BoyneIan Boyne
THE UNITED States has registered yet another foreign policy tragedy in a long series of such episodes in the world, particularly in the Latin American region, long considered its sphere of influence.
The U.S. pressure on former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to resign, and its refusal to send in troops to quell the insurgent violence and growing anarchy in Haiti's fragile democracy, has brought widespread condemnation, mostly from people who hold an idealist view of politics.
For many years the intense debate among scholars of international relations has centred on the idealist and the realist schools. What you have seen with the U.S. action in Haiti is the triumph of the pragmatic, realist approach to foreign policy.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION
The Bush administration had to make the practical calculation that in an election year, the prospect of having large numbers of Haitian boat people knocking down its doors for safe entrance and having a prolonged, bloody conflict on its doorstep was not by any means a favourable one. The Bush administration came to the conclusion that the lack of trust between the Opposition forces and Aristide was deep and impenetrable; that the power-sharing proposal of the CARICOM leaders, though desirable was impracticable; that Aristide had lost the support of the suffering and disappointed working and peasant classes and that a U.S. war with insurgents was simply not worth it. Secretary of State Colin Powell was perhaps sincere when he said the U.S. tried to find a political solution to Haiti's crisis but that it "couldn't find the answer. So we felt by the end of last week that only real answer was if President Aristide step down."
The Haitian Opposition's rejection of that excellent proposal by CARICOM to have Aristide share power with the legitimate Opposition groups while the international community would help to fix the disputed electoral system and reorganise the police force and provide a United Nations-sanctioned peace-keeping force apparently convinced the Bush administration that the easier option was to press Aristide to go.
That this would set a dangerous precedent and would be a blow to electoral democratic principles, as CARICOM Chairman P.J. Patterson so aptly put it, was irrelevant in a realpolitix context. These are all idealistic, philosophical niceties, which might not accord with life in an Hobbesian world, the Bush strategists seemed to have opined. We so often fail to see in the cut and thrust of intense political debates how the clash of philosophical visions shape responses.
Great powers make their decisions based on strategic considerations, not largely on moral ones, though there has been a strong Wilsonian ideological strain in US foreign policy action, too. If the Opposition had confidence in Aristide and was willing to go along with the CARICOM proposal which the United States first supported, the Bush administration would have moved in to crush the rebellion of the insurgents. The view by some that the group of known criminals and terrorists who created mayhem in Haiti were being used by the Central Intelligence Agency to remove Aristide comes out of a reflexive anti-Americanism and is devoid of any hard evidence; which is no problem to people given to conspiracy theories.
The US has already sent strong signals to rebel leader Guy Phillipe who had declared himself head of the military but who had to back down when the US flexed its muscles. P.J. Patterson and CARICOM will not have to worry about sitting down at table with Guy Philippe and other goons like Louis-Jodel Chamlain, former death-squad leader and Butteur Matayer, head of the Revolutionary Anti-Aristide Front, and another terrorist.
The US will do everything now to "restore democracy" and will be working quite closely with CARICOM now that it has achieved its objective of shoving Aristide from power. Incidentally, I do not buy Aristide's claim that the US kidnapped him and forcibly removed him from the country. It seems obvious that the US made it quite clear that it could not guarantee his safety and that he was strongly advised to leave. I believe the US story that Aristide himself, knowing that he could not prevent massive bloodshed, perhaps including his own, asked the US for safe passage.
The claim that he was abducted was a face-saving device to protect his ego and appease his CARICOM colleagues who had worked so hard for his stay. Aristide sought to and has succeeded in exploiting the United States' low credibility in this post Second Iraq War era by lying about what really happened. Aristide is a realist who knows when to break vows to achieve his purposes. He knew he did not have the force to repel the rapidly advancing rebels and that no United Nations, CARICOM or U.S. forces were on their way to help him.
Now safely ensconced, ironically critics would say appropriately in a country which boasts one of the most atrocious records of human rights abuses, the Central African Republic, Aristide can fabricate his version of events to exploit sympathy and play the small-country-exploited-by-the-Big Bad-Wolf card. It has worked like a charm.
Because the Bush Administration has shattered its moral authority with its unjustified war against Iraq with no weapons of mass destruction yet to be found as well as the dishonourable history of U.S. dirty tricks against constitutionally elected governments, particularly in the Latin American region, it is not hard to believe that Aristide was kidnapped. But for a number of well-thought-out geopolitical reasons, I don't buy Aristide's story and those who disagree with me strongly have no firmer ground epistemologically to stand on than I have. We are both making a judgement without direct evidence and have to use what the philosophers called Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) until an impartial enquiry of the sort that CARICOM has called for makes its findings known.
STRONGLY SUPPORT
I strongly support CARICOM's call in light of the grave consequences of Aristide's charges. However, as the Observer editorial of Tuesday said, whether Aristide was kidnapped is not the biggest issue. The fact is his departure in the circumstances were forced and his resignation anything but voluntary in the true sense of the word. The U.S. used its diplomatic signals and its inaction to force him out.
On pragmatic grounds, the U.S. officials will claim success. Who would deny that had Aristide stayed many lives would have been lost and much property damaged?
How much is one human life worth? Should we sacrifice lives for abstract principles like constitutionalism and democracy? These are grave philosophical issues which we must face (and for which I give no answer here, mind you). Calm is returning to Haiti. The rebels are disarming. The legitimate Opposition is now prepared to work for a solution to the national crisis. And the US this time, significantly, is not acting unilaterally but, importantly, with the Great Power France, from whom it was estranged in the Iraq War. Significantly, too, the U.S. has as an ally a traditional friend of the Caribbean and no lackey of U.S. imperialism Canada. This has given considerable clout to U.S. action. To top it off, the United Nations is behind the United States this time.
But remember the United Nations Security Council rejected CARICOM's plea for intervention. A lot of attention is being focused on the U.S. because knee-jerk anti-Americanism is fashionable, but the Security Council, which does not consists of only the U.S. and France, as some pro-Aristide supporters here seem to want to foist on the ignorant, also rejected CARICOM's efforts to save Aristide.
The US will soon unfreeze the $500 million which has been pledged to Haiti and will work rapidly to get a functioning Government, and CARICOM will be right there to add legitimacy to the process. There will be no other resurrection for Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the U.S. will be pulling out all its stops to win back the favour of CARICOM.
REALIST VIEW
The fellows in the State Department have calculated the odds and feel, as realists, that the ends justify the means. This is not the world of idealists and Sunday School teachers, ladies and gentlemen.
The U.S. action, however, has left a lot of bitterness in its wake and not only among leftists in the Caribbean. The U.S. can't eat its cake and have it. It cannot speak loftily about democracy and freedom while undermining democratic processes. In other words, it cannot engage in the rhetoric of idealists and the action of realists. The New York Times on Monday said in an editorial that Bush should have sent in the Marines before Aristide's departure. It said the U.S. failure to act has left Haitians "at the mercy of some of the country's most vicious criminal gangs. The former death squad leaders and army thugs whose undisciplined forces seized power in a succession of cities are men who have never accepted democracy and who now menace Haiti's future."
The editorial mentions the fact that the rebels include two convicted murderers who "helped run an organisation that killed thousands of Haitians during military Government and a former police chief whom American officials suspect of cocaine trafficking."
The influential American newspaper says the power-sharing proposal would have "reinforced the framework for constitutional democracy." But that's the idealist school, where matters like constitutional democracy, the rule of law and sovereignty mean a lot. The Machiavellians think otherwise.
In a blistering column in London's Guardian newspaper on Tuesday ("Why they had to crush Aristide") political scientist Peter Hallward said Aristide was punished because he never bowed to "commercial interests" and refused to indiscriminately privatise state resources and rejected IMF demands for cuts in wages education and health. "Worst of all, he remained indelibly associated with what's left of a genuine popular movement for political and economic empowerment. The 'threat of a good example' solicits measures of retaliation that bear no relation to the strategic or economic importance of the country in question. This is why the leaders of the world have joined together to crush democracy in the name of democracy."
MORAL HIGH GROUND
It is clear that the United States did not take the moral high ground with Haiti. Despite the failures of Aristide and there were many, including human rights abuses because he accepted the CARICOM power-sharing proposal he should have been facilitated in the interest of Haiti's fledgling democracy. But it must also be said that Aristide's failure to correct in time, the fallout from the disputed election of 2000, the subject of resolutions by the Organisation of American States (OAS) contributed to his downfall. Aristide had serious leadership weaknesses, notably a stubbornness which is admitted by the left-leaning Council on Hemispheric Affairs which has bitterly attacked the U.S. over its Haiti policy. The President of Washington's Centre for International Policy, Robert E. White, put it well: "Aristide is an immensely talented man with no talent for compromise."
It is that serious leadership flaw which contributed to his lack of credibility with the Opposition and civil society groups.
It must also be said that the Opposition groups have been obstructionist in many instances and have failed to co-operate with the Government in enabling Aristide to fulfil the obligations under OAS Resolution 1831.
The Opposition kept refusing to participate, charging that the security provisions demanded by the OAS were not being provided by Aristide. Disastrously low social capital is at the base of the political crisis in Haiti. U.S. spokespersons have not been as honest and as open in criticising the Opposition groups for the major role they played in sabotaging Haiti's chance of democracy.
One person who has come out shining in this crisis is Jamaica's P.J. Patterson, Chairman of CARICOM. His brilliance as a negotiator and his sophistication and balance as a statesman and regionalist have stood CARICOM in good stead. The power-sharing proposal he brokered was the finest in the circumstances and was even accepted by the U.S. at first. His measured statements on the issue since the Aristide departure, his recommendations and his clear commitment to philosophical ideals should make all Jamaicans proud.
In a world where principles are expendable for expediency, Jamaica dares to be different.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can send your comments to ianboyne1@yahoo.com.
