How Did We Ever Get Into the Haiti Mess? We Had Better Find Out--Fast

ROME —  The ink was barely dry on the agreement negotiated by Jimmy Carter’s team in Haiti when second guessing began. It came as a shock to many that the Administration had postponed its proclaimed goal of overthrowing the junta and that the landing in Haiti was brought about with the cooperation of leaders whom President Bill Clinton had described as mass murderers 72 hours earlier. But criticism should focus on the policy that left no other option except military invasion.

Any prolonged military occupation must be avoided; another attempt at nation-building will trap us in an endless enterprise before it ends in a fiasco. Too much has already been staked; some relationship between means and ends must be re-established.

The basic dilemmas of postwar U.S. foreign policy have been the result of enterprises undertaken lightly, with little if any opposition, and from which extrication proved hellishly difficult. The Carter mission has eased the entry of U.S. troops into Haiti--a success that is also an admission ticket to the far more complex danger of U.S. forces finding themselves engulfed in the passions and conflicts of Haitian factions far more practiced in violence than in pluralism. A prolonged U.S. military occupation of Haiti will almost guarantee that the hatreds accumulated over decades will overwhelm the purposes for which we entered.

I have always held grave doubts about military intervention to restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power. That the United States should favor an elected president over a murderous junta is inherent in our values and justifies diplomatic pressure and embargoes of the kind that had, after all, helped to overthrow the Duvalier dictatorship. But American lives should only be risked when there is a demonstrable threat to the national security, on behalf of clearly defined objectives, and with forces proportionate to the objective.

The Administration policy fails all three tests. Haiti poses no conceivable direct threat. The Administration’s stated objectives are vague and the force deployed disproportionate to any sensible goal. When CNN airs daily briefings by the press officer of the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince describing locations from which to view the planned invasion of the country to which he is accredited, and promising the arrival of additional personnel to handle the overflow demand for invasion coverage, the argument that the Haitian threat cannot wait for less drastic measures becomes hardly plausible.

The principal achievement of the Carter mission is that it provides a graceful exit from becoming engulfed in the vortex of Haitian domestic politics. It is senseless to talk of the “restoration” of democracy in a country that has never known democracy, or to equate the fact that Aristide was elected with a certificate of democratic practices. To turn Haiti into a pluralistic society may take a decade or more and cannot be achieved by military occupation. Even the limited task of disarming Haiti’s armed forces implies difficult decisions: How, when and by whom is the army to be disarmed or restrained? To whom do we provide protection once Aristide is back in power? What precisely are the terms of amnesty for the generals and army and which parliament approves them--the existing one or that emerging from future elections? Will Aristide abide by the amnesty despite his opposition, and what is the U.S. obligation to enforce the Carter agreement?

Nor can the dilemmas of a prolonged military operation be avoided by turning nation-building over to the United Nations. I hope the President was speaking euphemistically when he presented U.S. policy on Haiti as reflecting some kind of international political consensus. For the international support we elicited was a tribute to U.S. power, not to its purposes.

The artificial nature of this international support has already levied an exorbitant toll. One of the most hallowed principles of U.S. foreign policy is to keep the military power of other continents out of the Western Hemisphere. From the Monroe Doctrine to the 1947 Rio Treaty, every U.S. administration has insisted that hemispheric problems be settled by the nations of this Hemisphere. Yet, the Administration recoiled from involving the institution specifically designed for that purpose--the Organization of American States--because it realized that our partners in this Hemisphere would never approve military intervention. Appealing for military assistance from outside this Hemisphere in an inter-American issue sets a precedent future U.S. administrations may regret.

Another such booby trap is inherent in the Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to replace the Haitian junta, which passed with Russian support. The precedent for Moscow’s ambitions in what Russia calls the “near abroad” is hard to miss--the worrisome policy of forcing the republics of the former Soviet Union to return to the imperial fold. That this tacit quid pro quo is understood in Washington is reflected in pronouncements by Madeleine K. Albright and Clinton, who stated that each major power has a special responsibility for peacekeeping and stability in “its own back yard.”

It is a dangerous doctrine. U.S. actions in Haiti, however ill-advised, do not affect overall security. U.S. interventions in this Hemisphere have been short-lived; Russia’s military advances have tended to be permanent. They are certain to rekindle ancient fears and tensions. Three conclusions follow.

* U.S. military presence in Haiti ought to be brought to a rapid conclusion, preferably by the end of this year. By then, we will have restored Aristide to power and disarmed or neutralized Haitian forces threatening his rule.

* Once U.S. forces--except for a small training mission--are withdrawn, the remaining tasks can be assigned to inter-American institutions. Governmental reform could be assigned to the OAS; economic assistance to the Inter-American financial institutions--backed up, of course, by a continuing U.S. interest.

* The Haitian crisis provides an occasion for the Administration to review the practices that produced such stark alternatives and such an obsession with public relations. Symbolic of these tendencies was the decision to launch the 82nd Airborne Division while American emissaries were still on the ground in Haiti. Surely, there was no need for surprise when the projected landing sites could be seen on television. If the purpose was to land before the Congress could pass a resolution of disapproval the next day, the enterprise marked an astonishing disintegration of the executive-Congressional relationship.

The greatest risk we face is an open-ended commitment of military forces to tasks for which they are not designed. The greatest need is a bipartisan reassessment of our foreign policy and, above all, a prudent definition of the circumstances in which U.S. power is to be engaged.