NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE B ad ideas never die. They just wait for the next crisis to offer themselves up again.

Using the military to fix nonmilitary problems is perhaps the most tragic and costly bad idea, yet proposals by the State Department and the media for U.S. allies to do exactly that in Haiti are bubbling up anew.

The perennially dysfunctional Caribbean nation just 650 miles from Miami is battling an unprecedented wave of gang violence. The United Nations estimated this spring that gangs controlled as much as 80 percent of the capital city of Port-au-Prince. The resulting humanitarian crisis affects the U.S. and every other country in the region as desperate Haitians flee in all directions.

What does the State Department, which ordered Americans to leave Haiti “as soon as possible” because of the country’s insecurity, think is the answer?

“We believe it’s urgent to get forces on the ground that can support the Haitian National Police,” a senior diplomat recently declared to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Shockingly, big names in Washington also maintain that the solution must involve boots on the ground. Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have both called for an international force to intervene in Haiti, and the U.S. has been actively trying to recruit a country to lead it.

While top American officials attempt to persuade other countries such as Canada or Kenya of the importance of this mission, they insist that American forces shouldn’t be involved.

That’s because Washington knows better than anyone the futility of military intervention in Haiti. A nearly two-decades-long occupation initiated by President Woodrow Wilson in 1915 left no lasting success, and an “intervasion” by President Bill Clinton in 1994 that promised to “restore democracy” after a 1991 coup did nothing to prevent another coup just ten years after the U.S. military got involved.

Even if a multilateral coalition could be formed to respond to the Haitian challenge today, there’s compelling historical evidence to expect it to be just as ineffective — or worse. The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) deployed in 2004 and sought to keep the peace for 13 years. The peacekeepers not only failed to accomplish lasting stability but directly caused the deaths of approximately 10,000 Haitians by inadvertently spreading cholera.

Neither an American nor any other well-intentioned foreign force can restore order in Haiti because Haiti does not have a military problem. Haiti has a political problem. The country has not had an election since 2016, and many of the gangs currently terrorizing the country originated as private militias of staggeringly corrupt authorities.

The orthodox view is that security precedes a functioning government. “Haiti needs a longer-term multinational peacekeeping force,” wrote the Washington Post editorial board late last year, “without which there will be no possibility of future elections or a legitimate Haitian government.”

Afghanistan should serve as a painful reminder that the opposite is true. No number of foreign troops providing security could induce the unwilling local factions there to build a working political system. When the security forces inevitably left after two decades, the quasi-legitimate and unsustainable government in Kabul collapsed like a house of cards.

Of the 59 heads of state in Haiti’s history, only six have peacefully completed their terms. Until Haitians craft for themselves a trustworthy political system, no pacification effort by outsiders will make any difference to the nation’s long-term prospects.

That doesn’t mean that the U.S. must simply sit on the sidelines. USAID already invests $150 million a year to improve health and economic outcomes in Haiti. America should continue to use its immense resources to facilitate political negotiations for a legitimate and successful Haitian government.

But keep the troops out of this one. Whether it is an American mission or a diverse international coalition, we’ve learned the hard way that a military force is clearly the wrong tool for this job. Washington is wasting its breath by asking its allies to pretend otherwise.