Still, the embargo continued to take a serious toll, and sanctions would be tightened repeatedly over the next two years, often at the urging of Aristide. In May 1992, the OAS reiterated its call for member states and all other countries to respect the embargo.49 President Bush complied, banning vessels that traded with Haiti from U.S. ports. In a May 28 statement, he explained:
Our actions are directed at those in Haiti who are opposing a return to democracy, not at the Haitian poor. We are continuing to provide substantial, direct humanitarian assistance to the people of Haiti and are working to intensify those efforts. Our current programs total 47 million dollars and provide food for over six hundred thousand Haitians and health care services that reach nearly two million. While tightening the embargo, we will continue to encourage others to ship food staples and other humanitarian items to those in need. The action that I have directed will not affect vessels carrying permitted items.50
Meanwhile, the boat people continued to take to the sea. Contemplating the waves of Haitian refugees heading for American shores, international lawyer Lori Fisler Damrosch noted: “Ironically, the economic sanctions that became the chosen instrument of international involvement turned out only to exacerbate that problem for the United States, while bringing the crisis no closer to resolution.”51
If Bush and Baker did not see a vital U.S. interest (or, at least, one sufficient to merit military action) in Haiti, they couldn’t mistake the U.S. interest in stanching the flow of Haitian refugees pouring into Florida. After the military coup, that flow had increased from two to three thousand per week. Under a 1981 agreement with the Duvalier regime, U.S. policy was to intercept refugees and return them to Port-au-Prince. The Bush administration sought a regional solution to the new refugee problem, but only four countries expressed interest. On November 20, Bush announced that the United States would grant asylum only when petitioners could substantiate claims of political oppression. By this time, so many people were leaving Haiti that the U.S. Coast Guard began taking refugees to a camp at the American naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba, for processing. When Guantanamo reached its maximum capacity of 12,500 refugees in May 1992, Bush authorized the Coast Guard to repatriate the refugees without processing them. But 1992 was a presidential election year, and Bush’s decision would have political costs: Bill Clinton made Bush’s policy an issue, criticizing the president’s decision and calling for immediate and unconditional political asylum for the refugees—a policy he reversed soon after his inauguration.
THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION ADOPTS A NEW POLICY
Clinton had strong political ties to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), whose members strongly advocated action on Haiti, and he arrived in the White House ready to implement a more activist policy. In February 1993, less than a month after his inauguration, a joint UN/OAS international civilian mission (MICIVIH) to Haiti was established to monitor human rights practices and investigate violations.
In June 1993, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 841, imposing a mandatory oil and arms embargo against Haiti. Lori Damrosch, an expert in international law, observed at the time that “the Haitian sanctions resolution goes farther than any other to date in applying universal, mandatory, and severe economic sanctions to influence a domestic political crisis over democratic governance. Its cautious wording (stressing more than once the ‘unique and exceptional’ circumstances) cannot hide its precedential significance.”52
It was widely assumed—on the basis of virtually no evidence—that imposing economic sanctions on Haiti would hasten the return to democracy by putting pressure on the ruling junta. But it did not. It only made the Haitian people poorer. In a careful study of the effects of the sanctions, Elizabeth Gibbons, a former UN representative in Haiti, described the harsh impact of the sanctions; while the efforts of the international agencies and the strength of the Haitian people prevented outright famine, she concluded, they could not protect Haitians from the ravages of the embargo.53 The embargo had devastating effects on the poorest Haitians, especially children, and on public services. A measles epidemic killed or debilitated thousands of children. Conflicting goals created cross-cutting pressures that blocked effective humanitarian work by UN agencies.
International pressure to restore Aristide to the presidency led to the Governors Island Agreement of July 1993. Drafted by Dante Caputo, Special Envoy for Haiti of the Secretaries-General of the UN and the Organization of American States (OAS), and signed by Aristide and Cédras in July 1993, the agreement called for the retirement of Cédras and the restoration of Aristide by October 30, 1993; dialogue among Haitian political parties to allow parliament to resume normal functions; and international technical and financial assistance to build a new police force, modernize the army, and implement administrative and judicial reform. It also called for the appointment and confirmation of a new prime minister, and for amnesty for the coup leaders. Aristide selected Robert Malval as prime minister, and the selection was ratified by the Haitian parliament. In late August, the UN passed Resolution 861, suspending the embargo, and Resolution 862, deploying a UN mission in Haiti.
The Governors Island Agreement was Clinton’s preferred instrument for dealing with Haiti. As late as July 23, 1993, he said, “I’m excited about this process. There’s a major potential for a victory for democracy here.”54 Clinton pledged economic aid to Haiti, and he offered to send U.S. military personnel to retrain the nation’s army and police force. Ultimately, though, neither Cédras nor Aristide honored the agreement, and it was never implemented. Nor was the Malval plan to restore democracy, which was put forth by the State Department after the Governors Island plan failed. Generous funding eliminated an important incentive for Aristide to cooperate: the U.S. government provided him with $1 million a month, and the State Department authorized payments of $5 million a quarter.
While the Clinton administration waited to see whether Aristide and Cédras would honor the Governors Island Agreement, the U.S.S. Harlan County made its way to Haiti. The ship, carrying about two hundred American and twenty-five Canadian military and police trainers armed with light weapons, was slated for a six-month stay in connection with the UN mission. Although the Governors Island commitments were not being kept, National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, his deputy, Sandy Berger, and Secretary of State Warren Christopher prevailed over Secretary of Defense Les Aspin in allowing the Harlan County to proceed. When the ship arrived in Port-au-Prince on October 11, it was met by a flotilla of small boats filled with several hundred armed attachés, who sought to prevent it from docking.55 The ship retreated. (This incident occurred just days after the battle in Somalia in which eighteen U.S. servicemen were killed.)
The ensuing flood of criticism got the attention of the top leaders of the Clinton administration, who did not like appearing incompetent. President Clinton immediately called for the reimposition of sanctions; the Security Council agreed, passing Resolution 873 on October 13. Three days later, after Aristide pushed to strengthen the sanctions, the Security Council voted to impose a naval blockade on Haiti. Aristide continued to press for tougher sanctions against the Cédras regime through the spring and summer of 1994, although the Haitian parliamentarians and the State Department did not agree. That spring, the Congressional Black Caucus—which supported Aristide—proposed the Haitian Restoration of Democracy Act, which would tighten the economic embargo, block financial assets held in the United States by Haitian nationals, sever commercial air links, and reverse the summary repatriation of refugees. The act was never brought to a vote, but most of its provisions were eventually adopted as administration policy.
In April 1994, Aristide terminated the 1981 treaty allowing repatriation of Haitian boat people, and Randall Robinson, chairman of Trans Africa (a leftist organization that focused on foreign policy issues of concern to African Americans), went on a hunger strike to protest the U.S. repatriation policy. The administration reaffirmed its support for Aristide and agreed to look
into strengthening the Dominican Republic’s border with Haiti against sanctions violations. Clinton caused a stir in Washington when he attempted to distance himself from his own administration’s policy by voicing support for Robinson’s protest. His comments triggered a new wave of refugees. On May 8, the administration agreed that Haitians would be interviewed to determine whether they were political refugees and would not be summarily sent back to their country.
The Clinton administration’s actions were not without consequence. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released in mid-May 1994 confirmed that public confidence in President Clinton’s handling of foreign affairs had declined sharply, with 40 percent approving, 53 percent disapproving, and only 13 percent saying they thought the president had a clear foreign policy.56 The clamor for stronger action against Haiti was rising on the left of the Democratic Party, a faction to which the president was especially sensitive. Clinton’s former envoy to Haiti, Lawrence Pezzullo, described the administration’s policies as irrevocably headed toward military intervention to restore the ousted Haitian president.57
On May 6, 1994, the administration joined in UN Security Council Resolution 917, which imposed a comprehensive mandatory commercial embargo and an international naval blockade unless the junta departed Haiti by May 21. The blockade included seven U.S. naval warships, frigates from Argentina and Canada, and 650 Marines aboard the U.S.S. Wasp. Two members of the Friends of the secretary-general for Haiti, 58 France and Canada, announced that they would not participate in or support a U.S.-led invasion.
The sanctions’ cumulative impact on Haiti’s economy was overwhelming and devastating. Before October 1991, for instance, there were 145 garment factories; by January 1994, only 44 remained. Before the coup and the sanctions, the assembly industry employed forty-four thousand workers; by May 1994, that number had dwindled to eight thousand.59 But still the Clinton administration moved to tighten the screws. Former president Jimmy Carter later revealed his negative opinion of the sanctions: “I told [General Cédras] that I was ashamed of my country’s [embargo] policy.”60
During the summer of 1994, Clinton and his special adviser on Haiti, William Gray, tried with little success to find other countries that would accept Haitian refugees. The effort dramatized Haiti’s isolation in the region. Panama backed out of an earlier agreement to accept ten thousand Haitians. Country after country found reasons not to accept the displaced people; they feared the refugees’ competition for scarce resources, jobs, and public assistance, and they feared AIDS, which was believed to be more widespread in Haiti than in most other Caribbean and Latin American countries.
Aristide asked the UN for action to restore democracy in Haiti. On July 31, 1994, by a vote of 12 to 0 (Brazil and China abstained, and Rwanda was absent), the Security Council passed Resolution 940, authorizing a multinational force and clearing the way for U.S.-led military action. On August 5, members of the U.S. Senate engaged in a heated debate on Haiti policy. Majorities in both parties opposed a U.S. invasion, and Congress was sharply divided on whether the president had the authority to undertake military action without congressional authorization. A U.S. force had never been used to “restore democracy” or been sent anywhere without congressional authorization.
A clear majority of the American public was opposed to such action, and criticism of Clinton’s handling of foreign affairs grew. The deepening U.S. involvement in Somalia made the proposed military commitment in Haiti even less attractive. Clinton spelled out for Congress and the American people several reasons that restoring Aristide to power was in the U.S. national interest: to stop the brutal atrocities that threatened the lives of tens of thousands of Haitians; to secure our borders and prevent a mass exodus of Haitian refugees; to preserve stability and promote democracy in the Americas; and to emphasize the reliability of U.S. commitments.61
Nonetheless, a September 17 ABC News poll showed that 60 percent of Americans opposed U.S. military action in Haiti, and only 31 percent agreed that the situation was a vital American interest.62 The New York Times also reported that 60 percent of Americans opposed sending or keeping American troops in Haiti, and 56 percent said that the United States had no responsibility to restore democracy in Haiti.63
AN ENTITLEMENT TO DEMOCRACY?
For several months, the Clinton administration seemed to be preparing for war (although they called it a “peace operation”). By whatever name, what they were planning was an invasion, intended to depose Haiti’s unconstitutional government and restore democracy in the form of Aristide. Already the administration had tightened the embargo in an effort to remove Haiti’s military government from power. Already it had reinforced Haiti’s long, rugged border with the Dominican Republic. Obviously, U.S. military forces would have no problem subduing Haiti’s small army, establishing control of ports and government buildings, and installing Aristide in power. But what then?
Would restoring democracy to Haiti mean trying to ensure democratic government, with the rule of law and respect for rights of citizens? Would it mean accepting responsibility for Aristide’s use of power? Did the Clinton administration plan to become directly involved in governing Haiti—as UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali had proposed that the United States do in Somalia?
The operation proposed for Haiti would not just replace one ruler with another; it would also aim to build a modern democratic state. But nation building requires a long-term commitment, intimate familiarity with the country, and deep cultural affinities. The United States and the Clinton administration clearly had few of the fundamental requisites for successful nation building in Haiti.
I believed, further, that an invasion of Haiti would be incompatible with American interests. Haiti was not a menace to the United States or the hemisphere. It was not then a center of Caribbean drug trafficking (though that would later change). It did not provide a base for a hostile power. It did not export subversion and revolution. It had not declared open season on Americans, as Manuel Noriega did earlier, nor held Americans hostage, as had Grenada’s revolutionary Committee of Safety. It had not engaged in terrorist plots against Americans, as Libya did.
There was only one conceivable ground for invading Haiti, and that was to implement some sort of “Brezhnev doctrine” for democracies, invoking the principle that no democracy could be overthrown. But Haiti had only the weakest claim to ever having had a democratic government in the first place, and the prospects were not bright that Aristide would govern by constitutional means if he returned to power. During his first term, he consistently undermined the rule of law, violated constitutional practices, ignored established institutions, shut down parliament (where he did not have a majority), and relied on mobs and a private gang of enforcers—on the model of Papa Doc’s Tonton Macoutes—to attack his opponents. By violating democratic norms and human rights standards, Aristide had forfeited his claim to constitutional rule. As George H. W. Bush noted at the time, restoring Aristide might not be the same as restoring democracy—he could prove as difficult as Haiti itself to deal with. On the other hand, the military rulers had violated Haiti’s constitution and had no claim to legitimacy.
One of the fundamental questions at issue was the existence of a right to democracy, or a right to be governed democratically, by rulers chosen in free elections. Did Haiti have such a right? The Clinton administration thought so, and tried for many months to rouse support in the international community for action to depose the military government and restore Aristide. These efforts, and the political skill of chief U.S. delegate Madeleine Albright, produced Security Council Resolution 940, authorizing “the use of all necessary means” (that is, force) to achieve this end. But was this force to be provided and paid for exclusively by the U.S. government?
Weeks of effort to persuade other governments to contribute netted little. Canada turned down an appeal to join the expeditionary force, but offered to send peacekeepers. France and Venezuela, both in the Group of Friends, declined to participate i
n the multinational force (MNF). Among European allies, only the United Kingdom, Belgium, and the Netherlands agreed to participate in the military phase. Other countries agreed to contribute troops, including Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Israel, Jordan, and a number of Caribbean and Central American nations. Eventually, twenty-eight nations would contribute about two thousand peacekeeping troops, police monitors, and translators to the U.S.-led MNF.64 The largest contribution, of five hundred troops and one hundred police monitors, came from Bangladesh.65
The Clinton team justified its plan to invade Haiti on grounds that force was required to restore democracy. It offered other supporting arguments, mainly that the Cédras government had violated the civil rights of Haitians and had failed to carry out the decisions of the UN Security Council and the provisions of the Governors Island Agreement. But the fundamental justification for the use of force was a postulated “right to democratic government” of which Haitians had been deprived.
Resolution 940, the first action of its kind, constituted a significant expansion of the Security Council’s jurisdiction over the internal affairs of member states. The idea of a right to democracy, which could be imposed by force, was a dramatic departure from previous theory and practice. International lawyers, notably Thomas Franck, whose work was an important source for the ideas and arguments of Morton Halperin and other Clinton administration officials, had written of an emerging democratic entitlement and right to democratic governance.66 Franck argued that the end of the cold war, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the disappearance of Marxism-Leninism as a competing paradigm for understanding the world and legitimizing political action, had resulted in a global move toward democracy and a new global ethos in which all persons enjoy all democratic rights and under which only democratic governments are legitimate.
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