The Political Interest the Case Against Invading Haiti

By Michael Kramer

How would Jim Baker or Dick Cheney handle Haiti? Of the potential Republican presidential nominees in 1996, the former secretaries of State and Defense are the best qualified to speak about foreign affairs, and both would avoid the invasion Bill Clinton seems ready to launch. For Baker and Cheney, the bottom line is simple: restoring Haiti's deposed President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, isn't worth a single American life. From there, however, their positions diverge. Both would stay out of Haiti, but Cheney would also stay away.

Ever consistent, the cerebral but dull Cheney (he makes Baker appear charismatic by comparison) reflects the views he unsuccessfully advanced when Haiti was his headache. "I said during the Bush Administration and I say today that we should forget about it," Cheney says. "Haiti's a mess. That's too bad. It was a mistake for us to begin the sanctions Clinton's continued. They only hurt the poor, the people who deserve better since we won't allow them into the U.S., which is the right policy. We should lift the embargo and focus on really important things, like rolling back North Korea's nuclear program."

Baker, too, echoes the policy he favored as Secretary of State. "Turn back the refugees and toughen the sanctions," he argues. "Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic has yet to be sealed effectively." Baker concedes embargoes hurt the innocent most, but says "you can't conclude they can't work until you've imposed them seriously."

This disagreement on sanctions reflects a deeper difference about U.S. support for fledging democracies. Cheney and Baker both describe Aristide as "a leftist," but Baker insists that the exiled leader's politics are immaterial. Those like Cheney "who urge walking away because Aristide isn't our kind of democrat are wrong," says Baker. "If supporting democracy is a cornerstone of our foreign policy, which it is and should be, then you can't treat what democracy produces as a fruit salad, taking a raisin here while rejecting a pecan there. The test should be whether Aristide was chosen in a free and fair election. He was. Supporting him is therefore an American interest. It isn't an interest that justifies war, but it does justify rigorous sanctions."

Neither Baker nor Cheney believes returning Aristide to power in Haiti will encourage other Caribbean countries to become more democratic. In fact, both discredit signal sending as particularly important in foreign affairs, except as a "negative incentive," says Baker. "I never thought our resolve in getting Saddam out of Kuwait would deter the Serbs in Bosnia or the coup that overthrew Aristide," explains Cheney in an analysis Baker shares. "It doesn't work that way unless, like Clinton, you talk loudly about using force and then fail to follow through. When you project weakness consistently you do embolden bad guys. But standing up for a truly vital interest, as we did in the Gulf, has never had much of a deterrent effect elsewhere, even during the cold war."

Handling foreign annoyances on a case-by-case basis is "obviously the way you'll have to increasingly treat crises now that communism's dead," says Baker. "We no longer have a global enemy, a prism through which actions can be fitted," when trouble flares. "So, yes, it's a different world but it's not a more complicated or dangerous one." Baker and Cheney, then, are not enamored of overarching visions. They're content to present themselves as more competent than Clinton to manage whatever irritations arise -- and both particularly abhor the motivations they perceive as influencing the President's willingness to fight Haiti's thugs. "Clinton's driven by domestic considerations," says Cheney. "The liberals are pushing him, and he's pushing himself because he thinks he needs to show some muscle somewhere after promising it everywhere." Worse, adds Baker, "the whole thing smells like Somalia. It could too easily be another open-ended operation," the product, he says, of the U.N.'s mandating a continued U.S. presence in Haiti until, as the Security Council resolution states, "a secure and stable environment has been established." Having the U.N. on board "is good," says Baker. It can deflect the traditional Latin cry that "we're colonial cowboys, and make it harder for Russia to muck around in the countries of the former Soviet Union." But, he adds, permitting the U.N. to control the end game as the arbiter of stability "is ridiculous."

It's easy to portray Cheney and Baker as the kind of callous politicians U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali had in mind when he identified "indifference and inaction" as "the real crimes against conscience." Indeed, some academic critics familiar with their views have already compared Cheney and Baker with John Quincy Adams, whom Henry Clay branded an isolationist after Adams declared that the U.S. should be the "well wisher to the freedom and independence of all" but "the champion and vindicator only of her own." In fact, though, Baker is right: "All interests aren't equal." If war is a course best reserved for advancing the nation's vital interests rather than its moral preferences, then all Cheney and Baker are saying is that invading Haiti doesn't meet that test no matter how much Clinton may need to back his words with actions to save his credibility.