Returning to Haiti : Is It All Over for the Monroe Doctrine?

‘No, I don’t despair, I don’t believe in despair, but our problems won’t be solved by the Marines. I’m not sure I wouldn’t fight for Papa Doc if the Marines came. At least he’s Haitian. No, the job has to be done with our own hands. We are an evil slum floating a few miles from Florida, and no American will help us with arms or money or counsel. We learned a few years back what their counsel meant.’- Graham Greene, ‘The Comedians’ 1966

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July 28: Under orders from Washington, U.S. Marines land in Haiti. July 31: After losing two men to sniper fire, U.S. forces proceed to disarm Haitians. Sept. 3: The U.S. commander declares martial law, announces he is “invested with the power and responsibility of government in all functions.” Sept. 16: Haitian puppet officials agree to treaty giving the United States the authority to maintain “a government adequate for the protection of life, property and individual liberty.” This chronology is not a prediction, but a summary of real events in the year 1915.

In 1994, as in 1915, Haiti is wracked by deadly political violence. Today’s rulers are contemptuous of democracy and human rights. They have not been moved by a punishing economic embargo. They have spurned the efforts of the United States and others to negotiate a political settlement leading to the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. And now U.S. naval vessels are gathering near Haiti and the Marines are practicing amphibious operations. William H. Gray III, the Clinton Administration’s special adviser on Haitian affairs, says no invasion is “imminent,” but defines imminent as a matter of “hours or days.”

Thus, with the strong possibility that history may be repeated, it is useful to explore the past, noting how much has changed in the relations of the United States and Haiti in 80 years--and how much remains the same. A comparison will not provide a solution to the Clinton Administration’s difficulty, but it will clarify the nature of U.S. interests.

Early in the 20th Century, the Monroe Doctrine, with its attached corollaries, was the guiding principle for U.S. security in the Western Hemisphere. It held that the United States would oppose all European interference with the independent republics of the Americas. But the political turbulence and fiscal irresponsibility of several countries in the Caribbean basin--Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and Haiti--seemed to invite European intervention. The United States was particularly fearful that Germany might obtain a naval base threatening the sea lanes to the Panama Canal, then under construction.

President Theodore Roosevelt came up with a solution in 1904--known as the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. He declared that civilized nations everywhere in the world should exercise “an international police power” toward countries engaging in “chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society.”

In the Western Hemisphere, that responsibility belonged to the United States. Under the Roosevelt corollary, the United States first established a protectorate over the Dominican Republic, Haiti’s neighbor on the island of Hispaniola.

In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson added the establishment and protection of democracy as a goal of Latin American policy. The next year, the issues of democracy, “chronic wrongdoing” and U.S. national security came together in Haiti. The Haitian government was little more than a succession of military chieftains. Haiti was in debt to foreign investors. Germany appeared to be interested in settling debts in return for a base at Mole St. Nicolas, a harbor overlooking the passage between Haiti and Cuba. The United States, invoking the Monroe Doctrine, declared it would not tolerate “a foothold” by any other power in Haiti.

By January, 1914, normal conditions in Haiti--meaning constant fighting and changes of regime--led the Wilson Administration to demand the country’s leaders follow democratic procedures and protect the life and property of Americans and other foreigners. A small force of Marines, about 120 men, landed and remained briefly in Port-au-Prince to emphasize American seriousness. But nothing changed. This month’s revolutionary leader became next month’s president--and ex-president the month after.

In March, 1915, Gen. Vilburn Guillaume Sam seized power and arrested large numbers of the opposition. The Guillaume government lasted until July 28--murdering 167 political prisoners in its last moments. Sam took refuge in the French legation. The U.S. charge in Haiti reported what happened: “At 10:30, mob invaded French legation, took out president, killed and dismembered him before legation gates. Hysterical crowds parading streets with portions of his body on poles. U.S.S. Washington entering harbor.”

Instructions went immediately to Adm. William B. Caperton to land the Marines. Germany was out of the picture because of the great European war, but the United States told the French and British not to even consider landing troops. The United States would look out for the interests of their nationals. The Monroe Doctrine was alive and well.

Soon, Port-au-Prince was under U.S. control, and 19 years of American occupation and military government had begun. The young assistant secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, sailed down to see how his boys were doing and later boasted that he wrote Haiti’s new constitution and it was “a pretty good constitution, too.”

In 1934, Roosevelt was President and, as part of the Good Neighbor policy and in the absence of a European threat to American strategic interests, withdrew U.S. troops from Haiti.

Fast-forward to the present. Haiti was a backwater during the Cold War. The CIA monitored possible communist influence, but found little. From 1957 to 1986, Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier, ruled Haiti through terror and corruption. Haiti, never prosperous, was the poorest country in the hemisphere. An increasing number of the people sought to emigrate to the United States. After a succession of presidents, reminiscent of 1913-15, Aristide was elected president in a free election in 1991. But he was overthrown later that year by the military group now in power.

Terror is again the order of the day. Theodore Roosevelt and Wilson would have no trouble finding grounds for sending back the Marines. But the strategic arguments for intervention under the Monroe Doctrine are gone--along with the Monroe Doctrine itself. Not even the most perfervid American patriot can find a foreign threat. No Germany, or Soviet Union, or any power wants a naval base in Haiti. Where formerly, under the Monroe Doctrine, the United States excluded first the League of Nations and then the United Nations from a political role in the hemisphere, now the U.N. presence is welcomed by Washington.

Roosevelt and Wilson had no qualms about using the U.S. government as an international policeman, whether to combat “chronic wrongdoing” or support democracy. But U.S. experience as a policeman since the end of the Cold War has not won broad support in Congress or with the public. Policeman has become a forbidden word in U.S. foreign policy.

Today, as in 1915, the United States has to consider the alternatives to intervention, but faces difficulties not present in the past. The desperate flight of thousands and thousands of Haitian refugees in their overcrowded and unseaworthy wooden sloops is new. Also new are the self-inflicted wounds on America’s better conscience when these desperate people are turned back or gathered in the equivalent of detention camps. The other side of the coin is the political cost to any U.S. Administration of admitting large number of Haitians to the United States.

In 1915, before radio and TV, the American public received only delayed and attenuated accounts of conditions in Haiti. Today, we see on television the equivalent of President Sam’s body parts being carried on the ends of poles. Such instant, vivid images may lead some Americans to favor intervention, but, on balance, they are probably a deterrent.

And what of support for democracy and human rights? It is easy to cite the historical record and say the U.S. intervention of 1915-34 did nothing for those ideals. But neither has nonintervention.

The 1915 intervention involved a question larger than Haiti. Wilson and his advisers asked what would be the consequences for region, the United States and international stability if the bloody chaos of Haiti was left unattended. One can argue whether their answers were sound--but at least they tried to look at the big picture and act decisively.*