PERSPECTIVE ON HAITI : The Pledge We Made Is Awaiting Action : We took the initiative to restore democracy and other nations agreed; if that requires military action, so be it.

“Always expect a miracle,” says the Haitian proverb, and after almost three years of floundering and indecision, it does seem miraculous to see Washington’s Haiti policy take on coherence and momentum.

In response to the crisis in Haiti, the world divides into three parts. First are those who over the years have cheered on every intervention in Central America and the Caribbean but self-righteously draw the line at the possibility of military action to restore Haiti’s first freely elected president. Second are those liberals whose distrust of American power is so deep-seated that they would sacrifice the Haitian people’s first chance at democracy on the altar of nonintervention. In the third category are those who find it unacceptable that a gang of uniformed drug traffickers can hijack a country and defy the expressed will of the world community.

Among those publicly wringing their hands over the prospect of effective action to restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide are several of the chief foreign-policy architects of the past Administration, including President Bush himself. They must have forgotten that in the immediate aftermath of the Haiti coup, they pledged that the United States would act as decisively against gangster rule in Haiti as it had three years earlier in Panama--only this time in concert with other democracies of the hemisphere. On Oct. 3, 1991, with Secretary of State James A. Baker III in the lead, the Organization of American States unanimously voted an embargo until President Aristide was returned to power. Within a few weeks, however, the Bush Administration caved in to pressures and unilaterally weakened the sanctions to permit oil to go to Haiti for American-owned assembly plants. This action cut the heart out of the embargo and sent a thumbs-up, business-as-usual signal from Washington to the military power-grabbers.

Should President Clinton succeed in restoring constitutional government in Haiti, he will have accomplished that most difficult of diplomatic tasks: the rescue of a failed policy inherited from a previous administration.

Members of the second and third categories have more in common. They recognize that lack of democracy has been the major cause of internal conflict in Latin America and the Caribbean and they want the United States to take the lead in restoring constitutional government to Haiti.

Both groups recognize that during his seven months in office, President Aristide accepted free-market policies and raised half a billion dollars in grants and concessionary loans to restore economic growth and promote Haiti’s social development. They acknowledge that Aristide, like just about every other honorable person in Haiti, lacked governing experience and made his share of mistakes--a few of them serious. Yet, as Pamela Constable aptly points out in Foreign Policy magazine, “Aristide’s policies posed little immediate danger to the social order--much to the disappointment of his more radical followers.” He was overthrown not because of a few disputed offenses against democracy or human rights but because he insisted that the rich pay taxes and that the military put an end to its drug trafficking.

President Clinton should do more to make clear that his policy to restore constitutional government to Haiti transcends the personality of any one leader, that he is committed to the principle that elected government must not be trampled on by the forces of terror, and that democratic leaders both inside and outside Haiti deserve our respect and effective support. He should educate his post-Cold War warriors to the fact that any popular leader overwhelmingly voted into office in the hemisphere’s poorest country will do things that will make power holders, both in Haiti and in Washington, uncomfortable. This, however, should be accepted and harnessed constructively to rebuild a country that has been made into a political and ecological disaster by the selfish behavior of its elites.

Although members of the second and third categories have all this and more in common, they divide over one fundamental issue: the use of military force as a last resort. To the purists, nonintervention is the most sacred principle of international law, a precept they believe was routinely violated by the Reagan and Bush administrations. This group is intent on opposing any action that might serve as a precedent for future military-minded presidents.

Those of the third category believe that if the world is to be made a safer place, the answer must be found in the responsible and restrained use of American power. The challenge is not to run away from power but to use it for worthy causes in concert with other nations.

In El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada and Panama, Presidents Reagan and Bush ignored the OAS. These unilateral interventions set back the cause of effective regional action to strengthen the hemispheric commitment to constitutional government.

In the case of Haiti, President Clinton went to the United Nations when he decided that worldwide measures, including an embargo, were needed. The United Nations then negotiated a pact signed by President Aristide and Gen. Raoul Cedras providing for the prompt return of the constitutional president. In his first action as special envoy for Haiti, William Gray traveled to Caribbean countries to consult on a common course of action.

Writing in the Nation, Christopher Hitchens flays his fellow idealists for refusing to recognize that diplomacy without the threat of force is idle, for putting “the preservation of their virginity” above the need to cleanse Haiti of junta rule. Concealed under this flippancy is an important principle. Once a nation takes the lead in persuading the international community to impose sanctions in order to force an illegitimate regime to cede power, that government is morally bound to see that policy through to success.

Those who oppose intervention after other measures have failed must learn to distinguish between the unilateral big stick and the responsible exercise of power within a multilateral framework. Once a pact is signed, those who assumed responsibility for conducting the negotiations--in this case the United Nations, the OAS and the United States--must insist on compliance. Accountability, not nonintervention, is the basic principle of foreign policy.