack, the forces of the MNDAA and their rebel companions vacated the city. Not long afterward, the Tatmadaw arrived, driving a convoy of some two hundred vehicles and reassuming their control of the city without a fight.

Beijing’s Pressure Campaign and the MNDAA Withdrawal

According to Myanmar’s rebel leaders, speaking to the New York Times for a report published in late May 2025, the reason for the rebel exit was a simple one. Over the prior several months, China had placed considerable pressure on the rebels in Lashio, blocking the usual flow of trade across China’s border seventy-five miles away, cutting off power and Internet services to nearby towns, and holding the commander of the MNDAA hostage on Chinese soil, where he has been detained since October of 2024. Before the decision to pressure the rebel coalition out of Lashio, China had largely held off on issuing explicit demands to either side of the Myanmar conflict—but since the fighting ramped up about five years ago, and long before that in Myanmar’s history, China has kept very close tabs on its smaller neighbor.

Unlike many nations around the world, where a civil war might be turned into a proxy conflict between minor powers, Myanmar is entirely in China’s sphere of influence. That dynamic works in much the same way that a hypothetical insurgency in northern Kazakhstan would, for all intents and purposes, be Russia’s business, or in the case of a hypothetical insurgency in Canada, America would be the major power with the most influence, by far, over whatever was happening there. And although China hadn’t gone so far as to demand territorial handovers in Myanmar before this April, the rising superpower has taken a very active role in managing both sides of the conflict.

Where the military regime is concerned, China has provided weapons, supplies, military support, and economic aid, while cultivating a range of strategic megaprojects of its own, built and managed by China on Myanmar’s soil. At the same time, China has also funneled weapons and maintained close contact with the Myanmar insurgency, and declined to officially recognize Myanmar’s military takeover for years. For a little while, it seemed as if China might even switch sides and back a rebel takeover of the country.

Elsewhere, China maintains a direct proxy faction in Myanmar’s Wa State. Recently, Chinese mercenaries have started playing a more active role in protecting China’s interests in the country, even showing up on airplanes to land in the middle of heavy fighting, in some cases.

Pipelines, Ports, and China’s Strategic Calculus in Myanmar

As for what China wants in Myanmar now, and what it hoped to achieve by pushing the rebel coalition out of Lashio, it helps to have a clear understanding of China’s priorities. Specifically, China doesn’t particularly care who wins the war. A Tatmadaw victory or a rebel victory might come with a few benefits or costs for China, depending on the circumstances and on what happens after—and as of now, Beijing has made clear that the regime is not allowed to fall, because of the instability that a regime collapse would bring with it, based on the security crises that would follow if the regime collapsed now.

But if the identity of the civil war’s ultimate winner is even written onto the list of things Beijing cares about, then it’s certainly near the bottom. Among China’s higher priorities are the security of its 2,100-kilometer border, the safety of a very expensive and strategically critical oil and gas pipeline that runs through Myanmar for 250 kilometers, and the confidence that Western influences aren’t at work on Myanmar’s soil. And when it came to the decision to push the rebels out of Lashio, it was that second item on the list that apparently motivated China’s thinking.

In the areas around Lashio, the autonomous forces of Wa State are able to lock down large sections of the border, but they’re not able to protect China’s pipelines or its other infrastructure projects in that area. Lashio, in particular, isn’t far from where that massive oil-and-gas pipeline enters the country, before starting its long journey toward the Indian Ocean. A recent report by The Economist points out that the pipeline is especially important because it’s one of the only ways for China to receive oil and gas shipments without those shipments traveling through Indonesian waters, and particularly the Strait of Malacca.

The Economist writes: “If China and America ever went to war, it would become a critical economic lifeline.” The decision to force the MNDAA out of Lashio has been accompanied by a parallel initiative to get other rebel groups to vacate areas that they control. The Ta’ang National Liberation Army, a key partner of the MNDAA, says that it is resisting China’s efforts to push the group out of five towns that China has deemed too important to host conflict.

Quoting the group’s general secretary, who spoke to the New York Times: “They’ve warned us not to engage in battles along the China-Myanmar border or near the pipelines. In fact, they’ve explicitly said no battles should take place anywhere they have vested interests.” China’s warnings have gone against the military regime, too, after the regime demonstrated a repeated willingness to use airstrikes liberally in areas where those same vested interests were at risk.

But in the case of Lashio, China appears to have decided that it’s better to simply ensure that the Tatmadaw is in control, rather than leave it to the Tatmadaw to attempt a messy and violent counterattack.

Mercenaries, Railways, and China’s Expanding Footprint Across Myanmar

At the same time, China appears to be locking down other points of interest across the country. At a location where China intends to build a deep-sea port, and then connect that port to China directly via a long railway, mercenaries have deployed with the mutual approval of both the Myanmar regime and the powerful rebel group that they’re fighting. The regime even went so far as to pass a law allowing the presence of foreign mercenaries in Myanmar, something that the nation’s leaders have tried to resist for many years.

Meanwhile, those particular rebels, the Arakan Army, have demonstrated their willingness to protect Chinese interests, ensuring that its pipelines are kept safe and that the flow of oil and gas is never interrupted. In central Myanmar, armed groups are now very used to following the guiding principle of “don’t attack China’s shit,” after those groups, whose weapons and ammunition largely flow to them from China via proxies, have watched weapons shipments dry up as punishment for prior infractions. In the same northeastern areas where China has forced the rebels to withdraw, internally displaced refugees now set up their camps as close to the pipelines as possible, knowing that every party to the conflict will do everything in their power to avoid angering Beijing.

The decision by Myanmar’s rebels to acquiesce to China, and abandon the hard-fought city of Lashio, isn’t exactly an indicator that China is coming down on the side of the Tatmadaw. China did host Myanmar’s military leader in Beijing for the very first time, earlier this year, but the situation is a good deal more complicated. Instead, China has demonstrated its willingness to get a hell of a lot more direct about protecting its own interests in Myanmar, and ensuring that whatever battles might take place between the Tatmadaw and the rebels, they don’t get in the way of China’s ambitions in the country.

If the Tatmadaw and the rebels want to have massive battles in the deep jungle, or if the Tatmadaw wants to bomb civilian villages, or the rebels want to capture artillery or tanks or even helicopters, Beijing really couldn’t care less. But anyone in Myanmar who touches China’s interests is going to get the hammer brought down upon them, regardless of what they believe, what they’re fighting for, or even whether they’ve built broader goodwill with Beijing. In a conflict where all sides have to answer to China, the rebel withdrawal from Lashio is just one in a series of reminders that everybody would be wise to remember who the big boss really is.

Mandalay as a Red Line and the Rebel Impasse

The fact that China’s involvement in the civil war is rooted in its own self-interest doesn’t mean that it won’t have a major impact on the conflict. If both Myanmar’s ruling regime and its rebels understand that they’re not to endanger China’s economic assets, then the location of those assets will have a major bearing on where future battles will or won’t take place. The city of Mandalay is an example—the second-largest of the three critical cities that form the very heart of the regime’s remaining territory, but also the most vulnerable of the three.

With the rebels already active in areas just outside the city, it has long been the likeliest target for the rebel alliance to try and bring its war effort to the next level, bringing down their greatest target yet and starting a cascade that might bring down the entire regime. The trouble, however, is that China’s all-important pipeline passes right by Mandalay, through a nearby town where the Tatmadaw’s military academies are based—and where a major battle would be practically guaranteed. Not only that, but China is hard at work on a major railway project that runs through Mandalay, it maintains a major cement factory just thirty kilometers outside the city, and it has a range of financial interests tied up in what remains an economically vibrant metropolis.

There, many of the most powerful people in business are immigrants from China, who own interests ranging from gold and gemstone mining operations to lucrative timber traders and more. Indeed, China has already stepped in to prevent an escalation of violence in and around Mandalay, after the city was first threatened in late 2024. For China, it appears that a change in territorial control over Mandalay is a critical red line, and one that Myanmar’s rebels will not be allowed to cross.

Until and unless that changes, the rebels will struggle mightily to begin the final cascade of battles and takeovers that could bring down the regime. It’s for that same reason that the rebels didn’t take full advantage of the chaos after Myanmar’s devastating earthquake. It’s for that same reason that several rebel groups have agreed to repeatedly extend a ceasefire with the regime—even though the regime continues airstrikes in some parts of Myanmar.

And it’s for that same reason that the rebels haven’t seemed to seize on their recent technological advances, most recently the first instance of a rebel group using a first-person drone to bring down a military helicopter. If China refuses to allow battles in places where its interests may be harmed, then at this stage of the fight, the rebels are unable to take their war to the next level. Until and unless that changes, the rebel alliance is at an impasse—and Myanmar’s military regime is safe, at least for now.

Poland’s Razor-Thin Presidential Election

On the 1st of June, citizens of Poland went to the polls to elect a new President. The result, whatever it would be, would be likely to have a deafening impact on the country’s defense and security endeavors, as well as relations with its partners both east and west. The election was a run-off, following from the first round in May, in which no candidate had won the majority necessary to clinch the Presidency outright.

The candidates who fell off in the first round were a colorful group, offering a unique insight into bitter, often controversial divides at the heart of the Polish political sphere. Perhaps most significant of these, falling short at 15% of the first-round vote, was entrepreneur and tax advisor Slawomir Mentzen of the nationalist Confederation party. Mentzen’s programme included ending free university tuition, sealing Poland’s borders, prohibiting abortion in all circumstances including rape, and preventing Polish troop involvement in the War in Ukraine.

Also to falter was Grzegorz Braun, a dissident former parliamentarian for the same Confederation party. A self-identified Traditionalist Catholic, Braun was especially known for his antisemitic tirades, and in 2023 he doused a Hanukkah Menorah installed in the Polish Parliament with a fire extinguisher, resulting in his expulsion from the chamber and loss of parliamentary immunity. At 6% of the vote, he came up far short, as did the trio of Szymon Holownia from the Christian Democrat Third Way and a pair of candidates from left-wing parties—each receiving less than 5% of the vote.

That left only two candidates to contest the run-off: historian Karol Nawrocki for the right-wing Law and Justice Party, and Rafal Trzaskowski, Mayor of Warsaw, for the liberal Civic Platform Party. Trzaskowski may have looked toward the election with much optimism. Opinion polls before the election consistently held him as the favourite, and he—unsurprisingly—won the first round with 31%.

His first-round victory was hardly a trouncing, with Nawrocki having come an ominously close second at 29% of the vote. And the close margin would prove telling.

Nawrocki’s Victory and Its Implications for Ukraine

After run-off voting got under way, preliminary results appeared to point towards victory for Trzaskowski, who took to a podium in Warsaw in front of jubilant supporters and declared: “Ladies and gentlemen, we won. Although I think this phrase will forever enter the Polish language and political arena: on a razor’s edge.” But he would be made to eat his own words.

The results swung round at the eleventh hour, ultimately showing 50.89% of the vote for Nawrocki, and 49.11% for Trzaskowski, with a turnout a little under 72%. Early on June 3rd, Nawrocki was declared the election winner. And, just like that, Poland exchanged its hard-right President Duda for the extremely-hard-right Nawrocki.

What does this mean for the geopolitics of the region, and specifically the war in Ukraine? Possibly quite little, at least short-term, since true power continues to lie, above all, with the Civic Platform, which has controlled the Polish government since late 2023. Following the December parliamentary elections that year, Law and Justice remained the single-largest party with 194 of an available 460 seats in the Polish Parliament, or Sejm.

But they were nonetheless outseated by the Civic Platform’s electoral alliance with the Third Way and The Left, which collectively secured them 248 seats and a house majority. The Prime Ministership passed to Civic Platform’s Chairman Donald Tusk, the pro-European former President of the European Council, who had previously held the role of head of government in Poland from 2007 to 2014. The bedrock of the Civic Platform’s defence policy includes NATO membership for Poland and bilateral cooperation with the United States, as well as continuing support for Ukraine through military and humanitarian means.

Shortly after the 2023 election, Poland’s defence spending grew to $38 billion or 4.2 percent of GDP, with further plans to increase spending to 5% GDP. In March 2025, Tusk announced the introduction of military training for all men in Poland, promising further details, with the aim of reaching a standing Polish army of half a million soldiers, including reservists.

Polish Defense Policy, War Weariness, and the Volhynia Grievance

Civic Platform’s militarizing and support for Ukraine doesn’t deviate much from the preceding policies of Law and Justice, which held power for eight years going into the 2023 election, including the first eighteen months of the war. It was under Law and Justice that Poland became a haven for millions of Ukrainian refugees, and simultaneously became one of the most important supporters of the Ukrainian war effort. According to the Polish Ministry of Defence, military aid for Ukraine reached $3 billion before the election, including the provision of around 300 T-72, PT-91, and Leopard A4 battle tanks, MiG-29 fighters, surface-to-air missiles, and Krab howitzers amongst others.

While Law and Justice and Civic Platform have tussled for power in Poland in recent years, and their policies domestically and with regard to the EU diverge on multiple key fronts, their positions on defence and on Ukraine have appeared to generally coalesce. But is that still the case? The nearly 40 months of war have led to weariness in Poland, directed—in some cases—towards the Ukrainians, some of whom have complained of rising antipathy and abuse in their new home.

Pressure groups like “It’s Not Our War” set up billboards and online campaigns in the country, urging Poland to limit its engagement or end its supporting role in the war outright. And the fatigue has made its way into the political arena too. Slawomir Mentzen, for example, stated that Poles must stop letting Ukraine treat them as “suckers” instead of partners, and urged a deal with Putin to bring the war to an end—something that would have been unthinkable in the earliest stages of the war.

And Grzegorz Braun—in a characteristic diatribe against symbols in the Parliament building—demanded the removal of a Ukrainian flag from the Sejm chamber. But more importantly: where does Poland’s President-elect stand on all this? Generally, the position of the Law and Justice Party is to continue the support for Ukraine, and Nawrocki hasn’t—until now—deviated much from this, having expressed support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and resistance to Russian aggression.

However, Nawrocki opposes the admission of Ukraine to NATO outright. Immediately after the first round of the election, he signed an eight-point declaration, which included a pledge to block Ukraine’s would-be NATO accession, in a move heavily criticized by the Civic Platform and seen by many as an attempt to inherit Slawomir Mentzen’s vote base ahead of the second round. Moreover, Nawrocki, a historian with a keen patriotic focus, has a particular bone to pick with Ukraine because of a longstanding grievance between the two nations: the 1943 Volhynia Massacre.

The event took place during the Second World War, when Ukrainian nationalists—allied with the Nazis—killed around 100,000 Poles in what was then eastern Poland, now western Ukraine. Some of the main ideologues behind the massacre remain glorified in Ukraine to this day, and although the issue took a back seat in the early stage of the war, it became more pervasive as time passed and Polish war weariness rose.

The Presidential Veto and Poland’s Power Struggle Over Ukraine Policy

Nawrocki is also a supporter of Donald Trump, whose noncommittal position on the war could be a blueprint for the Polish President’s own decisions moving forward. This could prove trouble for Tusk and the Civic Platform, in their attempts to carry support initiatives through Parliament. Under Poland’s political structure, the powers of the government can be hindered by the Presidential Veto—a power which was routinely exercised by the incumbent President, who, until June 2025, was Law and Justice’s Andrzej Duda.

To override the veto is possible only with a three-fifths Parliament majority, which the Civic Platform—even through its electoral alliance—did not quite attain. Not only that, but it is the President—not Prime Minister—who assumes the role of commander-in-chief of the armed forces, playing therefore a key role in defense and foreign policy. Duda—for his part—held strongly to supporting Ukraine, though he regularly shot down domestic policy initiatives put forward by Tusk, including a proposed commission to investigate Russian influence in Poland.

Nawrocki may not stay his hand on even more biting matters, and the result may spell trouble for Tusk—but perhaps especially Ukraine. While an outcome where Warsaw stops supporting Kyiv in its defensive war against Russia remains extremely remote, an outcome where Poland becomes a major headache for post-ceasefire Ukraine just got a whole lot more likely.

Port-au-Prince on the Brink of Falling to Armed Gangs

There’s a psychological shift when a capital falls to the enemy. No matter how clearly desperate the situation was before, watching the seat of power seized by an opposing force triggers something—an acknowledgement that all really is lost. That was evident just four years ago, when the Taliban entered Kabul, or last December, when a coalition of rebels marched on Damascus and overthrew the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Now one of those big psychological shifts may be about to play out in the Caribbean. For years, the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince has been on the verge of being overrun by armed gangs. Government control has slipped away, to the point that even former ministry buildings have been surrendered.

But so long as the authorities still held a pocket of land, the world could tell itself that Haiti hadn’t fallen—that it might be a basket case, but not one that was led by ruthless gangsters. Today, though, that last government-held pocket might be on the verge of disappearing. At the beginning of June, the Financial Times filed a report from the wealthy suburb of Pétion-Ville, where the last remaining authority, the Transitional Presidential Council, is holed up.

Their conclusion: Pétion-Ville is about to fall. Having overrun the rest of Port-au-Prince, the gangs have laid siege to this last suburb. The police have all but evaporated, leaving the commune’s defense in the hands of an ad hoc group calling itself Du Sang 9.

The Economist described the group: “It is all that stands between [the gangs] and the prime minister’s office.” The Financial Times’ report from the scene spoke of an atmosphere of anxiety, of piles of trash burning in the streets and a sense of impending collapse.

The Failed Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti

The question of what happened to the recent military intervention has a straightforward answer: it failed. Authorized by the UN in October of 2023—and funded by the United States—the Multinational Security Support Mission was supposed to be Haiti’s ticket to stability. As envisaged, a force of 2,500 well-trained and highly-armed policemen led by Kenya would descend on Port-au-Prince, secure key roads and sensitive sites, and at least allow the free movement of supplies in and out of the city.

Instead, the entire deployment wound up being about 800 men. Eight hundred men, lacking helicopters and adequate funding, tasked with taking on 12,000 gang members and securing a city of 2.5 million people. That’s the very definition of an impossible task.

As a result—following some early successes—the MSS troops have mostly retreated to their base at the airport, only rarely venturing out. And with Haiti’s national police either melting away or taking bribes from the armed gangs, that has left Port-au-Prince with no visible security. Today, the capital looks like something from a dystopian sci-fi film.

The roads out of the city are blocked—controlled by armed groups. With the port and airport effectively non-functional, the only way in is by helicopter. Schools are closed, hospitals have been sacked and burned, and the streets are pocked with bullet holes.

Food prices have skyrocketed, fresh water is scarce, and public sanitation is non-existent. And then there’s the incessant, random violence. Over 7,000 Haitians were killed in gang violence in 2024.

The UN recorded another 2,660 murders in the first three months of 2025 alone—a 41 percent increase on the previous quarter. Sexual violence against women and girls is off the charts. While the South African murder rate was a grim 42 per 100,000 people in 2024, Haiti’s was a shocking 62 per 100,000.

Should this year’s trend continue, the 2025 murder rate could be as high as 91. By comparison, the US homicide rate is around 6 per 100,000. Haiti’s level of violence is just orders of magnitude worse than anything seen in other nations with high homicide rates, like Honduras, Mexico, or even Ecuador.

Ecuador’s gang violence is so bad that the country declared itself in a state of internal armed conflict.

Expanding Gang Control and Haiti’s Humanitarian Catastrophe

Violence in Haiti is also getting worse, in part because the gangs are spreading their control beyond the capital. The agricultural region of Artibonite is now so dangerous that few farmers are able to safely grow crops, following a massacre in Petite Rivière last fall that killed maybe 150 people. On the road toward the Dominican Republic, the key town of Mirebalais has been seized.

Analyst Romain Le Cour Grandmaison recently described the gangs’ growing reach to the Miami Herald: “The territory of the capital, and more and more of the country, is made up of hundreds of turfs, controlled by [self-defense] brigades on one side and gangs on the other, creating a mosaic of strongholds each led by a strongman.” The result of this rapid expansion has been one million people forced to flee their homes—equivalent to maybe one tenth of the population—as well as 5.7 million people pushed into emergency levels of hunger. Things are so bad that parts of the country now rank alongside Sudan and Gaza in terms of catastrophic levels of food insecurity.

Meanwhile, the interim government—the nine-member Transitional Presidential Council—does nothing useful. Its members seem perfectly happy scheming and plotting against one another, trying to score political points and enrich themselves. Former Prime Minister Claude Joseph told the Economist: “The council is a transitional authority that controls nothing.”

Meanwhile, gang members freely post videos to social media of their members playing football with the severed heads of enemies. To be fair to the Council, some of its members are trying to give the impression of mounting a fightback. For months now, specialists connected to the founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince, have been flying drones armed with explosives into gang territory, in the aim of taking out their leaders.

But the Wall Street Journal explains: “The hundreds of people killed in those explosions since February don’t include any gang leaders, human-rights organizations said.” Overall, it is thought today that 300 people have died in these government drone strikes, adding to the general sense of chaos gripping Port-au-Prince. Although that doesn’t mean the attacks are unpopular with the general public.

Pierre Esperance of the National Human Rights Defense Network told the Journal: “What should we do? Wait for the gangs to come to us and kill us?”

What Haiti’s Gangs Want and Why the Crisis Defies Easy Solutions

As War on the Rocks notes, despite the fear that Port-au-Prince could fall like Kabul, Saigon, or Damascus, the situation in Haiti isn’t like a normal civil war. To quote: “The ongoing crisis in Haiti defies traditional definitions of intrastate conflict. The crisis goes beyond a scourge of gang violence, as the gangs challenge the authority of the state.

Yet, the gangs have not taken over the country, though they likely could do so at any time.” In the recent cases of Afghanistan and Syria, the fall of the capital meant a new force—or group of forces—stepping in to take over the functions of the state. For all they may have emerged as violent terror groups, the Taliban and HTS were absolutely interested in forming new administrations, providing public services, and generally fulfilling the functions of government.

There’s no indication that Haiti’s armed groups want to do anything similar. Instead, War on the Rocks theorizes that they want to be integrated by the government—given fancy titles and access to opportunities for corruption, as well as a say in the nation’s future, but without any of the hassle that comes with actually running a country. These gangs were originally created decades ago by Haiti’s elite.

They were built up with money and weaponry by powerful politicians and businessmen as a way to protect their own interests, and damage those of rivals. Even now, as they threaten the entire nation, there are signs that the gangs still maintain contact with the top of Haitian society. This means that rooting them out will be next to impossible.

And that doesn’t bode well for heading off the final fall of Port-au-Prince. Right now, the options for dealing with the Haitian crisis are limited at best. For all people talk about a “Haitian-led solution,” attempts to find one over the last few years have led precisely nowhere.

That leaves outside military intervention as the most-obvious way forward. Yet, for all nations like the United States continue to push for boots on the ground, the sad reality is that—after Kenya’s debacle with the MSS—no one wants to lead such a mission. Theoretically, this shouldn’t matter.

A vote in the UN Security Council should be enough to authorize a deployment of blue helmets to combat the gangs. But Russia and China seem content to veto any resolutions on Haiti, on the basis that it’s great fun to see a crisis unfolding a mere two hours’ flight from Miami. As an alternative, Washington is trying to persuade the Organization of American States to instead intervene, but the OAS has no experience with peacekeeping, and no one seems willing to commit troops.

The White House has no interest in leading a military force into Haiti, Brazil was burned by its own experiences leading the last UN mission, and other regional powers like Colombia have too many internal problems to think of adding “fixing Haiti” to their to-do list.

Haiti’s Looming Collapse and the Geopolitical Fallout

The only other option, then, is doing nothing—to wash our hands of the problem and leave Haiti to sort itself out. But no one seriously thinks that letting Haiti become a North American Somalia is anything but a bad idea. An exporter of instability that could cause problems not just for its immediate neighbors, like the Dominican Republic, but for the entire Caribbean region, and perhaps even the United States.

With the last government holdout in Haiti’s capital on the verge of falling, a possible major geopolitical shock is on the horizon, and a crisis that everyone agrees requires action, but without being able to agree what that action should be. Lost amid all the worrying and hand-wringing are the people of Haiti themselves, terrorized by sadistic gangs, wracked by hunger, unable to fight back or flee or do anything but try to survive an increasingly desperate situation in which seemingly no one is coming to help. The Haitian capital may fall in the coming days or weeks, but if it does, it will just be the start of a new chapter in this overlooked crisis, one that could have profound knock-on effects across the hemisphere and beyond.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did China force the MNDAA to abandon Lashio, and how did it do so?

China’s 250-kilometer oil and gas pipeline through Myanmar passes near Lashio and is one of the few routes allowing China to receive energy shipments without transiting the Strait of Malacca — a critical lifeline if China and the United States ever went to war. To protect this infrastructure, China blocked trade across its border, cut power and internet to nearby towns, and has been detaining the MNDAA’s commander on Chinese soil since October 2024, compelling the rebels to vacate the city in April 2025 without a fight.

What does China actually want in Myanmar, and does it favor the regime or the rebels?

China does not particularly care who wins the civil war; what it cares about is the security of its 2,100-kilometer border, the uninterrupted flow of oil and gas through its pipeline, and the absence of Western influence on Myanmar’s soil. Beijing has supplied weapons and aid to the military regime while also maintaining close contact with rebel groups, and has made clear that battles near its economic assets — pipelines, railway projects, ports — will not be tolerated regardless of which side initiates them.

Why does China’s intervention make Mandalay a de facto red line for the rebel advance?

China’s all-important oil and gas pipeline passes directly by Mandalay, and China is simultaneously building a major railway through the city, operating a cement factory thirty kilometers outside it, and holding substantial business interests there. China has already intervened to prevent escalation around Mandalay once. As long as Beijing treats a change of territorial control there as a red line, the rebel alliance cannot launch the cascade of battles that could bring down the entire regime.

What are the implications of Karol Nawrocki’s presidential election victory in Poland for Ukraine?

Nawrocki won with 50.89 percent of the vote and has signed an eight-point declaration pledging to block Ukraine’s NATO accession. While day-to-day power lies with Prime Minister Tusk’s Civic Platform government, the Polish president serves as commander-in-chief and can veto legislation — a veto requiring a three-fifths parliamentary majority to override, which Tusk’s coalition does not hold. This gives Nawrocki significant leverage to complicate Polish support for Ukraine’s post-ceasefire aspirations.

Why has the UN-authorized multinational security mission in Haiti failed to stabilize Port-au-Prince?

The Multinational Security Support Mission was authorized for 2,500 well-armed personnel but deployed only about 800, lacking helicopters and adequate funding to take on an estimated 12,000 gang members across a city of 2.5 million people. Following some early successes, the mission’s troops largely retreated to the airport base. In the first three months of 2025 alone, the UN recorded 2,660 murders in Haiti — a 41 percent increase on the previous quarter — and the last government-held suburb of Pétion-Ville now faces siege by armed gangs.

Sources

1. https://www.ft.com/content/e96d941b-d40b-4d08-8e6a-1d6261cbfae6
2. https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2025/05/07/killer-gangs-are-inches-from-ruling-all-of-haiti
3. https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/haiti-drones-gangs-fight-27e8341f
4. https://warontherocks.com/2025/04/haiti-is-a-political-and-criminal-crisis-that-should-not-be-ignored/
5. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article307519886.html
6. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/us/haiti-erik-prince-blackwater-gangs.html
7. https://www.ft.com/content/d34b1310-56b0-4f74-8d61-05ed525b39e1
8. https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/03/haiti-blackwater-international-peacekeeping-mission/
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13. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68014535
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19. https://youtu.be/S7gncaC8Olo?si=0Q9pyoYUS3EDkPpx
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26. https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/05/22/polish-opposition-presidential-candidate-signs-far-right-leaders-list-of-demands/
27. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/01/12/stepan-bandera-the-ukrainian-anti-hero-glorified-following-the-russian-invasion_6011401_4.html
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30. https://apnews.com/article/myanmar-mogok-lashio-shan-kokang-taang-mndaa-e1d1b94abde78ac8048ca39ffbf2d341
31. https://apnews.com/article/myanmar-fighting-lashio-civil-war-militias-e994e50600340cc06190e0b91ff75f75
32. https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/china-puts-squeeze-myanmar-s-tatmadaw
33. https://www.economist.com/interactive/asia/2025/05/30/china-calls-the-shots-in-myanmars-civil-war
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39. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czjyj2rd1zpo
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44. https://www.mediadefence.org/news/the-growing-threat-of-lawfare-defending-journalists-and-independent-media/?tztc=1
45. https://charityandsecurity.org/csn-reports/the-alarming-rise-of-lawfare-to-suppress-civil-society-the-case-of-palestine-and-israel/
46. https://x.com/Sahel_Tales/status/1929441019717730739