The Political Interest the Case for Intervention

By Michael Kramer

Why remove tyrants if they won't go quickly and quietly? Because the cause is just and the costs can be reasonably predicted as acceptably low. The case for sending troops to Haiti, whether as a hostile force or as a friendly one after the dictators leave, is stronger than the rationale Bill Clinton articulated last week, which was mostly specious:

The fate of democracy elsewhere in the hemisphere is not threatened by its loss in Haiti. If it were, the region's other freely elected leaders would have gladly joined the action. Most haven't. Those who have are participating reluctantly.

Stemming a new tide of boat people could be accomplished without an incursion. The refugees could be coldly repelled, as they are now, or the poverty mostly responsible for driving them out could be mitigated by lifting the ineffective economic embargo.

"Upholding the reliability" of U.S. commitments, to use the President's words, is an especially disingenuous argument. No one can seriously doubt even Clinton's resolve to protect the nation's vital interests wherever they are truly at stake. In Haiti the credibility gap the President seeks to close is largely the result of his own dithering. Indeed, more than anything else, the current crisis can be traced to the President's capitulation to an unarmed rent-a-mob protesting the arrival of a U.S. warship last October. When the Harlan County turned away from Port-au-Prince, the junta was emboldened to break its promise to depart voluntarily.

Haiti's instability doesn't dent U.S. security. If Clinton were more confident of his leadership, he could offer a straightforward, unadorned justification for intervention, a course that would acknowledge pursuing a sympathy rather than an interest, a preference rather than a need. By building on the junta's brutality, which he mentioned last week, Clinton could have said something like this:

"The oppression of innocents offends humanity. Sadly, the murderers who rule Haiti are not unique. If we were capable of deposing all despots, we would. Surely in Bosnia, for instance, where the genocide dwarfs the atrocities in Haiti, we would act. But in my judgment the costs there would be too great. A foreign policy invested with moralism need not be consistently applied. You act where you reasonably can.

"Every action that risks American lives requires a balancing of costs and interests. I believe we can act in Haiti with minimal losses. Haiti's presence nearby does not make our mission more urgent or more just. It only makes it easier. It is mostly easy, however, because we are strong and they are weak. Haiti, then, is a doable good deed. To a considerable extent it is within our capacity to alleviate the politically based terror there. We might even help democracy flourish."

If Clinton's speech last week was wanting, the underlying idealism of his stance was eroded when he emphasized the mission's limits. Restricting his assignment would be understandable if restoring Aristide were sufficient to create a vibrant Haitian democracy. In fact, though, the nation building Clinton forswears because he fears too many in the U.S. would oppose the time, effort and risk involved is a defensible, even a mandatory task. It may be enough to give peace a chance, as Clinton contends, but history suggests Americans may wish a year from now that peacekeepers had stayed long enough to increase the odds of doing the job right.

The Administration's penchant for humanitarian fixes was coherently expressed last year when National Security Adviser Anthony Lake outlined a foreign policy of "democratic enlargement." A host of caveats accompany such a policy, Lake said, if only because, in the post-cold war era, there are "relatively few ways to convince a skeptical public that engagement abroad is a worthwhile investment." So, he concluded, distinctions will be drawn; America will "pick and choose" among prospective interventions. Lake was criticized for a woolly, unfocused left-liberalism, but in fact his views enjoy bipartisan support and reflect historical precedent. The policy of "selective engagement" favored by former Secretary of State James Baker clearly echoes Lake's insistence on "distinctions." Baker's opposition to invading Haiti means only that he would select differently.

Picking and choosing has a noble history. In numerous tests over 40 years, the cold war policy of containment was no different from the positions advocated by Lake and Baker. When Harry Truman first embraced containment, he said the U.S. would contest Soviet expansion only when the reality of U.S. power offered the prospect of a successful result.

For the next two years, the calls are Clinton's to make -- at least initially. Even those who support the President on Haiti should decry his refusal to seek Congress's authorization simply because he thought he wouldn't get it. Meanwhile, both during and after the Haiti adventure -- and even if the last-ditch diplomatic attempt to avoid a fight is successful -- the nation should debate the wisdom of humanitarian interventions. Defining America's role in the new world order -- weighing the benefits and costs of a moralistic foreign policy -- is a discussion that already has been left for too long to academics, politicians and pundits.