This week the Clinton administration lets fly the last arrow in its quiver of economic sanctions against Haiti, a ban on commercial flights, aimed at toppling the country's military rulers and returning ousted President Jean Bertrand Aristide to power. U.S. officials remain optimistic that sanctions will work: William Gray, President Clinton's special adviser on Haiti, says that there are "signs of cracks" in support for the regime.
But realities in Port-au-Prince suggest a different story. The Haitian Army's stockpiles will allow it to hold out while the rest of the country suffers under sanctions. The regime remains defiant, answering sanctions with a state of emergency and harassment of international officials. "They're still convinced Clinton won't invade," says a local businessman.
Still, military action may prove unavoidable, in large part because the Clinton administration has so defined the Haiti issue that if the military leaders do not leave the island, Washington will be all but forced to drive them out. Pentagon and senior administration officials acknowledge stepped-up preparations for a possible U.S.-led military intervention in Haiti, which could come as early as the end of July, sources say. "President Clinton has determined that our interests require the restoration of the democratic process in Haiti," Gray told Congress recently. "No option is excluded."
New mantra. In Washington, that kind of talk can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Today, says a State Department official, "no one is telling their superiors that they're against the new mantra of intervention." Ongoing U.S. military exercises in the Caribbean have created the impression among Haiti's neighbors that intervention is imminent.
The administration has also increased its demands. A U.S.-backed resolution approved last month by the United Nations requires the resignation not only of coup leader Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras but of Chief of Staff Philippe Biamby and Col. Michel Francois, key figures in the military junta. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott has said that Biamby and Francois must "leave the island." But by targeting all three, the administration has united them, making a coup within the military against Cedras less likely.
Meanwhile, the planned size of a peacekeeping force that would arrive after the coup leaders depart has ballooned to over 6,000, far more than the 1,257 authorized under a peace accord last year. And Talbott recently said that this mission "will provide for essential civil order on the island" -- a steep escalation from the original professed aim, to train Haitian security forces.
Top administration officials dealing with Haiti see the backward nation as a pushover. Gray's deputy, James Dobbins, says the problems of Bosnia and North Korea are more intractable, whereas Haiti "is nearby, small, an area of traditional American interest where others look to us for leadership." At the moment, the direction of that leadership is toward conflict.
