(8 of 9)
All the doubts and arguments underscore the immense gamble Clinton was taking in pushing the Haiti confrontation to a crunch. By common consent in Washington, he was risking his presidency on the outcome -- and he would not necessarily win even if Carter and friends could persuade Cedras and friends to depart quietly, or even if a U.S. invasion were to succeed quickly with minimal loss of life. Either development might relieve the immediate crisis but raise the ante for the U.S. to help foster enough of a stable democracy in the unhappy island nation to prove it was not all in vain. "Haiti is not a one-day problem," acknowledges Admiral Paul Miller, head of the U.S. Atlantic Command, who will have overall charge of the U.S. forces taking over Haiti. "You have to factor the political, the military, the economic and the cultural into your planning and execution, and then figure out what is done the day after ((invasion)), the week after, the month after, the year after."
For the next 17 months or so, the U.S. must pin its hopes on Aristide. His 1990 election victory gives him an aura of legitimacy no other Haitian figure can come close to matching; the U.S. can hardly pretend to be restoring Haitian democracy if it backs anyone else. If he is a leftist and no admirer of the U.S. -- well, in a perverse way, that makes American intervention easier to defend against possible cries of Yanqui imperialism. Instead of overthrowing a populist reformer to install a military dictatorship friendly to the U.S., Washington will be doing the exact opposite.
But Aristide is a slender reed on which to lean. No one is certain whether to trust his promises of a program that sounds rather conservative. He says he intends to decentralize Haiti's government, cut the army to about 1,500 people, reduce the bloated civil service, lower tariffs and increase imports of food and other supplies the nation cannot immediately produce for itself, , concentrate on building up the private sector and court private and foreign investment. Pursuing his theme of reconciliation, last week he promised the Haitian army -- that supposed gang of murderous thugs -- that far from seeking revenge, "we will create jobs for you." But can he do it? The worry is that he does not have the temperament to succeed, and may only arouse hopes he cannot fulfill.
But suppose Aristide is assassinated? Some Cedras supporters make no secret that their intention is to kill him. The U.S., they figure, will have no one else to support and will lack the stamina to wait out a long and messy struggle. It will pull its troops out and let a dictatorship come back in, negating anything that might have been gained by pushing Cedras into exile and/or pulling off a successful invasion.
It does not have to be that way, of course. Quite the contrary; a successful restoration of Aristide in the next few weeks or so with little or no loss of American life could give Clinton great new prestige for adroit management of his worst foreign policy crisis. But the President's aides still worry that there is far more of a downside risk than an upside gain for the U.S. in Haiti. The public could well greet success with relief followed by a big yawn. Not so if things go wrong, and there will be many opportunities over the next year or so for things to go badly wrong.
CHART: NOT AVAILABLE
CREDIT: Source DIA