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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.