NEWS ANALYSIS : Clinton’s Call to Arms Based on U.S. Credibility

In laying out his argument for a U.S. invasion of Haiti, President Clinton on Thursday offered the nation four reasons for action: to protect Haitians’ human rights, to restore their democracy, to prevent a flood of refugees--and to preserve the United States’ own credibility.

Three of those four arguments add up to a distinctly untraditional, post-Cold War rationale for U.S. military action.

Never before has the United States gone to war to stop refugees from coming to our shores. Rarely have human rights and democracy been the central aims of a military expedition.

Perhaps because he is taking the nation to battle on such unfamiliar ground, Clinton has had little success so far in winning public support for his cause. Polls show huge majorities of the public oppose invading Haiti, and Democratic leaders in Congress admit that there is little support for the action on Capitol Hill.

But one part of Clinton’s argument, at least, appears unassailable: his fear that the credibility of the United States would be hurt if he turned away from Haiti now.

Even some of the President’s critics acknowledged that Clinton is so heavily committed to ousting Haiti’s military regime that hesitation now would make him what one Republican in Congress called “a laughingstock” both at home and abroad.

Anthony Lake, Clinton’s national security adviser, put the credibility argument at the head of his list of reasons for an invasion in a speech earlier this week:

“First is the essential reliability of the United States and the international community,” he told the Council on Foreign Relations. “Having exhausted all other remedies, we must make it clear that we mean what we say. Our actions in Haiti will send a message far beyond our region--to all who seriously threaten our interests.”

Even some foreign officials have echoed this argument. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe recently told reporters, with a hint of exasperation, that he could not quite understand why the United States has waited so long.

“The signals from the Administration have been a little bit contradictory,” he said.

To some historians, it seems ironic that Bill Clinton is using the same argument that Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon once employed to keep U.S. troops in Vietnam, a war that Clinton opposed as a young man.

“Nixon used to talk the way Clinton’s talking now,” said Stephen Ambrose, a historian at the University of New Orleans and author of a recent book on D-day. “He said the United States would be a ‘pitiful, helpless giant’ if we didn’t stay in Vietnam.”

And it is equally ironic that Clinton’s Republican opponents sometimes sound like the peaceniks of old: “Credibility lost by political bungling should not be redeemed by American blood,” Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) said this week.

Nevertheless, said political scientist Robert W. Tucker, Clinton’s credibility argument has a long and sometimes honorable pedigree.

“This is the way great powers behave,” Tucker said. “They’re not going to be defied by smaller powers. If they feel obliged to rationalize their actions, they always say it’s a matter of credibility.”

Previous Presidents have found themselves in similar positions, he noted. One was Clinton’s Republican predecessor, George Bush, who invaded Panama to topple dictator Manuel A. Noriega in 1989.

Another was Woodrow Wilson, who warned Mexican dictator Victoriano Huerta in 1914 that he was a brutal despot and should step down. Huerta refused.

“Wilson’s credibility was on the line, and he invaded Mexico,” Tucker said. (Huerta fled, and eventually landed in exile in Queens, N.Y.)

“It doesn’t matter that Clinton has created some of these problems himself,” Tucker said. “The credibility issue is still real.”

And, in the course of history, U.S. indecision in one part of the world really does affect the behavior of other governments in other parts of the world, he said.

“Nixon’s perseverance in Vietnam impressed both the Russians and the Chinese,” he said. “One shouldn’t exaggerate the effect. I don’t think if we attack Haiti the North Koreans will think we’re going to attack them, or the Bosnian Serbs will worry about American troops arriving on their shore. But it will have some effect.”

Clinton aides privately acknowledge that they believe it especially important to establish U.S. reliability in Haiti because the Administration has failed notably to maintain its credibility in earlier tests.

In Somalia, Clinton hastily announced a withdrawal for U.S. troops after a 1993 gun battle in Mogadishu killed 18 U.S. troops.

In Haiti itself, the U.S. Navy attempted to land police trainers but turned away when they encountered a band of the regime’s gunmen on the dock.

“We have some impressions to live down,” one official said. “Some of the impressions are unfair but there they are.”

Clinton is also operating under the handicap of an uncertain base of public support.

Military intervention is always unpopular before it begins--but in this case, Clinton is trying to sell an unfamiliar package of reasons.

When Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada in 1983, he pointed to that island’s leftist regime as part of the Soviet-sponsored Cold War threat to U.S. security--and he said he was rescuing a campus full of American medical students in the bargain.

When Bush invaded Panama in 1989, the Cold War was over, but he too could claim a threat to U.S. citizens, who were being harassed by Noriega’s regime.

Haiti is different. The regime there has been careful to avoid threatening any Americans. And the closest thing to a national security threat, the flood of Haitian refugees, has largely been stanched by Clinton’s own policy of sending them to “safe havens” in other parts of the Caribbean.

As for democracy and human rights, polls show that most Americans are skeptical about using military power around the world to address a seemingly endless series of challenges.

“We’re all sympathetic with the restoration of democracy in Haiti,” said Rep. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.), normally a Clinton ally. “But I cannot for the life of me see how this becomes the responsibility of the United States government.”

“Earlier Presidents could link this kind of action to the Cold War or to some kind of direct threat against U.S. citizens,” Ambrose said. “Clinton can’t do that.

“I feel some sympathy for Clinton,” he said. “He’s in a hard position here.”