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The New American Interventionism: Essays from Political Science Quarterly
Demetrios James Caraley (ed.)
1999
“Disobedient” Generals and the Politics of Redemocratization:
The Clinton Administration and Haiti
Morris Morley and Chris McGillion
U.S. policy toward political transitions in postwar Latin America has centered around the goal of securing regime changes that ensure the continuity of the state. This is true of Republican and Democratic administrations under both conservative and liberal presidents. While issues of democracy and dictatorship have remained secondary, the task of preserving the institutions of the state (civil bureaucracies, judiciaries, military and police, etc.) have taken priority. The level of Washington’s concern over challenges to the state has been incomparably greater than over changes in regime because the state, especially its coercive institutions, is perceived as the ultimate arbiter of power and guarantor of basic U.S. interests in these societies.
Consequently, Washington’s policy toward the state in Latin America has remained constant; toward the regime it has been variable. Whether we are discussing Eisenhower policy toward Cuba, the Kennedy-Johnson approach toward the Dominican Republic and Brazil, Richard Nixon’s hostility toward Allende’s Chile, Jimmy Carter’s policy toward Nicaragua and El Salvador, or Ronald Reagan’s support for redemocratization in Guatemala, the thread that linked them all was a singular determination to preserve key state institutions (not least, the armed forces) in the event of a political transition, together with a flexible approach regarding support for elected regimes or dictatorial rulers.
Moreover, given the willingness of U.S. governments to support such autocratic regimes as Fulgencio Batista in Cuba or Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua over extended time periods in the absence of challenges to the regime or state, an abrupt policy change cannot be adequately explained by reference to a White House commitment to promoting or imposing democratic values. Rather, U.S. policy makers have interpreted a change from dictatorship to democratic regime, first and foremost, as a mechanism for preserving the state, not as a mode of promoting democratization and the values that accompany it.
Where state structures are threatened by broad-based social and political movements, Washington has sought to hive off those sectors compatible with the state and U.S. interests and promote a political settlement in which electoral processes are incorporated within the “old” state; where such movements achieve power and signal their intention to change state structures, Washington has traditionally moved to apply pressure on these nationalist or populist regimes to modify their policies and appoint moderate/conservative individuals to key decision-making positions.
However, as in the case of Haiti, once a decision is made to dump recalcitrant clients in order to “save” the state, it is never a question of the United States automatically achieving what it wills. One particularly difficult task in brokering a desired political transition has been in those circumstances where the target regime is tightly connected with the state, all the more so where the authoritarian client or ruling generals have built up strong political loyalties in the armed forces that resist pressure from the outside. Such circumstances can and do determine Washington’s preferred policy options more than any pressing need to protect human rights or pursue the goal of redemocratization.
Bush Policy toward Haiti
It was almost five years after the toppling of the Duvalier family rule before Haiti tasted democracy for the first time in its history. In December 1990, following an interregnum of military-dominated governments, a populist priest, Jean Bertrand Aristide, was elected president with an overwhelming 67 percent of the total vote. Aristide campaigned on a platform of politically, socially, and economically empowering the country’s largely peasant population and reforming key state institutions, including the armed forces. On assuming office, however, he confronted two active centers of resistance: a local economic elite that branded him a “Bolshevik” and “the devil” and a military leadership that opposed his efforts to reform the institution and implement existing constitutional provisions affirming civilian authority over the armed forces. During his short-lived presidency, Aristide not only antagonized the Haitian business community but also U.S. investors with his proposals to double the minimum wage, initiate new public works projects, make the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, impose export levies on assembly plant operators, and support the growth of trade unions.
Aristide’s presidency lasted a mere nine months; in September 1991 it was terminated by a military coup. Initially, Washington joined with other regional governments in denouncing the junta and calling for the reinstatement of the ousted Haitian leader. Secretary of State James Baker said the junta would “be treated as a pariah, without friends, without support, without a future....” 1 Days later, though, the Bush administration began to back away from unqualified support for the deposed president’s return with all his former powers intact. Demands that Aristide disavow an imagined mobocracy “and work toward sharing power with the Parliament” 2 indicated a new vision of what administration officials had in mind when they spoke of the restoration of Haitian democracy: it must not antagonize the military or the traditional political class which had largely accommodated itself to the coup.
This policy shift was linked to a concern over Aristide’s populist orientation. The White House was ambivalent about supporting an elected leader who was committed to empowering the poor through changes in the economy, the regime, and the state. And as the policy unfolded, it soon became clear that Support for Aristide’s return was predicated on the latter’s willingness to accept specific limitations on his presidential powers, not least because his efforts to democratize the Haitian state were perceived as a potential threat to longer-term U.S. objectives: the restoration of political stability; the survival of an, albeit reformed, military institution with its external linkages to the Pentagon intact; and the promotion of an open economy and a development strategy that accorded foreign investors a central role.
Within the foreign policy bureaucracy, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) emerged as the locus of hostility to a U.S. policy approach based on Aristide’s return. Soon after his election in 1990, the agency began waging a systematic campaign to discredit the Haitian leader, in the process forging close links with Aristide’s domestic opponents. Among them was Emmanuel Constant, the head of the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), a violent paramilitary organization with close links to the armed forces. After the September 1991 coup, Constant was placed on the agency payroll, in return for which he provided continuing information about the nature and activities of Aristide’s local protagonists. 3
For all its professed aversion to the golpistas (ruling generals), the United States dragged its feet on endorsing an Organization of American States (OAS) trade embargo, which weakened the regional body’s effectiveness in denying the military its oil or the wealthy their smuggled-in luxury goods paid for in hoarded dollars. In early February 1992, the Bush administration dealt another powerful blow to the economic sanctions strategy when it lifted those restrictions affecting American-owned assembly plants, which comprised most U.S. investments in Haiti. 4 This was the clearest indication to date that Washington was reluctant to commit itself to a formula based on substituting Aristide for the Duvalierist armed forces.
Later that same month, the State Department sought to broker an “acceptable” political comprise that included a role for the military. Under intense pressure from his American hosts, Aristide agreed to sign an accord with Haitian parliamentarians appointing an interim prime minister, Conservative party leader Rene Theodore, and establishing a timetable for his return in effect as little more than a figurehead president at some future, unspecified date. But after the parliament, bowing to military opposition, failed to approve the agreement, Washington quickly revealed a disposition to tolerate the existing political arrangements.
Meanwhile the generals’ brutal rule had precipitated a refugee problem for the Bush administration, which it attempted to solve in a fashion guaranteed to reaffirm the junta’s belief that it had little to fear from Washington. Following the September 1991 coup, temporary restraining orders by U.S. courts prevented the forced repatriation of Haitian boat people. This ban was lifted by the U.S. Supreme Court on 31 January 1992, but Naturalization and Immigration authorities continued to prescreen interdicted Haitians at the U.S. naval facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, allowing just under one third to enter the United States to seek asylum. By the end of May, however, concern over the domestic political consequences of thousands of Haitians fleeing military terror produced a major policy shift. Bush reinstituted a 1981 agreement between Washington and the Duvalier regime permitting the U.S. Coast Guard to intercept refugee boats on the high seas and return all undocumented passengers to Haiti. Washington’s line was now based on the assumption that boat people were fleeing economic deprivation, not political repression. In future, Haitians could only apply for refugee status at the American embassy in Port-au-Prince. This decision subsequently affected more then 30,000 refugees.
By mid-1992, while still going through the motions of calling for the restoration of Aristide’s government, the United States was simultaneously encouraging the exiled leader to negotiate with the new military-imposed Prime Minister Marc Bazin, a former World Bank official and the favored Bush candidate in the 1990 elections in which he received only 14 percent of the total vote. In the process, State Department officials “dropped the none-too-subtle hint that if he passed up this ‘important window of opportunity,’ the United States may drop or ease the embargo.” 5 A July CIA memorandum, which lavished praise on Bazin and described General Raoul Cedras “as a conscientious military leader who genuinely wished to minimize his role in politics, professionalize the armed services, and develop a separate and competent civilian police force,” mirroring as it did the attitudes of many Defense and State officials, provided more evidence of the conditional nature of administration support for Aristide’s return: it had to be acceptable to Haiti’s military and economic elite. 6
Clinton Policy: January 1993 to April 1994
The transition from George Bush to Bill Clinton did not signal any major policy shift on Haiti. While the newly appointed Secretary of State Warren Christopher acknowledged that Aristide “ha[d] to be part of the solution to this [crisis],” both he and President Clinton balked at setting a firm deadline for the exiled Haitian leader’s return. Senior administration officials spoke of his “eventual” return “when conditions permit.” 7 During their first meeting. Clinton sought to assuage Aristide’s concern about the strength of Washington’s commitment to his speedy return, but he stressed that this could only take place “under conditions of national reconciliation and mutual respect for human rights.” 8
The initial uneasiness and ambiguity in Clinton’s approach to the “Aristide problem” was partly a function of domestic political factors, specifically the refugee issue. In the course of the 1992 presidential election campaign, Clinton vigorously denounced the Bush policy of forcible repatriation of Haitian refugees as “appalling” and promised to overturn it. 9 Within days of his inauguration, however, Clinton backtracked on this pledge following warnings that the United States might soon be confronted by a new wave of at least 200,000 Haitians fleeing the brutality of military rule. Sensitive to the electoral damage suffered by the Carter administration in the wake of the 1980 Mariel boatlift of over 125,000 Cuban refugees to Florida, Clinton tumbled from the high moral ground of the election campaign and announced that the existing policy would remain in place.
The absence of a sharp break in policy was further reinforced by Clinton’s decision to temporarily retain until May the architect of Bush’s Haiti strategy, Bernard Aronson, as assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, and Clinton’s reluctance at the White House meeting with Aristide to take a strong stand on the question of justice for victims of the military terror. To Aristide’s demand that the coup leaders must be brought to account for the killing of some 3,000 of his supporters and other human rights abuses since September 1991, Clinton offered little but the vaguest of promises.
Having reversed his position on refugee policy Clinton moved quickly to limit its impact by committing the new administration to “step up dramatically” diplomatic efforts to restore the ousted Haitian leader to office. 10 To facilitate this goal, the former U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua, Lawrence Pezzullo, was appointed a special envoy to secretary of State on Haiti policy.
Over the next fifteen months, the Clinton White House searched for an internal political solution to the Haitian conflict that could accommodate the military, the local economic elite, and Aristide. This attempt to produce an acceptable coalition government that would effectively circumscribe Aristide’s power had as one of its by-products a sustained pressure on the exiled leader to capitulate on army demands for immunity from prosecution for its brutal rule since September 1991. U.S. policy was distinguished by its effort to bludgeon Aristide to agree to give amnesty to those who had engaged in a “systematic and ruthless” program of murder, torture, and indiscriminate repression throughout Haitian civil society—targeting not just pro-Aristide slum dwellers but also the political, peasant, trade union, and other leaders of the opposition movement. 11
To lure and prod the military leaders to relinquish power, Clinton resorted to a carrot and stick strategy. The carrot was the White House offer of a seat at the negotiating table for the ruling troika—Army Chief Lt. General Raoul Cedras, his deputy and Chief of Staff General Philippe Biamby, and the Port-au-Prince Police Chief Michel Francois. The stick consisted largely of a gradual tightening of the global, regional, and bilateral trade embargos. In June, Clinton announced new sanctions, preventing all civilian and military coup supporters from entering the United States and freezing the latter’s American assets; later that month, the United Nations imposed a global oil and arms embargo on Haiti. In tandem with the resignation of the military-appointed Prime Minister Marc Bazin, the conditions were deemed propitious for a resumption of talks involving Aristide and the military golpistas.
On 3 July 1993, under considerable pressure from United Nations Special Envoy Dante Caputo and the Clinton administration’s Lawrence Pezzullo, Aristide and Cedras signed the so-called Governor’s Island Agreement, which outlined a redemocratization scenario for Haiti. The steps included Aristide’s nomination of a prime minister to assume office after being confirmed by a reconstituted parliament; the suspension of global economic sanctions; the provision of international aid to facilitate reforms of the civil bureaucracy, the judiciary, the armed forces, and the establishment of a new police force; a political amnesty for the perpetrators of the September 1991 coup; and Army Chief Cedras’s retention of his position until Aristide’s resumption of the presidency on 30 October ~ 993 In light of the accord’s concessions to the military and its lack of any enforcement mechanisms for ousting the ruling junta from power, it is not surprising that Aristide’s signature required much greater effort on the part of the international negotiators than Cedras’s.
The Governor’s Island Agreement signaled an escalation of the campaign to shrink Aristide’s authority while ostensibly working for his return to Haiti. In the course of negotiations, Pezzullo seemed no less preoccupied with the fate of the armed forces and the local economic elite than with Aristide’s restoration to office. The accord asked much of the exiled civilian president, little of the military leaders, and relied on a groundless belief in the junta’s commitment to “good faith” negotiations.
Although Pezzullo, Caputo, and the other international negotiators had been only too willing to accept Cedras’s commitments at face value, the “recalcitrant” Aristide displayed the greater willingness to abide by the terms of the agreement. After his nominee for prime minister, Robert Malval, was approved by the reformed parliament in late August, all regional. global and U.S. sanctions were suspended. Almost immediately, the tempo of military-authored violence accelerated. The army and police unleashed their thuggish paramilitary “attaches,” who threatened Malval and a number of his cabinet ministers, and assassinated or attempted to murder prominent Aristide civilian and political supporters. The audacious nature of this offensive, reflecting the military’s intransigence and belief that it could and would hold onto power, elicited a relatively muted response from Washington. Ultimately, the accord unravelled: while Aristide exhibited flexibility to excess and honored his commitments, Cedras did not.
Throughout this period, U.S. policy makers seemed less committed to restoring democracy than to creating political stability in Haiti. The State Department’s Pezzullo strategy was based on the assumption that the military was a stabilizing factor, and that it should and had to be part of any political solution. Hence, there was relentless pressure on Aristide to negotiate some kind of power-sharing arrangements with the generals, to give priority to national reconciliation at the expense of justice, and to be willing to modify or forego long-held policy positions. But it was becoming increasingly clear that on these issues Aristide was not the problem. He accepted the reversal in Clinton refugee policy, agreed to a political amnesty for the military, and appointed a business figure acceptable to the Haitian elite and Washington to be his prime minister. By contrast, Cedras and his colleagues persistently refused to accommodate U.S. demands. Instead, they revealed themselves to be disobedient clients—obdurate, intransigent, and implacably opposed to relinquishing their hold on political power.
In early October, the military reaffirmed their opposition to Aristide’s return and simultaneously dealt a telling blow to the Pezzullo approach. In preparation for Aristide’s return on 30 October and as part of a larger United Nations observer and training force destined for Haiti under the Governor’s Island Agreement. the U.S.S. Harlan County, with 200 lightly armed U.S. soldiers and twenty-five Canadian military trainers aboard, arrived within sight of Port-au-Prince on 11 October, only to find that the military leadership had reneged on its promise to allow the ship to dock. While Haitian soldiers stood by doing nothing, armed civilian thugs, organized by the FRAPH, whose leader Emmanuel Constant was still on the CIA payroll, 12 bluffed the Harlan County into turning around and heading for home. This was the clearest possible sign that the ruling clique would not cede power without a struggle.
The Pentagon, determined to avoid any repetition of the debacle in Somalia less than two weeks earlier, which led to the deaths of eighteen American soldiers, played a leading role in the bureaucratic debate that produced the decision to recall the Harlan County. If this humiliating episode triggered the image of “America turns tail” 13 and a loss of “credibility,” as well as dealing an almost fatal blow to the accord, the Defense Department was far from displeased. Having constantly opposed sending any American troops to Haiti, it felt vindicated. Deputy Under Secretary for Policy Walter Slocombe expressed the agency’s view of Aristide in no uncertain terms: it was opposed to risking soldiers’ lives to put “that psychopath” back in power. 14 At the same time, other administration officials. so angered over what had occurred, requested that serious consideration be given to the interventionist option. National Security Council (NSC) Adviser Tony Lake, signaling this possible future course of action, directed his subordinates to construct the first of the Haiti invasion scenarios. For the moment, however, according to another involved official, “cooler heads...prevailed.” 15
While support for Aristide’s return raised hackles in the Pentagon, the exiled leader was still the target of malicious CIA allegations and leaks that largely questioned his sanity. In October, the agency’s national intelligence officer for Latin America, Brian Latell, prepared a psychological profile on Aristide that concluded he was mentally unstable. Such studies provided ammunition for anti-Aristide legislators on Capital Hill and other foreign policy influentials such as former Bush NSC adviser, Brent Scoweroft, who described the Haitian leader as “erratic” and concurred with Senator Jesse Helms that he was “probably a certifiable psychopath.” 16
If the Harlan County fiasco indicated the military leadership’s resolve, further provocative actions testing the outer limits of Washington’s tolerance followed. Emboldened by Clinton’s shambolic foreign policy performance, and despite White House warnings that the generals were responsible for the safety of the new civilian government, gunmen assassinated the newly appointed Justice Minister Guy Malary on 14 October. Malary was then preparing legislation to bring the police force under civilian control. 17 The United Nations immediately reimposed its oil and arms embargo—this time enforced with the support of six U.S. Navy warships. Washington also reinstituted its bilateral sanctions. Just as significant, though, was Clinton’s footdragging on proposals to implement more draconian trade penalties against the military, notably a December ~993 French-Canadian plan to impose a comprehensive ban that only excluded food and medicines. The explanation was not hard to find: the administration still clung to a belief in the possibility of a solution to the conflict based on a power-sharing formula, or what special envoy Lawrence Pezzullo described as “a political coalition in the center.” 18 Not even the Haitian military troika’s recent provocations were able to completely disabuse the Clinton administration of this illusion.
The refusal to jettison the belief that the military could still be part of the solution to the conflict also explained the White House reluctance to exploit the generals’ cocaine-generated personal wealth. Ignoring Drug Enforcement Administration evidence implicating the Haitian military commanders in drug trafficking extending back to the early 1980s, 19 Clinton avoided virtually any mention of the subject in his public pronouncements, precisely because to have made an issue of these activities would have rendered the existing power-sharing approach politically untenable.
However, by December the frustration among key administration officials over the behavior of the military leadership was palpable. The junta was increasingly perceived not just as an obstacle to political stability, solving the refugee problem, and getting Haiti off the domestic political agenda; but it was also seen as an impediment to Washington’s longer-term third force goal—identifying and promoting a civilian alternative to Aristide. According to a New York Times report, an exasperated Warren Christopher told his newly appointed deputy, Strobe Talbott, “that the administration’s policy was at a dead end because no viable alternative to Aristide would be found while the nation remained under a military dictatorship.” 20
By the 15 January 1994 deadline, the military had failed to meet any of the conditions set down in the Governor’s Island Agreement. Although Washington had previously threatened to request expanded United Nations sanctions if this situation arose, it now declined to do so. Instead, it once again sought to apply pressure on Aristide to be more flexible, which translated into additional concessions to ensure a political solution. This new attempt to lean on the exiled Haitian president, largely orchestrated by Pezzullo, took the form of a plan proposed by a delegation of Haitian parliamentarians during a visit to Washington in late February 1994. Pezzullo’s objective was to present the image of a politically balanced proposal drafted by a representative group of centrist legislators that could provide the basis for a negotiated resolution of the conflict.
The so-called Monde Plan, named after one of the delegation, a founding member of the paramilitary FRAPH whom the U.S. special envoy preferred to describe as “a right wing politician,” 21 was basically an American production. The visit was sponsored by a private conservative organization, the AID-funded Center for Democracy, and it was composed of figures vetted by U.S. officials. As Pezzullo conceded during congressional testimony: “Well, we selected people who we thought would be a representative group to come up here.” 22 More than half of the delegation belonged to the Alliance, a pro-coup coalition that had consistently sided with the military leadership since September 1991.
The proposed plan represented a visible retreat from the Governor’s Island Agreement: only one military leader would be required to step down (the others receiving amnesties); the national police, a major perpetrator of violence against Aristide supporters, would remain in place; the exiled president would appoint a new prime minister responsible for establishing a broad-based government that included allies of the current regime; and no date would be set for the military’s transfer of power to Aristide and the latter’s return to Haiti. In contrast to the earlier accord, there was no provision for an international mission to train and create a more professionalized armed forces. Aristide was bluntly told that this plan was the quid pro quo for a tightening of economic sanctions against the country’s ruling generals.
Not surprisingly, Aristide balked at these demands, accusing its supporters of “acting in ‘complicity’ with the military regime in delaying his return,” 23 and insisting that the generals would treat this proposal with the same contempt they had lavished on the Governor’s Island Agreement. Irritated State Department officials interpreted Aristide’s dismissal of the plan as another instance of his inflexibility and refusal to compromise. That, not the military’s intransigence, constituted the main obstacle to a political solution and his return to Haiti. 24
But the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Dodd, provided the most trenchant and damning critique of the plan and its policy implications. Following sustained questioning of special envoy Lawrence Pezzullo, he concluded on the following note:
Larry, you understand my point here. We handpick a group of people. We finance their trip to Washington. We put together a proposal. You have some people who hardly could be called centrists craft this thing and put it together. Label them as sort of the moderate group, then put the pressure on the fellow who got 7() percent of the vote, and if he does not go along with these conditions, which do not even include the entire structure of the hierarchy of the military, that we are not going to impose the sanctions any longer. Why are we putting so much pressure on him? 25
The State Department-Pezzullo strategy was premised partly on the notion of a reformed coercive apparatus of the “old” state maintaining its power and prerogatives in any transition from Cedras to Aristide—illustrative of the historic U.S. perception of the Latin American armed forces as the ultimate guarantor of Washington’s vital interests within its traditional sphere of influence. This concern was echoed by Pentagon officials. While conceding that “there would have to be a change at the very top,” Deputy Under Secretary Walter Slocombe told a congressional subcommittee in early March that “there are significant forces within the Haitian military who would support and participate actively in the program of modernizing it and professionalizing [it]...” 26 The achievement of this goal was also linked to a desire to circumscribe and limit Aristide’s power in the event of his return to Haiti. Perceived in exile as a transitional figure by many U.S. officials, the Pezzullo-led pressure on Aristide to negotiate a political solution that embraced the military, the local economic elite, and his civilian political opponents was intended to erode the powers of the presidency, and make it more of a ceremonial position without substantive decision-making authority. This desire to encumber a revived Aristide presidency within a powerful set of constraints explained, for instance, the considerable emphasis Washington attached to the naming of a new prime minister as soon as possible; this would facilitate the undermining strategy through the appointment of Aristide political and military foes to cabinet posts.
At the end of March, U.S. policy still seemed wedded to the Pezzullo approach. The announcement by President Clinton that Washington would intensify its pressure on the generals, especially Cedras, to relinquish power was essentially motivated by twin concerns: saving the military and implementing the political preconditions for Aristide’s return. Only with the junta’s commitment to leave could Aristide name a new prime minister, thus establishing the basis for the eventual passage of an amnesty law through the Haitian parliament. The exiled leader’s failure to appreciate the significance of this policy shift did not sit well with administration officials, provoking one to declare in a mood of barely controlled anger: “These adjustments are a way of trying to meet some of his concerns and get him to join in the process of finding a practical approach to solving this crisis. ” 27
Ultimately, Aristide’s stubborn refusal to accommodate each and every U.S. demand for flexibility, compounded by the military leadership’s obduracy and disobedience, forced Washington’s hand. In late April, the Clinton administration abandoned its attempts to extract more compromises from Aristide and its military-as-part-of-the-solution approach. The ruling junta’s defiance and provocations had finally exhausted White House patience. The policy shift took the form of a request for United Nations Security Council support for imposing a global trade embargo on the country, together with financial sanctions (the freezing of overseas assets) and travel bans against 600 military officers who supported the autocratic regime or participated in the September 1991 coup that toppled Aristide from power. 28 One State Department official described these measures to tighten the economic embargo as incorporating “the basic components of the... approach” contained in a bill introduced into the House of Representatives in March by the Congressional Black Caucus, a leading domestic critic of Clinton’s Haiti policy. 29
Another clear indicator that the generals were about to be dumped was the almost simultaneous resignation of special envoy Lawrence Pezzullo, the official most closely identified with the power-sharing strategy, and his replacement by the former head of the Congressional Black Caucus, William Gray. But, despite Clinton’s decision to get tough with Haiti’s military rulers, the resort to stepped up sanctions was not accompanied by any plan of action in the event the sanctions failed to achieve their strategic objective.
Clinton Policy: May 1994 to September 1994
On 2 May, Clinton signaled a dramatic shift in U.S. policy toward Haiti. Referring to the leaders of Haiti’s military junta, the president said that “it was time for them to go,” and for the first time he refused to rule out the use of U.S. force to get them going. 30 But these statements reflected the level of frustration with the Haitian military in the Clinton administration much more than they did a new resolve in the White House to see the crisis ended quickly. Cedras, Biamby, and Francois had dealt themselves out of any U.S.-brokered negotiated settlement by their obstinacy and, to a lesser extent, their continued brutality (OAS and UN human rights monitors in Haiti reported fifty politically-motivated killings for the month of April alone). Administration policy makers, however, remained deeply divided over how the United States should respond to the deadlock created by the junta’s refusal to step down. One faction, led by Anthony Lake and Strobe Talbott, favored the invasion option and were preparing plans for it; another faction, led by William Perry and senior military and intelligence officers, cautioned strongly against the use of force. A consensus approach did emerge for the next four months, and even then it was tenuous enough to allow the final twist in the saga—Jimmy Carter’s deal with the junta allowing for U.S. military intervention into Haiti and the phased exit of Cedras and his cohorts from power.
Between April and August, Clinton himself remained aloof from the debate within his own camp. In electoral terms, there was little to be gained by getting the approach right on Haiti; and especially after the debacle in Somalia the previous October, there was much to lose by putting another foot badly wrong. Moreover, the president was preoccupied with domestic policy issues, especially the troubled passage of his health and crime bills through the House of Representatives and the Senate. Those White House officials with day-today responsibility for Haiti had to consider limitations on their options. According to opinion polls, Americans disapproved of Clinton’s handling of foreign policy generally and strongly opposed his sending U.S. troops into Haiti. Congress was hostile to an invasion and, apart from the Black Caucus which was pushing for tougher measures to hasten Aristide’s return, deeply suspicious still of the exiled Haitian president and his democratic credentials. Aristide himself remained opposed to any invasion. Finally, it was clear that if Washington were to get the UN’s imprimatur for interventionist action, it would have to disabuse UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali of the notion that Haiti represented a case of sphere-of-influence peacekeeping in which the U.S. military should play only a minor role.
Clinton elaborated on the change of policy tack at an 8 May White House press briefing, when he announced the appointment of William Gray to replace Lawrence Pezzullo as the administration’s special adviser on Haiti. After declaring that Gray “will be the point man in our diplomacy and a central figure in our future policy deliberations,” Clinton outlined a set of tougher economic sanctions on Haiti in line with the previous day’s UN Security Council Resolution 917. These included a freeze on assets in the United States belonging to the Haitian military leaders and their civilian allies, a ban on nonscheduled flights in and out of Haiti, and a tightening of the economic embargo on everything but humanitarian supplies. As well, the president announced changes in migration policy toward Haiti: the U.S. would continue to interdict all Haitian boat people, but instead of automatic repatriation, it would process applications for political refugee status aboard ship or in other countries. “I am committed,” Clinton declared, “to making these new international sanctions work.” But once again he refused to rule out other options if these failed to convince Haiti’s military leaders to step down. 31
The following day, Secretary of State Christopher, speaking in Mexico City, sought to drive home the message: “If Haiti’s military leaders refuse to resign or leave Haiti,” he said, “they will find that the international community has both the will and the means to make them pay the price for their illegitimate actions, and to restore the legitimate elected authorities.” 32
This new White House posture looked and sounded much harsher than it was. The circumstances of Gray’s appointment, for instance, suggested that it would be much easier for the junta in Port-au-Prince to ignore him than had been the case with his predecessor. Unlike Pezzullo, Gray’s brief was to advise rather than represent the administration; moreover, he insisted on performing these duties while retaining his status as a private citizen, not on the payroll of the U.S. government.
In announcing the sanctions, Clinton said that the United States was “working with” the Dominican Republic to improve enforcement procedures along its border with Haiti. But Washington balked at pressing the corrupt Balaguer regime to seal the border against smuggling with threats to reconsider the Dominican Republic’s U.S. sugar quota or other economic benefits the country received under the Caribbean Basin Initiative. As for the new arrangements for processing applications for refugee status by fleeing Haitians, these were no more generous than the Bush administration had allowed during the months immediately following the 1991 coup, 33 despite the accumulated evidence since then of the new regime’s brutality. In fact, publicly at least, the White House was doing little more than ratcheting up its sanctions policy in line with UN initiatives and adopting minimum changes in its refugee policy to avoid condemnation from its domestic critics. Privately, the Clinton administration had adopted a two-track policy of forcing the Haitian military junta from power while “preparing” Aristide for his return.
If the ruling generals had become expendable, the fate of the coercive institution was another matter altogether. Paramount importance was attached to the survival of the armed forces in the event of Aristide’s return. But in recent weeks the weight of opinion among senior policy makers had shifted away from the idea of major personnel cuts and organizational changes as being too fraught with unintended consequences. The new emerging consensus was based on a hitting from the top strategy (getting rid of Cedras et al.) and working with those elements willing to accommodate Aristide’s return. Secretary of Defense William Perry put it succinctly, if rather clumsily: “We would want to use as much of the military and military police as is capable....” 34
Resistance to an invasion was fuelled by continuing CIA advice that Aristide was unreliable and that dispatching U.S. troops to restore him to power would have little impact on Haiti’s corrupt and thuggish political system. 35 Within the Defense Department, there was the added concern that the use of force lacked a clear objective and cut-off point. “The problem is not getting in,” said a Pentagon-based general. “It is getting out.” 36 Exploring options short of direct U.S. intervention seemed preferable. One scenario involved buying off Haiti’s military leaders and sending the bill to the country’s economic elite. 37 Amid increasing skepticism about whether or not the sanctions would achieve their intended goal in the time period allotted by the White House, a State Department official commented in late May: “It’s by a process of subtraction that we’re getting to the military option.” 38 However, sending in the marines to enforce a political transition based on a restored Aristide presidency was unlikely as long as the exiled leader remained wedded to a program of radical social and economic reform.
During his 8 May briefing, Clinton emphasized that one of the administration’s fundamental policy objectives was to promote a “broad-based, functioning representative government that can relate to the business community as well as to the ordinary citizens of Haiti.” 39 Given that Aristide was now perceived as an integral part of Washington’s equation, it therefore became imperative to reconfigure his populist socioeconomic outlook. This meant jettisoning his commitment to redistribute wealth, end exploitative labor relations, and pursue a growth strategy based on rural, not export-driven development in favor of a more economically “responsible” capitalist development strategy; and appointing the kind of moderate, technocratic officials who would faithfully oversee the implementation of this program.
As part of their efforts to remake Aristide, officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) began examining every aspect of his plans for rebuilding Haiti; in the process they instructed him in the kinds of economic programs and public administration rebuilding they deemed suitable for the country’s revival. 40 The United States was not only in a position to pressure Aristide directly but also to control his public profile. Aristide’s radio broadcasts to Haiti were monitored, the National Security Agency admitted to bugging his telephone calls, and he was not even consulted about U.S. plans for his return—especially the deal Jimmy Carter stitched together with Haiti’s military leaders in September.
Washington’s goal of getting Aristide “to see eye to eye” with a “critical mass” of the Haitian elite—to appreciate what William Gray called “the political realities”—proved effective as the exiled leader began to tone down his radical theology and class struggle rhetoric. 41 In mid-July he outlined a ten-point reconstruction plan for Haiti that included a commitment to “promote goals in the private sector.” 42 With few, if any, alternatives, his acceptance of IMF-World Bank-AID development blueprints calling for large-scale privatization, major tariff cuts, the elimination of import quotas, and a halving of personnel in the civil bureaucracy had become, in effect, one of the preconditions for his return. U.S. officials also managed to procure from Aristide a written pledge to uphold the Haitian Constitution and to hand over power to a successor when his term expired in February 1996. As AID Administrator J. Brian Atwood later recalled: “When we first met he was running for president, he [had] a real attitude about the United States and the West. But I think he really has grown. He knows all the practical issues now.” 43
As these efforts continued, events in Haiti were reeling out of anyone’s control. Clinton’s decision to modify the refugee processing arrangements produced a dramatic increase in the number of Haitians fleeing their country by boat. During the whole of 1993, around 2,000 Haitians put to sea in search of asylum in the United States; in June 1994 alone, the number jumped to 5,603; and then the floodgates really opened as close to 6,000 decamped in the first four days of July. 44 Attempting to strike an optimistic note, Defense Secretary William Perry told reporters that an invasion was still not on the cards: “I think we should... give some time to see that sanctions work itself out, and I think we may see some very substantial results from that. The conventional wisdom is that sanctions cannot be effective, that they cannot force governments to change their actions. This may be a counter-example.” The following day (1 July), Secretary of State Christopher, when asked if the administration favored an invasion to overthrow the Haitian military, replied: “The option we’re pursuing now is... sanctions.” 45
These comments only served to undercut Washington’s efforts to spook the ruling generals into stepping down. Such efforts included an announcement by U.S. officials that a naval task force with 2,000 marines was steaming toward the Haitian coast. Complementing this show of gunboat diplomacy were a Pentagon news leak that more than 1,000 commandos had just returned from Florida after secretly rehearsing a plan to seize Haiti’s airfields and ports, and William Gray’s warning that any threat to the lives of the 3,000 Americans still in Haiti would trigger immediate and forceful White House action. Frustrated over the seeming inability of any measure to stem the refugee tide, the White House unsuccessfully tried to pressure Aristide into making radio broadcasts to Haiti to discourage people leaving. 46
The US. response to the continuing exodus of Haitians was complicated by the unwillingness of regional allies to absorb large numbers of the boat people. Panama’s President Guillermo Endara abruptly reneged on his country’s agreement to temporarily house 10,000 Haitians; other Caribbean countries were slow to offer assistance. Meanwhile, Haiti’s military rulers were clearly losing their grip on the situation. On 13 July they expelled all international human rights monitors amid a marked escalation in the junta’s reign of terror. Clinton responded by saying the expulsion validated his decision to consider possible military action. But no definitive decision was taken.
By the end of July, the United States had secured UN Security Council approval for military intervention in Haiti. Within the foreign policy bureaucracy, however, disagreements persisted over the efficacy of such action. The Pentagon, unlike the State Department, remained steadfastly opposed to an invasion; nor did it believe that the options for inducing the junta leaders to relinquish power for a comfortable exile had been fully exhausted. 47 At the same time, these interagency conflicts could not mask the fact that Washington’s patience and imagination were running out. “We’re seized by the refugee surge,” one senior administration official explained, “and this has accelerated the discussion of other options.” 48 But the quickened drift toward a more activist response was temporarily halted by a simultaneous outflux of boat people from Cuba.
Beginning in August, the number of people seeking to leave Cuba by boat or raft rose precipitously. For the whole of 1993, only 3,656 Cubans were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard en route to Florida; between the beginning of August and early September the number surged to 30,000. The Cuban exodus made a final settlement in Haiti all the more imperative. But it also distracted attention from Haiti. Although UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright informed the Security Council at the end of July that the United States was prepared to lead a multinational force into Haiti, it was not until 26 August, after this latest Cuban refugee problem had been contained, that Clinton authorized “the final version of an invasion plan that the military had been drafting for months.” 49
While Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott quickly headed to a meeting of Caribbean foreign and defense ministers in Jamaica to secure unequivocal regional backing for the move, the White House authorized one last-ditch effort to promote an internal solution to the crisis: a $12 million CIA covert operation to topple the junta leaders by offering funds, communications equipment, and weapons to “friendly elements” in the military. As one involved U.S. official put it: “We are using every means at our disposal to get rid of this regime in the hopes of avoiding the necessity of an invaslon....Every means.” 50 But the agency’s failure to crack the loyalty of the armed forces to Cedras made direct U.S. intervention inevitable; all other options had finally been exhausted. It was now time to prepare the U.S. public for the invasion.
Apart from perfunctory remarks labeling Haiti’s coup leaders criminal and brutal rulers, Washington was forced to wage a low-key rhetorical campaign during the three years of Aristide’s exile. After all, Bush and Clinton officials could hardly rail against repression in Haiti, identify the junta as the culprits, and still deny asylum to the great majority of Haitians fleeing tyranny. But that consideration no longer applied. On 13 September, the State Department released its third interim report on Haiti’s human rights situation, which said, in part: “The present situation reflects a degree of terror comparable to that of the Duvalier regimes....The [Cedrasj regime’s human rights record demonstrates its intention not only to eliminate its opponents, but to subjugate the general populace and suppress and intimidate any potential opposition as well.” 51 Clinton drew on this report in a televised address to the nation in which he recounted a litany of politically motivated killings, torture, and rape in Haiti and declared that “General Cedras and his accomplices alone are responsible for this suffering and terrible human tragedy.” 52 This demonization of the Haitian military leadership made all the more puzzling Clinton’s decision to dispatch a negotiating team headed by Jimmy Carter to Port-au-Prince.
Officially, Carter was to discuss the “modalities” of the departure of Cedras and the others from power. More likely, the mission was meant to prepare the way for an invasion. It’s composition suggests as much. Carter, who opposed Clinton policy on Haiti and had been ignored when he offered to lead a similar diplomatic effort earlier in the year, had resurrected something of a public persona as a conflict resolution ambassador-at-large. If the former president could not talk the Haitian junta around to a peaceful exit, nobody could. To address any lingering congressional misgivings about the use of force, the powerful Democratic Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn accompanied Carter to Haiti. So too did Cohn Powell, former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and hero of the Persian Gulf War, ensuring that any invasion decision would pass the Defense Department’s muster.
The deal Carter unexpectedly concluded with Cedras caught the Clinton administration by surprise and forced a rethink of the invasion plans literally in midflight. The agreement stated only that “certain military officers of the Haitian armed forces are willing to consent to an early and honorable retirement,” that their successors “will be named according to the Haitian constitution and existing military law,” that the Haitian military and police forces “will work in close cooperation with the U.S. Military Mission” then on its way to Haiti, and that “the military activities of the U.S. Military Mission will be coordinated with the Haitian military high command.” 53 The agreement allowed the ruling clique to stay in power up to a month before Aristide’s return. It granted a general amnesty for all human rights abuses committed by military officials against civilian noncombatants since the 1991 coup (which Aristide had consistently opposed since the Governor’s Island Agreement); and left Cedras, Biamby, and Francois in possession of millions of dollars they made breaking the oil embargo through an alliance with military officials in the Dominican Republic. 54
These arrangements satisfied the Pentagon. The Somali debacle had demonstrated the risk of trying to fill a law-and-order vacuum in a strife-torn country. Moreover, it guaranteed that the coercive institution of the military-dominated Haitian state would survive intact (but refurbished) in the transition back to an Aristide presidency. The diplomatic agreement also appealed to Clinton and those White House officials concerned about whether a military gambit would pay off in the polls. They were enthusiastic about what Strobe Talbott called ~a permissive invasion” resulting in virtually no casualties. 55
For Aristide, of course, the deal was far less attractive. First, it indicated just how marginal he was to the evolving policy debate. While the NSC’s Anthony Lake and special White House adviser William Gray kept Aristide informed about the Carter mission, the exiled leader’s aides later complained that he had no input into the decision-making process. 56 During these briefing sessions, U.S. officials seemed more concerned with drilling Aristide on the importance of free market policies and adhering to the Haitian constitution, which mandated wider political powers to the parliament than to the presidency. 57 Second, it turned the generals who had ousted him from office and conducted a three-year reign of terror on his supporters into “honorable men,” to use Carter’s term, and elevated them into allies of the U.S. forces in their mission to restore “democracy in Haiti. Lastly, Carter’s brokered outcome further constrained Aristide’s room for maneuver: it delayed his return to Haiti, guaranteed the survival of an institutionally cohesive armed forces, provided generous amnesty terms for Cedras and the other junta leaders, and gave the military-backed network of thugs and “attaches” both time and opportunity to mount one last assault on Aristide supporters under the very noses of U.S. peacekeeping troops.
Conclusion
Both the Bush and Clinton administrations shared the same overriding objective in Haiti, which was to restore political stability and stop the country being seen as a “problem” for Washington. Each worked through the same preferred policy options to secure this end, with Clinton only returning to the tough choices he advocated on the 1992 presidential campaign trail as his options narrowed and the situation in Haiti threatened to get out of control.
From the beginning of his presidency, Clinton pressured and cajoled the ousted, democratically-elected president of Haiti to adopt a more flexible approach toward dealing with the ruling junta. As long as the junta was perceived as “part of the solution,” the White House was content to talk tough about the generals but apply its real muscle to extracting concessions from Aristide. Washington’s objectives in seeking to broker a power-sharing solution to the Haitian conflict were primarily twofold: to ensure the survival of the coercive apparatus of the old state, albeit restructured and reformed; and to shrink Aristide’s political authority in the event of his resumption of the presidency. American officials were particularly insistent that the army “must be preserved as an institution,” convinced that it was “an essential part of the ‘iconography’ of nationhood.” 58
Ultimately, the obdurate behavior of the junta leadership proved incompatible with the broader U.S. policy approach. The belief increasingly took hold among Clinton and his senior advisers that these disobedient clients had passed their use-by date and had to go, by force if necessary. The challenge was to replace them with a government that could lay some claim to legitimacy, that enjoyed some degree of popular support, and that would thus put an end to the refugee flow and get Haiti off Washington’s political agenda. Given the U.S. commitment to “stability” and the correlation of political forces in Haiti, Aristide effectively became the sole realistic option. But the White House only wanted his legitimacy, not his populist policies. Hence, the need for his political and economic reeducation—a precondition for the invasion.
In mid-1995, Deputy Secretary of State Talbott reassured members of a Senate Committee: “even after our exit in February 1996, we will remain in charge by means of USAID and the private sector.” 59 The Clinton political objective in restoring Aristide to power reflected less a universal commitment to democracy than an effort to create a permeable democracy in which restructured state institutions (especially the military and police) and an economic development model (free markets) would serve long-term U.S. interests in Haiti, as well as those of the country’s international creditors, and, to a lesser extent, the privileged local elites. Washington wanted a government of civilians who could lay claim to an electoral mandate but who, more importantly, would know their place and have little power or opportunity to move beyond it.
Not surprisingly, this objective has contributed to instability and uncertainty in Haiti. By overriding Aristide’s initial desire to abolish the military, prosecute officers for human rights abuses, and disarm the paramilitaries, the White House left Haitian democracy vulnerable to its old adversaries. Despite a purge of the security forces in September 1996, political assassinations and plots by armed right-wing groups have forced President Rene Preval to request the continued presence of foreign peacekeeping troops. Meanwhile, as fear of indiscriminate violence spreads, it slowly undermines confidence in the democratic process.
Another source of tension between the Preval government and the popular classes has been the economic reconstruction program imposed on Haiti by Washington and the international financial community. Large-scale aid has been conditioned on the sell-off of state-run enterprises and the shedding of thousands of public sector jobs. This strategy to date has failed to attract significant new foreign investment or produced visible signs of economic recovery. Rather, it has contributed to an erosion of the government’s political support.
Disenchanted voters, however, are not turning to Haiti’s right-wing parties, which is one reason why these elements remain attracted to an authoritarian political solution. Instead, they are looking to a person who many believe should still be leading Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide. In 1995, he agreed at U.S. insistence not to stand for reelection. Today, Aristide has become the focus of a new opposition movement potentially more radical than the one that catapulted him to political power in September 1991. If he regains the presidency with a strong nationalist mandate, it will once again test Washington’s commitment to the defense of Haitian democracy.
Endnotes
Note 1: Quoted in Kim Ives, “The Unmaking of a President,” NACLA Report on the Americas 27 (January/February 1994): 16. Back.
Note 2: Clifford Krauss, “In a Policy Shift, U.S. Pressures Haitian On Rights Abuses,” New York Times, 7 October 1991; also see Thomas L. Friedman, “U.S. Won’t Link Aristide Return and Democracy,” New York Times, 8 October 1991. Back.
Note 3: See R. Jeffrey Smith, “Haitian Paramilitary Chief Spied for CIA, Sources Say,” Washington Post, 7 October 1994. Back.
Note 4: See Al Kamen and John M. Goshko, “U.S. Eased Haiti Embargo Under Business Pressure,” Washington Post, 7 February 1992. Back.
Note 5: Lee Hockstader and Douglas Farah, “U.S. Presses Haiti’s Civilian Leaders to Find Accord,” Washington Post, 5 July 1992. Back.
Note 6: Quoted from memorandum dated 21 July 1992, prepared by Brian Latch, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for Latin America, in Christopher Marquis. “CIA Memo Discounts ‘Oppressive Rule’ in Haiti,” Washington Post, 19 December 1993. Back.
Note 7: U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Nomination of Warren M. Christopher to be Secretary of State, 103rd Congress, 2nd sess., 13 and 14 January 1993 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office [GPO], 1993), 75. Back.
Note 8: See Gwen Ifill, “Haitian Is Offered Clinton’s Support on an End to Exile,” New York Times, 17 March 1993. Back.
Note 9: Quoted in Ann Devroy and R. Jeffrey Smith, “Debate Over Risks Split Administration,” Washington Post, 25 September 1994. Back.
Note 10: Quoted in ibid. Back.
Note 11: Americas Watch, Silencing a People: The Destruction of Civil Society in Haiti (New York: Human Rights Watch, February 1993), 1. Back.
Note 12: See Stephen Engleberg, “A Haitian Leader of Paramilitaries Was Paid by C.I.A.,” New York Times, 8 October 1994. Back.
Note 13: U.S. official, quoted in Devroy and Smith, “Debate Over Risks Split Administration.” Back.
Note 14: Quoted in Elaine Sciolino et al., “Haiti Standoff: The U.S. Will Try Again,” New York Times, 29 April 1994. Back.
Note 15: This unnamed administration official is quoted in Devroy and Smith, “Debate Over Risks Split Administration.” Back.
Note 16: Quoted in Mark Danner, “The Fall of the Prophet,” New York Review of Books, 2 December 1993, 44. Back.
Note 17: See Congressional Research Service, Issue Brief, Haiti: The Struggle for Democracy and Congressional Concerns in ]994, 22 September 1994, 9. Back.
Note 18: Quoted in Daniel Williams and Julia Preston, “U.S. Policy on Haiti Includes Search for Moderates,” Washington Post, 8 December 1993. Back.
Note 19: See Congressional Research Service Issue Brief , Haiti: Prospects for Democracy and U.S. Policy Concerns, 16 October 1992, 10. Back.
Note 20: Devroy and Smith, “Debate Over Risks Split Administration.” Back.
Note 21: U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere and Peace Corps Affairs, U.S. Policy Toward Haiti, 103rd Congress, 2nd sess., 8 March 1994 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1994), 112. Back.
Note 23: Congressional Research Service, Haiti: The Struggle for Democracy and Congressional Concerns in 1994, 5. Back.
Note 24: See Steven Greenhouse, “Which Way Forward on Haiti?,” New York Times. 9 March 1994. Back.
Note 25: U.S. Congress, Senate U.S. Policy TowardHaiti, 113-114. Back.
Note 27: Quoted in Steven Greenhouse, “Aristide Cool to U.S. Shift in Haiti Policy,” New York Times, 31 March 1994. Back.
Note 28: See Julia Preston, “U.S. Shifts on Haiti, Gets Tougher on Army,” Washington Post, 29 April 1994. Back.
Note 29: Quoted in Steven A. Holmes, “With Persuasion and Muscle, Black Caucus Reshapes Haiti Policy,” New York Times, 14 July 1994. Back.
Note 30: Quoted in Barton Geliman and Ruth Marcus, ~U.S. Boosts Pressure on Haitians,” Washington Post, 4 May 1992. Back.
Note 31: “Clinton Takes New Steps to Oust Haitian Military Leaders,” USIA Wireless File, 9 May 1994. Back.
Note 32: Quoted in Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, “Pursuing the Restoration of Democracy in Haiti,” U.S. Department of State, Dispatch, 23 May 1994, 332. Back.
Note 33: Congressional Research Service, Report to Congress , Cuban and Haitian Asylum Seekers: Recent Trends, 1 September 1994. Back.
Note 34: Quoted in Elaine Sciolino, “Exile in Style Being Offered to Haitian Chiefs,” New York Times, 20 June 1994. Back.
Note 35: Devroy and Smith, ~”Debate Over Risks Split Administration.” Back.
Note 36: Quoted in Michael R. Gordon, “Weighing Options, U.S. Aides Assess Invasion of Haiti,’ New York Times, 36 May 1994. Back.
Note 37: See Sciolino. “Exile in Style Being Offered to Haitian Chiefs.” Back.
Note 38: Quoted in Gordon, “Weighing Options, U.S. Aides Assess Invasion of Haiti.” Back.
Note 39: “Transcript of May 8 White House News Conference,” USIA Wireless File, 9 May 1994. Back.
Note 40: See Elaine Sciolino, “Aristide Adopts a New Role: From Robespierre to Gandhi,” New York Times, 18 September 1994. Back.
Note 41: U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. Policv Toward Haiti, 103rd Congress, 2nd sess., 8 June 1994 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1994), 11. Back.
Note 42: Quoted in Daniel Williams, “U.S. Looks for Moderation in Aristide’s Mixed Signals,” Washington Post, 18 July 1994. Back.
Note 43: Quoted in Sciolino, “Aristide Adopts A New Role: From Robespierre to Gandhi.” Back.
Note 44: See Congressional Research Service , Cuban and Haitian Asylum Seekers: Recent Trends. Back.
Note 45: Quoted in Ann Devroy and Barton Gelman, “Exodus From Haiti Strains U.S. Policy,” Washington Post, 7 July 1994. Back.
Note 46: See Pilita Clark, “Haiti Risks tnvasion After Expulsions,” Sydney Morning Herald. 13 July 1994, 10; Elaine Sciolino “Haiti Invasion Imminent, Envoy Says,” New York Times, 4 July 1994. Back.
Note 47: See Elaine Sciolino, “Top U.S. Officials Divided in Debate on Invading Haiti,” New York Times, 4 August 1994. Back.
Note 48: Quoted in Devroy and Geilman, “Exodus From Haiti Strains U.S. Policy.” Back.
Note 49: John H. Cushman, Jr. Ct al.. “On the Brink of war, a Tense Battle of wills,” New York Times, 20 September 1994. On the Cuban refugee figures. see Congressional Research Service, Cuban and Haitian Asylum Seekers: Recent Trends; Congressional Research Service. Issue Brief, Cuba: Issues for Congress, 6 September 1994,14. Back.
Note 50: Quoted in Doyle McManus and Robin Wright, “U.S. Tried Covert Action to Rid Haiti of Rulers,” Los Angeles Times. 16 September 1994. Back.
Note 51: “Haitian Regime as Bad as Duvalier, U.S. Says,” USIA Wireless File, 15 September 1994. Back.
Note 52: “The Crisis in Haiti,” reprinted in U.S. Department of State, Dispatch, 19 September 1994, 605. Back.
Note 53: “Agreement Sets Conditions for Haitian Leaders to Retire,” Text. USIA Wireless File, 19 September 1994. Back.
Note 54: See Douglas Farab. “U.S. Assists Dictators’ Luxury Exile,” Washington Post, 14 October 1994. Back.
Note 55: U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. Policy Toward, And Presence in Haiti, 103rd Congress, 2nd sess., 13.27, and 28 September 1994 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1994), 25. Back.
Note 56: Cushman et al., “On the Brink of War, a Tense Battle of Wills,” Back.
Note 57: Norman Kempster and Doyle McManus, “U.S. Cautions Aristide Over Divisive Action,” Los Angeles Times, 17 September 1994. Back.
Note 58: Quoted in Anthony Boadle, “U.S. to Keep Haiti Army Intact Despite Black Record,” Reuters Wire, 10 October 1994; Larry Rohter, “Some Aristide Supporters Seek Abolition of Military,” New York Times, 22 November 1994. Back.
Note 59: Quoted in Worth Cooley-Post, “Haiti Shows It’s Ready for Democracy ,” National Catholic Reporter, 28 July 1995, 9. (Emphasis added.) Back.
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