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

In his uphill struggle to win public backing for a U.S. invasion of Haiti, President Clinton on Thursday night offered the nation four reasons to support military 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, if ever, has a military expedition made human rights or democracy its main objectives. Bowing to the public’s doubts, Clinton tried to connect his aims to everyday concerns. He recounted a chilling list of atrocities in Haiti, including reports that children have been raped and murdered. He noted that sheltering Haitian refugees costs U.S. taxpayers $14 million a month.

“I know that the United States cannot, indeed we should not, be the world’s policeman,” he said. “But when brutality occurs close to our shores it affects our national interest and we have a responsibility to act.”

That part of Clinton’s argument has been rejected by many in the public and in Congress, including some Democrats who normally support the President.

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

Yet 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 opponents of an invasion 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 of U.S. troops after a gun battle last October in Mogadishu killed 18 U.S. troops.

In Haiti, the U.S. Navy attempted to land police trainers last fall 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.

Clinton likened his own war to his Republican predecessors’ on Thursday night, saying that a victory in Haiti “will help lead to more stability and prosperity in our region, just as our actions in Panama and Grenada did.”

But 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.

“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.