Taking Note
LaRamée, Pierre
Haiti: The New Old Policy The Clinton Administration's announcement in early May of a dramatic shift in its Haiti policy appeared at first glance to signal that the government had resolved to...
...Whereas senior policy advisors had informed me, at the end of January, that the embargo against the military regime in Haiti was "stronger even than that against Cuba," Clinton was now proposing to give the embargo real teeth by including the previously exempt U.S.-owned assembly plants, sealing the Dominican border, and freezing the assets of Haitian military leaders...
...Further limiting the effectiveness of the new embargo, the assets only of the top officers in the Haitian military have been frozen...
...Haiti: The New Old Policy The Clinton Administration's announcement in early May of a dramatic shift in its Haiti policy appeared at first glance to signal that the government had resolved to live up to its promise to restore democracy in Haiti...
...The new posture seems designed to deflect criticism, and to keep the original policy intact...
...Now, in what appeared to be the most substantive shift, military intervention-albeit as a last resort-was openly proposed...
...Although it might indeed end the bloodletting, the main purpose of any military action would be to get the original policy back on track...
...The Haitian military and police would have been left largely intact, and the Lavalas movement, already weakened by repression, would have been progressively marginalized by massive U.S...
...And, as icing on the cake, a "surgical" intervention might pay Clinton, as it did Reagan and Bush, the political dividends of an easy military victory...
...Clinton was now proposing to allow offshore hearings to ensure due process for applicants...
...The Governor's Island Accord was tailor-made to meet these objectives...
...Now Clinton has to hope that the tough new posture will force the putschists to allow him to save face, by agreeing to an eleventh-hour return of the deposed president and the holding of elections in 1995 from which Aristide would be constitutionally barred...
...Asylum hearings have been permitted outside of Haiti but only on board a special ship anchored off Kingston, Jamaica, and at a beach site on the Turks and Caicos Islands...
...and preventing, at all costs, a massive exodus to South Florida of Haitian refugees...
...The fly in the ointment was the intransigence not, as alleged, of Aristide, but of the U.S.-trained and funded military...
...To begin with, Lawrence Pezullo, Clinton's point-man on Haiti, was replaced as special envoy by William Gray, a former ranking member of the Congressional Black Caucus with no previous foreign-service experience...
...Balaguer promised to cooperate in exchange for U.S...
...promises to disregard massive fraud in his recent reelection...
...Furthermore, only three months prior to the policy shift, the very idea of using military intervention to restore democracy to Haiti had been categorically dismissed...
...funding for right-wing organizations and political parties...
...If not, unilateral military intervention by the United States, for which the ground is already being laid, might be the only recourse...
...These developments notwithstanding, it has become gradually apparent that both the policy itself and the way it is being implemented remain constant...
...TransAfrica Executive Director Randall Robinson's highly publicized fast in protest against the refugee policy coupled with growing Congressional pressure, particularly from the Black Caucus, also required a response...
...The Administration sent Gray to ask Dominican President Joaquin Balaguer for his cooperation in closing the border...
...If the policy shift on Haiti turns out to be little more than a publicrelations offensive, why did it happen at all...
...Refugees not prescreened for a full hearing in the United States are still being summarily repatriated, and the percentage of asylum claims accepted will a priori remain the same...
...The same advisors had also claimed that the in-country asylum review process was safe and effective...
...Despite Balaguer's pledge, however, the border has not been effectively sealed...
...That policy, carried over from the Bush Administration, consists of: cultivating a "stable political center...
...In spite of mounting human rights violations, pressure for some sort of change became irresistible only when Aristide finally went on the offensive, branding the Clinton policy racist...
...maintaining access to a cheap labor force for U.S.-owned off-shore assembly plants...
...What better way to defuse and co-opt the race issue than to appoint a respected black public figure as special envoy...
...Clinton's pledge to restore Aristide to office would have been honored, but he would have served out his term with little power to carry out his original program...
...professionalizing" the police and military to reduce human rights abuses while still controlling the popular movement...
...Even though direct financial transactions and commercial flights between Haiti and the United States have been banned, these moves are at best irritants to wealthy Haitians who can still access their funds or travel to the United States via third countries...
...Despite appearances, an invasion would not be primarily to "end human rights abuses and restore democracy...
...A closer look at the change in refugee policy is even more disheartening...
Vol. 28 • July 1994 • No. 1
