19353: radtimes: Haiti: Resisting Imperial Temptation (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Haiti: Resisting Imperial Temptation

http://antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=2053

February 27, 2004
by Alan Bock

Haiti is devolving into what conventional political observers call anarchy,
in the sense of being a place where chaos, disorder and violence reign
supreme. For better or worse – mostly for worse – as has been the case for
most of its 200-year history as a nominally independent country, Haiti's
problems do not arise from a lack of government but from a government (as
is so often the case with places deemed "anarchic") that is itself the
chief cause of chaos and disorder. Consequently, we are hearing increasing
calls for U.S. intervention in Haiti, some of them undoubtedly well-meaning
and motivated in part by the near-certainty that things in Haiti will get
worse before they get better, and innocent Haitians will suffer the
consequences.

The Bush administration, which may still be operating under the delusion
that things are getting better in Iraq, is hardly immune to the siren call
to stage a "humanitarian" intervention and establish a measure of order and
stability. The likelihood of being able to do so successfully, however, is
hardly better and may be worse than when the Clinton administration staged
an armed intervention to restore the dogmatic leftist (although with brutal
authoritarians like Aristide concepts like "left" and "right" refer more to
the tenor of rhetoric chosen to justify brutality than to anything like
actual policy) President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power. Aristide, who was
actually elected but ousted in a 1991 coup, is president once again
following a 2000 election marred by corruption and intimidation. A rebel
movement led to a great extent by people who used to be Aristide allies but
became disgusted with his misrule has taken several northern cities and is
on the verge of taking the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Last weekend the Bush administration succumbed to the temptation to try to
be an "honest broker" in Haiti and put forward a plan, supported by several
other countries, that was supposed to lead to something resembling order.
President Aristide claimed to accept it but failed to implement any of its
provisions – hardly a novelty for him. The rebels have declined to sign on.
The administration has sent about 50 US Marines to Haiti, ostensibly to
safeguard the US embassy. But pressure is building to make them the
precursor of a much larger military force.

NO VITAL INTEREST

Back in 1994, when a Democratic president was leading the charges,
Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah put the matter rather succinctly: "We
do not have any vital interest in Haiti … The administration is playing a
high stakes game that commits the United States to an invasion of a
sovereign nation and that opens up an indefinite stay of US forces on that
island. There is no consensus in Congress or among the American people for
intervening in Haiti, or for a prolonged occupation of that country."

What will Orrin Hatch have to say now that a Republican president is being
pressured to intervene once again?

If anything, as noted, the prospects for success are less auspicious than
in 1994 and 1995 when the Clinton administration decided to try to run
Haiti for a while. Although there were terrorists operating in the world
back then, they did not present anywhere near the kind of systematic threat
they do now. The US military, which had been trimmed only modestly in the
wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, was not coming off a costly and
demoralizing war that had not been completely resolved, and military
leaders were not complaining seriously about being overstretched. Although
he was a thug back then, Aristide had not yet worn out his welcome
completely with the "international community;" indeed, many advocates of
intervention were deluded or naοve enough to think that he was the key to a
bright future in Haiti.

One aspect of the situation in Haiti made things worse in some ways then
than they are now. Some four years of sanctions imposed (presumably with
good intentions) in the wake of Aristide's ouster had decimated Haiti's
economy (never strong at any time in its sad history). As usually happens
with sanctions intended to punish political leaders, the regime found ways
to get around or even to take advantage of the sanctions, while the Haitian
people, in whose name the sanctions were imposed, did most of the suffering.

As Gary Dempsey and Roger Fontaine put it in their 2000 book, "Fool's Errands:"

"In the four-year period between Aristide's ouster and his return, Haiti's
GDP dropped perhaps another third, while its population continued to grow,
and its arable land diminished. Foreign investors had fled to safer climes,
like the Dominican Republic next door. As a result, Haiti's unemployment
rate shot up to astronomical proportions. Encouraging even more corruption
in Haiti may not have been the intention of those who wanted to do
something about Haiti, but the effect of the sanctions on corruption was
real enough. Illegal foreign trade and smuggling further enriched Haitian
officials already well-versed in the arts of international commerce not
approved of by the World Trade Organization. Even more destructively,
inflation, especially steep increases in the price of basic commodities
like food, imposed an additional harsh burden on Haiti's already
impoverished population. The misery of the private sector was mirrored in
the public sector, where basic tax-based services, like elementary school
education and the provision of clean water, simply collapsed."

It was mainly the sanctions that impelled the massive outflow of boat
people from Haiti to Florida that so alarmed so many Americans in the early
1990s. The current crisis is likely to lead to more efforts at unauthorized
emigration – the AP this week did a story about Haitians building boats and
planning to take their chances, motivated more by economic decline than
political unrest – but it is unlikely to be as massive as in the early
1990s. The likelihood of large numbers of boat people heading for the US,
which some advocates of intervention will invoke as a reason for an
intervention to head off the exodus, is simply not as great as it was in
the early 1990s. And insofar as Haitians are becoming refugees for economic
reasons more than from fear of unrest, an intervention is unlikely to
improve Haiti's economic situation any time soon; indeed, it might make the
situation worse for a while.

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

Most people are unaware of the sheer scale of international assistance that
was poured into Haiti following the Clinton intervention that restored
Aristide to power in 1994. International aid workers went to work repairing
roads, generators and the like. By October 1995, US Civil Affairs soldiers
had completed 332 infrastructure projects and were at work on 375 others.

Tens of millions of dollars in aid money poured into Haiti – the US alone
donated $97 million – and a fairly serious effort was made to build an
independent, apolitical and reasonably non-thuggish police force and to
establish a modestly honest justice system. Much of the foreign aid simply
disappeared into the pockets of government ministers. By 1997 international
lawyer William O'Neill reported that "Haitian justice lacks everything:
financial resources, materials, competent personnel, independence, stature,
and trust."

International aid workers made a concerted and quite conscientious effort
to establish a system of voting that would offer the government a shred of
legitimacy and (someday perhaps) the people a chance to have a say in their
governance. But Haiti has no history of democratic electioneering. It was
ruled by the contemptible and brutal Duvaliers, father and son, from 1957
to 1986.

The 2000 parliamentary elections were an administrative disaster;
independent observers were turned away from polling places and armed men
stole ballot boxes. At least 15 people were killed and hundreds more were
threatened with violence. Two members of the Provisional Electoral Council
were forced to resign after grenade attacks on their headquarters, and one
fled to the United States for fear of his life. Aristide was returned to
power, and it is possible he got a majority of the votes, but there were so
many irregularities and threats that he has no real legitimacy.

No wonder Luigi Einaudi, then assistant secretary general of the
Organization of American States, said in 2000, "With Haiti, the
international community feels as if it has plowed the sea and invested
uselessly." In the final weeks of the Clinton presidency a State Department
spokesman admitted, "There is always a limit. You can't impose democracy."

NOT LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE

For any number of reasons, some still rooted in the experience of French
colonialism, which left the island with two radically different societies
that literally didn't even speak the same language; Haiti has never been
well governed and is riven with mutual distrust. In the 20th century the
United States made three major efforts to change the island's political and
economic culture, each of which has failed and left resentment and
bitterness in its wake.

The Woodrow Wilson administration, fearing German influence, invaded Haiti
in 1915 and the United States occupied and ran the country until 1934. The
Kennedy administration made a concerted effort to reshape Haiti through the
Alliance for Progress from 1961 to 1963. And the Clinton administration
made its own effort from 1994 to 2000.

Unfortunately, as Dempsey and Fontaine observed in their 2001 book, "Haiti
is simply not ripe for nation building. It does not possess the human and
physical capital or the natural resources to rise above extreme poverty.
Nor does it have the political stability or legal institutions to inspire
investor confidence, foreign or domestic. Few, if any, in the Haitian
government favor a working market economy or even understand what the term
means, and no widespread political culture prevails with widespread
acceptance of the habits, beliefs, and values that sustain democracy or
democratic institutions."

If anything, this is more true today, in the wake of the current unrest,
than it was in 2001. Haiti's political and economic condition is
unspeakably sad, even tragic. The impulse to want to do something to
improve the country is understandable. But a realistic assessment suggests
that the United States is more likely to make conditions worse rather than
better through a military intervention, even one designed (or intended) to
ameliorate the lot of the Haitian people.

If he has an iota of common sense – especially in an election year –
President Bush will resist the siren call to "do something" in Haiti. It is
tough to admit one is likely to fail in such a small and in some ways
charming country. But that's the truth, as hard as it might be to swallow.

If France wants to give it a try, let them have at it, but if I were a
French citizen I would be skeptical.

.