There is a specific genre of diplomatic theater that one can only describe as “Kafkaesque slapstick,” and the United States State Department has just delivered a masterclass performance in the medium. In a display of geopolitical awareness that rivals a man shouting at a hurricane to keep the noise down, Washington has issued a stern warning to Haiti’s transitional council: do not destabilize the country. One must pause to savor the exquisite, wine-dark irony of such a statement. Warning Haitian politicians against creating instability is rather like warning a fish about the dangers of moisture, or cautioning the captain of the Titanic, post-iceberg, that he really ought to be careful about scratching the paint.

The catalyst for this latest bout of American paternalism is the transitional council’s apparent desire to shuffle the deck chairs on their sinking ship. The unelected body—itself a construct held together by duct tape, hope, and foreign pressure—is facing mounting demands to move toward elections. Remember elections? That quaint ritual Haiti hasn't successfully pulled off in a decade? The United States, in its infinite wisdom and bottomless capacity for optimism in the face of contrary evidence, insists that this council must not make changes to the government that might “destabilize” the nation.

Let us deconstruct this for a moment, shall we? To “destabilize” implies the existence of stability. It implies a status quo that is functional, or at the very least, extant. Haiti is currently a nation where gangs control the capital with the authority of feudal warlords, where prime ministers resign via video link from Puerto Rico because they cannot physically land in their own country, and where the concept of “government” is largely theoretical. Yet, the bureaucratic mandarins in D.C. are terrified that the transitional council might do something to upset this delicate ecosystem of anarchy. It is the logic of a hoarder telling a cleaning crew not to touch a specific stack of old newspapers because it’s “load-bearing.”

The American warning comes with the threat that they will “take action” if the council creates further chaos. One shudders to think what this “action” might entail. Historically, American action in Haiti has ranged from military occupation to backing dictators to ignoring elections to demanding elections, creating a cycle of dependency and resentment that is the geopolitical equivalent of a snake eating its own tail. The threat is hollow, of course. The U.S. has no desire to own the Haitian crisis; they merely want to manage its optics. They want the “transitional council” to behave like a proper western parliament, filing paperwork and holding committee meetings, while the streets outside burn. It is the imposition of a bureaucratic fantasy upon a brutal reality.

Furthermore, the demand for elections serves as the ultimate punchline. The West is obsessed with the ballot box as the panacea for all societal ills. If we can just get people to cast a vote, the logic goes, the gangs will lay down their arms, the infrastructure will rebuild itself, and the economy will miraculously revive. It is a superstitious belief, a cargo cult mentality that ignores the fact that an election in a failed state is usually just a census of who has the most guns. Pressuring an unelected council to rush toward a vote in a security vacuum is not a strategy; it is a wish. It is the diplomatic equivalent of writing a letter to Santa Claus asking for world peace.

This friction between the council’s internal power struggles and the U.S. demand for stasis reveals the fundamental absurdity of the situation. The council is unelected; they have no mandate. Yet, they are expected to exhibit the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job, all while operating under the Sword of Damocles held by the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs. If they move too fast, they are destabilizing. If they move too slow, they are obstructing democracy. They are trapped in a rhetorical escape room designed by people who go home to comfortable suburbs in Maryland every night.

Ultimately, this warning is not for Haiti. It never is. These statements are for the domestic audience in the United States, a way for the administration to say, “Look, we told them to behave.” It allows them to wash their hands of the inevitable consequences when things go wrong—as they invariably will. “We warned them against destabilization,” they will say, sipping their coffee as the next crisis unfolds, completely oblivious to the fact that demanding stability from a chaotic system without changing the inputs is the definition of insanity. But then again, in the theater of international relations, sanity has never been a requirement for the starring roles.