[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 136 (Monday, September 26, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 26, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                         ``OUT OF HAITI--FAST''

  Mr. BOREN. Mr. President, Sunday's Washington Post included an 
excellent article on the situation in Haiti by former Secretary of 
State Henry Kissinger. Dr. Kissinger is right on target abut past 
failures of our policy and what needs to be done from this point 
forward. It merits thoughtful consideration by all Members of Congress 
and the administration. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of 
the article be reprinted in the Congressional Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                           Out of Haiti--Fast

       The ink was barely dry on the agreement negotiated by 
     President Carter's team in Haiti when second-guessing 
     developed. It came as a shock to many that the administration 
     postponed its proclaimed goal of over-throwing the junta and 
     that the landing in Haiti was brought about with the 
     cooperation of leaders described by President Clinton as mass 
     murderers only 72 hours earlier.
       But the criticism should focus not so much on the 
     culmination of the crisis as on the policy that left no other 
     option except military invasion by a high-tech superpower of 
     a practically unarmed country and the poorest nation of the 
     Western Hemisphere. The agreement negotiated by the Carter 
     team saves American and Haitian lives, removes the Haitian 
     junta, albeit with a slight delay, and returns the deposed 
     elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to power, sacrificing 
     only grandiloquent statements that should never have been 
     made. Most important, the brief interval in which these 
     changes take place provides an opportunity for sober 
     reflection about just how deeply America should launch itself 
     into the Haitian morass.
       In my view, any prolonged military occupation must be 
     avoided; another attempt at nation-building will trap us in 
     an endless enterprise before it ends in a fiasco. Too much 
     has already been staked; some relationship between means and 
     ends must be reestablished.
       The basic dilemmas of postwar American foreign policy have 
     been the result of enterprises undertaken lightly, with 
     little if any opposition, and from which extrication proved 
     hellishly difficult. The Carter mission has eased the entry 
     of American troops--a success that is also an admission 
     ticket to the far more complex danger of American forces 
     finding themselves engulfed in the passions and conflicts of 
     Haitian factions much more practiced in violence than in 
     pluralism and which may yet undermine the agreement. A 
     prolonged U.S. military occupation of Haiti would almost 
     guarantee that the hatreds accumulated over decades would 
     overwhelm the purposes for which we entered.
       I have always had grave doubts about military intervention 
     to restore Aristide. That America should favor an elected 
     president over the murderous junta was inherent in our 
     values, and justified diplomatic pressure and embargoes of 
     the kind that had, after all, contributed to the overthrow of 
     the Duvalier dictatorship. But American lives should be 
     risked only when there is a demonstrable threat to the 
     national security, on behalf of clearly defined objectives 
     and with forces proportionate to the objective.
       The administration policy failed all three tests. Haiti 
     posed no conceivable direct threat. Contrary to 
     administration statements, the junta represented no model any 
     Western Hemisphere nation might be tempted to follow. The 
     stated objectives were vague, and the force deployed was 
     disproportionate to any sensible goal. When CNN shows daily 
     briefings by the press officer of the American Embassy in 
     Port-au-Prince describing locations from which to view the 
     planned invasion of the country to which he was accredited 
     and promising the arrival of additional personnel to 
     handle the overflow demand for invasion coverage, the 
     argument that the threat represented by Haiti cannot wait 
     for the operation of less drastic measures becomes hardly 
     plausible. (Moreover, it raises the question of how to 
     curb public relations efforts whose proconsular character 
     undermines America's relations with the other nations of 
     this hemisphere.)
       Ambassador Madeleine Albright's invocation of moral 
     absolutes that transcend all practical considerations is 
     belied by the actual record. The administration did not 
     intervene in Bosnia or Rwanda, where the atrocities were far 
     greater; in Rwanda, President Clinton stood apart from 
     genocide with the argument that America could not serve as 
     the world's policeman and that it had no national interest in 
     that part of Africa. The current administration, like any 
     other, cannot escape the need for selectivity.
       Thus the principal achievement of the Carter mission is 
     that it provides a graceful exit from becoming engulfed in 
     the vortex of Haitian domestic politics. It is senseless to 
     talk of the ``restoration'' of democracy in a country that 
     has never known democracy, or to equate the fact that 
     Aristide was elected with a certificate of democratic 
     practices--as Sen. Nunn has wisely pointed out. To turn Haiti 
     into a pluralistic society may take a decade or more and 
     cannot be achieved by military occupation.
       Even the limited task of disarming Haiti's armed forces 
     implies difficult decisions: How, when and by whom is the 
     army to be disarmed or restrained? To whom do we provide 
     protection once Aristide is back in power? What precisely are 
     the terms of the amnesty and which parliament approves it--
     the existing one or that emerging from future elections? Will 
     Aristide abide by the amnesty despite his opposition, and 
     what is America's obligation to enforce the Carter agreement?
       Nor can the dilemmas of a prolonged military operation be 
     avoided by turning nation-building over to the United 
     Nations. I hope that President Clinton was speaking 
     euphemistically when he presented America's policy on Haiti 
     as reflecting some kind of international political consensus. 
     For the international support we elicited was a tribute to 
     America's power, not to its purposes. With the exception of 
     Argentina, it included not a single major country of Latin 
     America. Most of the nations participating from outside the 
     hemisphere do so because of the economic strength of the 
     United States, as a quid pro quo for past or future American 
     security assistance, or to gain some influence over actions 
     they far from approve. Neither Bangladesh nor Israel has 
     heretofore exhibited any major political and security 
     interests in the Caribbean. Thus there is no other group to 
     which this assignment can be turned over. International 
     support of a military occupation may provide a few 
     auxiliaries and a modicum of financial help. But in the 
     real world, the military occupation of Haiti will remain 
     America's problem.
       The artificial nature of this international support has 
     already levied an exorbitant toll. One of the most hallowed 
     principles of American foreign policy has been to keep the 
     military power of other continents out of the Western 
     Hemisphere. From the Monroe Doctrine to the 1947 Rio Treaty 
     setting up a collective security system for the Western 
     Hemisphere and in the decades since, every U.S. 
     administration has insisted that hemispheric problems be 
     settled by the nations of this hemisphere. Yet the 
     administration recoiled from involving the institution 
     specifically designed for that purpose--the Organization of 
     American States--because it realized that our partners in 
     this hemisphere would never approve military intervention, 
     though they would and did support diplomatic and economic 
     measures short of it. Appealing for the military assistance 
     of nations outside the hemisphere on an inter-American issue 
     sets a precedent that future American administrations may 
     well come to regret.
       Another such booby trap inherent in the Security Council 
     resolution authorizing the use of force for the purpose of 
     replacing the Haitian junta, a resolution that passed with 
     Russian support. The precedent for Moscow's ambitions in what 
     Russia calls the ``near abroad'' is hard to miss--the 
     worrisome policy of forcing the republics of the former 
     Soviet Union to return to the imperial fold. That this tacit 
     quid pro quo is understood in Washington is reflected in 
     pronouncements by Ambassador Albright and President Clinton 
     stating that each major power has a special responsibility 
     for peace-keeping and stability in ``its own back yard.''
       It is a dangerous doctrine. America's actions in Haiti, 
     however ill-advised, do not affect overall security. 
     America's interventions in this hemisphere have been short-
     lived; Russia's military advances have tended to be 
     permanent. They are certain to rekindle ancient fears and 
     tensions. Three conclusions follow.
       America's military presence in Haiti ought to be brought to 
     a rapid conclusion, preferably by the end of this year. We 
     will have restored an elected president. By then, we will 
     have disarmed or neutralized those Haitian armed forces 
     threatening his rule. Aristide should be able to maintain 
     himself after that by his own efforts, helped by generous 
     American economic aid.
       If our armed forces stay beyond this mandate, they will 
     either become spectators in a bloody spectacle or 
     participants in struggles where it may not be easy to tell 
     which side to back--rebellious crowds or forces appearing in 
     the guise of law and order. In the end, even Aristide will 
     turn on the United States, if only to demonstrate that he is 
     a genuine nationalist and not America's instrument--a 
     tendency already implicit in his conduct.
       Once America forces--except for a small training mission--
     are withdrawn, the remaining tasks can be assigned to inter-
     American institutions, which, when freed of the Latin 
     American fear of U.S. military intervention, could prove 
     quite effective. Governmental reform could be assigned to the 
     OAS, economic assistance to the inter-American financial 
     institutions--backed up, of course, by a continuing U.S. 
     interest.
       The Haitian crisis provides an occasion for the 
     administration to review the practices that have produced 
     such stark alternatives and such and obsession with public 
     relations. Symbolic of these tendencies is the decision to 
     launch the 82nd Airborne Division while American emissaries 
     were still on the ground in Haiti. Given the possibility of 
     glitches in any military operation, which was the hurry? What 
     if the Haitian junta had not yielded, the attack had 
     proceeded, and Carter's plane had blown a tire on takeoff? 
     What if the junta, learning of the launch--as it is said to 
     have done--had taken the American delegation as hostages? 
     Surely there was no need for surprise when the projected 
     landing sites could be seen on television. If the purpose was 
     to land before Congress could pass a resolution of 
     disapproval the next day, the enterprise marked an 
     astonishing disintegration of the executive-congressional 
     relationship.
       It is painful to come to such conclusions while a military 
     operation is underway. But the greatest risk we now face is 
     an open-ended commitment of military forces to tasks for 
     which they are not designed. The greatest need is a 
     bipartisan reassessment of our foreign policy and above all a 
     prudent definition of the circumstances in which American 
     power is to be engaged.

                          ____________________