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Think Haitian Crisis Couldn’t Happen in U.S.? Think Again

By Matt Korade, CQ Staff

The United States needs to invest much more in its infrastructure if it wants to avoid the kind of calamity that has befallen earthquake-ravaged Haiti, security experts said during a national security forum last week.

A weak Haitian economy has fueled years of neglect to infrastructure in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and other cities. Massive deforestation eroded the soil and destroyed the country's agricultural base, leading to mass displacement to the cities. The country's budget relies largely on foreign aid. All of those factors contributed to a major humanitarian crisis following the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Those who think the situations in Haiti and the United States couldn't be more different should consider the flooding of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said Stephen Flynn, president of the Center for National Policy, which hosted the Jan. 14 discussion.

That flooding was caused by well-documented problems with the city's flood-control system, which failed to withstand low to moderate hurricane-force winds, Flynn said. Other examples of the crumbling U.S. infrastructure include the 2007 rush-hour collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis, Minn., and the Northeast blackout of 2003, he said.

"Somehow we've convinced ourselves . . . that infrastructure doesn't really matter, it just always will be there," Flynn said. "We're used to just coming into a room and flipping the switch and having power.

The nation's infrastructure didn't appear by magic, but by the energy, ingenuity and investment of our forebears, he said, adding that "we're just squandering it as a country."

The degradation of America's infrastructure has implications for national security, but it also offers opportunities, panelists at the forum said. As the first industrialized nation to confront the challenge of refurbishing its infrastructure, the United States could set an example and export its solutions worldwide. Panelists said the United States has done so in the past in the sciences and in other areas, when it has been willing to spend the money on such efforts. Investment in U.S. infrastructure would generate jobs, increase the nation's competitiveness in the world economy and improve quality of life.

But the cost is daunting.

By Flynn's rough estimate, about $1.5 trillion would be needed to make progress refurbishing roads, bridges and other areas. And a more general loss of faith in government and its ability to pull off major construction projects has hampered consideration of the issue, he said.

Although previous generations of Americans worked to build the country's infrastructure into the envy of the world, today's generations of young and middle-aged adults are like grandchildren who have inherited a mansion but decided not to do the upkeep, Flynn said.

"People are driving by and going, ‘Hey, nice house,' but the plumbing's gone to hell, the wiring's shot, and we as a country are saying we can't even afford to maintain it, never mind to invest and upgrade it," he said.

The Obama administration included $60 billion for infrastructure projects in the stimulus legislation (PL 111-5) that cleared in February. But the Congressional Budget Office reported last week that the money might not have as quick an effect as desired.

"As a practical matter, the experience with [the stimulus law] suggests that fewer projects are ‘shovel ready' than one might expect," the report said. While some types of infrastructure projects, such as road repaving, can be achieved quickly, others require years of planning and contracting.

Although the state of U.S. infrastructure today is discouraging, it is by no means hopeless, said panelist James Fallows, who wrote an article on the subject titled "How America Can Rise Again" in this month's issue of The Atlantic magazine.

Fallows, who has spent many years abroad, most recently in China, said upon his latest return to the United States he was struck by a paradox: although America remains the strongest of nations, its citizens are perennially worried about their country's imminent downfall. That concern is unfounded, he said.

"We have the worst of both worlds, people are scared and worried without being motivated," Fallows said.

In some ways, America's strength has created the unconventional threats to its infrastructure, Flynn said. In 2004, the United States had a larger defense investment than the entire world combined. The Navy, for example, was larger than the 18 next-largest navies combined. Because the source of this strength is the U.S. economy, America's enemies and competitors, such as China, have increasingly targeted U.S. computer networks, and infrastructure is tied to those systems, he said.

The country's ability to withstand terrorist attacks or other destructive events depends on the strength of the U.S. infrastructure, Flynn and Fallows said. Without succumbing to overreaction to terrorist plots, the country should focus on building up the resilience, or the ability of its critical systems to bounce back after a disruption, and infrastructure plays a major part in that, they said.

Flynn said that overreaction to terrorist attacks creates an incentive for further attacks. But when infrastructure is built up and resilient, it causes terrorist attacks to fizzle and therefore could deter further attacks, he said.

If America wants that benefit, though, it has to understand it needs to make the investment, he said.

"We have the means," Flynn said. "We've done this before, we can do it again." But America needs to recognize the problem and put itself through a recovery program, he said.