Los Angeles Times Interview : Robert Rotberg : Can Order Come to Haiti After Two Centuries of Chaos?

On July 28, 1915, a force of 330 U.S. Marines invaded Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Their stated aim--to bring stability to a country in chaos. They met little resistance and quickly secured the capital. The only casualties were two Marines killed by friendly fire. While few Americans may be aware of this event in our history, even the poorest Haitian knows most of the details.

The Marines stayed for 19 years. They built a few roads, strung a few power and telephone lines and installed a series of puppet governments. Yet, they did almost nothing to develop the country’s political, social and economic potential. Haiti remained the basket case of the Caribbean.

A far more formidable U.S. force now stands ready to return to Haiti, though it’s doubtful they’ll meet much more opposition than did their great-grandfathers. And the Haiti they will find is not much different from the country of 1915--still the poorest country in the hemisphere, overpopulated, undereducated and fully disorganized.

The onetime French colony won its independence in 1804, when former slave Toussaint L’Ouverture led a rebellion against the French planters. It would be almost two centuries before Haitians could choose their own leader in a democratic election. In 1989, 70% of Haitian voters cast their ballot for a 40-year-old Catholic priest and proponent of liberation theology, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Aristide’s Marxist rhetoric--”capitalism is poison”--upset the Haitian elite, along with many in the United States. Only nine months after taking office, Aristide was ousted in a coup organized by the man he’d chosen to head Haiti’s military, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras.

In the years since the coup, Haiti has endured a U.N.-sponsored embargo. Aristide has rejected several attempts at a compromise that could have installed a new government. Meanwhile, reports from Haiti tell of murder, rape and atrocity, and thousands of Haitian boat people have risked their lives to flee their country. With President Bill Clinton committed to restoring the Aristide government at gunpoint, the question now becomes: Can Haiti--mired in two centuries of indigence and neglect--be saved?

Robert Rotberg isn’t sure, but he’s convinced we must try. The president of the Cambridge, Mass.-based World Peace Foundation and a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Rotberg, 59, is author of “Haiti: The Politics of Squalor.” Just after Clinton presented his Oval Office speech to the nation Thursday, Rotberg discussed the troubled history of Haiti and his hopes for the most downtrodden nation in the New World.

Question: Let’s start in the 18th Century--what was going on in Haiti under French colonialism?

Answer: At that time, Haiti was perhaps the richest colony in the world. It was France’s most prosperous colony and outranked any of the British colonies. This wealth was almost entirely based on growing sugar with slave labor. Slaves began to arrive in Haiti in the 16th Century and by the middle of the 18th Century, Haiti was producing more sugar than any place in the world, and had a pretty good coffee crop as well.

Q: What precipitated the revolution in 1803, and how violent--how bloody--a revolution was it?

A: That revolution actually began a few years before, brought on primarily by the French Revolution--if France could get rid of kings, then shouldn’t a French colony be able to get rid of France? The revolt was led primarily by recently enslaved Africans; some had hardly been in Haiti for more than a year or two.

It was a very bloody and violent overthrow. The slaves were very badly treated--sugar cane is very hard to harvest, and the French planters were particularly cruel. So the revolution was the natural result of the bad treatment, along with the liberating philosophy of the French Revolution.

Q: Is it fair to say that Haiti never totally made the transition from colony to nation?

A: Yes; in Haiti, the revolution was aimed at throwing out the colonial powers and not at building a nation. There was the continuing threat of reinvasion by the French. The result was a series of governments which were, in many ways, as autocratic as the colonial rulers they replaced.

From the time of the revolution, well into the 20th Century, Haiti has remained a country in a state of perpetual emergency. What happened was that the entire agricultural basis of the country was altered by the revolution and its aftermath. The majority of the inhabitants were no longer willing to cultivate sugar or coffee. Instead, they grew food crops for their own consumption, and the economy of Haiti became one of subsistence. That may be fine, but it didn’t contribute to any kind of funds that would develop the country as a whole.

Q: What were the events leading up to the U.S. invasion in 1915?

A: The country had been persisting in instability, living off coffee that was mostly grown wild. The people in the rural areas simply went about their business of subsistence, and the people in the cities plundered the countryside and installed presidents. Between 1908 and 1915, there were seven presidents and about 20 uprisings and insurrections. The government had run out of money and was borrowing from anyone who would lend it money--including the First National City Bank of New York. When a newly installed president was literally torn limb from limb by a mob in Port-au-Prince, the U.S. Marines used the opportunity to invade the city.

Q: What was President Woodrow Wilson’s stated reason for the invasion, and what was popular feeling about it?

A: There were three unstated reasons. The First National City Bank had funneled millions of dollars into Haiti and it wasn’t getting its loans paid back. Then there was a worry during World War I that the Germans might come in and colonize Haiti--which would threaten the Windward Passage and the Panama Canal. Finally, the U.S. was protecting its market. The U.S. supplied about 60% of Haiti’s imports. That was only about 2% of U.S. exports, but there were some American companies who cared a great deal about what was going on in Haiti.

As far as public opinion, I’m not sure there was much popular debate about the subject. The U.S. was very busy enforcing the Monroe Doctrine during that time--there were troops in plenty of other places as well.

Wilson’s stated reason for the invasion was that intervention in the affairs of smaller countries represented a legitimate exercise of American power, because the aims of the intervention were demonstrably progressive. Wilson wanted to improve Haiti, and his motives were the usual Wilsonian mixture of doing good and also being strategic.

Q: What are the parallels and the differences between 1915 and now, vis-a-vis the relationship of Haiti and the U.S.?

A: Now, we are about to invade to reinstall a democratically elected president--the only democratically elected president Haiti has ever known--and we would do it to return democracy to Haiti. In 1915, we were not interested in promoting internal democracy. We did not enter on behalf of an elected Haitian government, as in today’s case.

Although we occupied the country for almost two decades, we didn’t train a civil service, didn’t improve agriculture and didn’t develop a political culture which could outlast the American occupation. In fact, the Marine occupation simply prepared Haiti for a renewal of dictatorship and instability.

Q: Did the occupation engender a lasting anti-American feeling among Haitians?

A: No, I think that is often overdrawn. Certainly, the occupation was never popular in Haiti, and because the Marines did little to improve the country, Haitians were glad to see them leave. But the upcoming invasion will be popular and the Marines will get a warm welcome this time. We will be pushing out a vicious junta which is much opposed by the mass of Haitians. That was not the case in 1915.

The only opposition to the current invasion will come from the commercial elite in Haiti. Everybody who’s not profiting from the situation right now will welcome the Americans.

Q: Many people consider Aristide a Marxist and would term him anti-American. He’s certainly proved to be inflexible in many ways. Is there any irony in this government using its considerable force to reinstall into office a man so vocal in his condemnation of our country?

A: Before he was elected in 1990, Aristide was very anti-American. I think he had very little experience in politics and in government. I believe that anti-Americanism quickly gave way to a more realistic appraisal of who were his friends and who were his enemies and how he could best govern Haiti. Since he’s been ousted, some of his strongest supporters have been Americans. I think he’s aware of that, and will continue to be aware of that when he resumes office.

Q: Will he be able to maintain control, and if so, will he step down and allow an election in 1996, as President Clinton outlined in his speech?

A: He has said that he will not stand in that election as a candidate. Perhaps he will go back on that and run if the people demand it. But I believe there will be elections in 1996, as President Clinton promised.

Can Aristide run the country? No, not without substantial help from the United States, Canada and other countries, and not without a 10-year period of systematic assistance and training for all parts of the government, the military and so on. The amount of money this will cost is relatively small. Haiti is the size of Maryland and is, by far, the poorest country in the hemisphere--a little goes a long way in Haiti.

Q: Does Haiti hold any strategic value for this country?

A: No, if by strategic value you mean it’s geographically or militarily strategic. It has no oil or precious resources. Why Haiti is important to our self-interest is that it represents the denial of democracy to the people of a country who fought very hard for it, elected a president and had it taken away. Democracy in this hemisphere is a precious commodity. The more we can maintain democracy in small countries, the better it is for the United States.

Q: What’s your prescription for Haiti?

A: I think the invasion should be over within a matter of hours or days. Then there’s just some mopping up. Bring all but 1,000 troops home after a week. There’s not going to be much of a guerrilla response--1,000 troops will be enough to ensure stability. There’s no popular support for any anti-Aristide uprising. President Aristide would have to be protected for a time, but I think a new army could be trained to put down any civil insurrection.

That’s the easy part. The hard part is developing a political culture in Haiti and jump-starting the economy, which has been destroyed--what little there was--by the embargo. And providing some level of hope, security, health and education for the people.

Most Americans are probably not aware that in a country only 650 miles from Miami, less than 15% of the population can read. We should not be proud of that at the end of the 20th Century. So my prescription would call for 10 years of retraining--we need Americans, Canadians and others who speak French to train people so they can reinvigorate their country. It will be a long, tough slog--I don’t want to minimize that--but for Haiti it is the last best chance we have.

Our job is not to do everything for the Haitians--that was what was wrong with the Marine occupation. Our job is to build capacity in Haiti so that they can do it themselves. And the fortunate thing is that--unlike in 1915 and unlike in 1971, when longtime dictator Papa Doc Duvalier died--there are now thousands of Haitians living in this country who are anxious to go back to Haiti and help their country. They represent its greatest resource. These people have skills and are trained, and if only a small portion return home, they are Haiti’s best hope.