Now That We’re In, How Will We Get Out? : America plunges into the abyss of yet another failed nation

In the short run, what is happening now in Haiti could have worked out far, far worse. As retired Gen. Colin L. Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it Monday, it’s awfully good not to see young Haitian soldiers and young American soldiers shooting one another. However, in the long run, it is not at all clear whether America’s Haiti adventure will have a satisfying conclusion.

The international political system has been spawning one failed national society after another. Haiti follows Somalia and before long surely another country will implode. The question for the international community is to what extent it can afford to ignore such collapses; the challenge for the United States is to be careful and modest about rushing in with the Marines, Air Force, Army or Navy, pursuing well-intentioned but misguided notions that we can fix everyone’s troubles.

President Clinton virtually talked himself--and practically no one else, by the way--into invading Haiti; to our eyes he had gone too far out on the limb. Former President Jimmy Carter, Gen. Powell and Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee--with the sure might of U.S. firepower behind them--managed to spare both Americans and Haitians an invasion that even the President himself very much wanted to avoid. Perhaps many lives on both sides were saved.

The deal struck with the Haitian junta has worrisome holes in it, but it did have the singular and honorable virtue of letting thousands of U.S. and multinational troops into the island nation without a shot being fired. But now, having put ourselves there, under what circumstances do we get out?

The limits of American capabilities must be kept in mind as the United States blithely embarks on nation-building. Grenada and perhaps even Panama, with its growing economy, are arguably better off than if the United States had never gotten involved militarily, but they both are more of a testament to the adage “better to be lucky than good” than to a well-thought-out entrance-and-exit policy.

Haiti’s Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras and company are to step down Oct. 15 and may or may not leave the country. Even if they do depart they will leave virtually intact the structure of an often brutal military, not to mention the secret and semi-clandestine police groups and other forces that have been historical instruments of repression. It’s important to note that the Haitian military does not operate in a vacuum; it typically has been used as a guard of the status quo by that nation’s privileged economic elite. Thus we doubt that well-meaning lectures about democracy by Americans are going to root deeply in Haitian soil. More likely is that by allowing these repressive structures to remain, the Clinton Administration may merely have allowed the dragon seeds to be planted.

The Administration was right to strive to avoid shooting its way in, even though there was never doubt that an invasion could be militarily successful. In fact, we feared that a military success, especially a relatively easy one, might blind Americans to the enormity of what the United States had gotten itself into. The question now is: How quickly can U.S. military involvement end?

Critics such as activist Randall Robinson of TransAfrica--a well-respected lobbying organization on African and Caribbean issues--think the Administration got very little in concessions from Cedras, considering the military bargaining power the United States brought to the table; that may be true. But the larger issue for U.S. foreign policy may be whether Washington too often overestimates its ability to stitch together a broken-down society like Haiti.

In any event, the troops are there now and before long 15,000 Americans will be on the Haitian part of the island of Hispaniola, shared with the Dominican Republic. They deserve our support. So does the President, who recommended the U.S. intervention not for craven reasons of acquisition or aggression or plunder. The key to keeping the Haiti operation from becoming a long and tedious march to terminal frustration is to establish limited, achievable goals: (1) the starting of the processes of democracy; (2) the true ending of military rule; (3) last but far from least, getting out of there sooner rather than later.