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The collapse of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government in Haiti and his unseemly flight out of the country may have come as a surprise to Americans and others who were not watching closely. It could not have been unexpected by those who were. Haitian history tends to repeat itself, and after a long detour, the circle closed once again. Even the sudden occupation of the country by a multinational force headed by the U.S. Marines is not without precedent. The big question is whether this time the cycle of failure will be broken.

Aristide first came to the attention of the international community in 1986 after the fall of Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier, heir to one of the most corrupt and repressive dynasties ever to rule a Caribbean country. At first blush Aristide would seem to be the ideal person to lead a complete break with the past. A Roman Catholic priest of the Salesian order who had won a broad following in the slums of Port-au-Prince, he represented himself as everything that the Duvaliers were not--selfless, idealistic, charismatic, and a true voice of the voiceless. Elected with the support of a broad coalition of civic, church, and political groups in December 1990, he was allowed to rule for a mere nine months before the Haitian army deposed him.

After his overthrow Aristide settled in the United States, where he established a close relationship with the Clinton administration, which was persuaded to sponsor an international economic and trade embargo against the military regime. When these sanctions proved incapable of forcing the generals to step aside, the White House ordered the U.S. Eighty-second Airborne Division to invade the country. The credible threat of force succeeded where other methods failed; the military surrendered power, and Aristide returned to the presidency on the wings, figuratively and almost literally, of the U.S. military. "Democracy"--defined almost entirely by the person of Aristide--was "restored" to Haiti.[1] At that point the country dropped off the front pages of American newspapers and from the consciousness of official Washington. Meanwhile, however, Haitian history continued to roll along.

The Cult of Aristide

In no country can democracy be restored by the rule of a single individual. In Haiti, however, such propositions are far from self-evident. Aristide's strengths were apparent largely while in opposition, but in office he seemed to have no particular interest in building the institutions the country lacks, and without which it can never be a viable sovereign state. In this regard I cannot refrain from recalling a conversation I had a few years ago with René Theodore, one-time head of the Haitian Communist Party. When I asked him whether Aristide aspired to build a one-party state, he shook his head. "Not at all," he replied. "He doesn't like parties. He doesn't even want one of his own." To which I retorted, "Well, then what does he want?" He replied with an elegant flourish, "He wants a mob swirling about his person"--which is a cruel, if rigorously clinical description of Aristide's theory and practice of government.

Aristide's first presidency can be divided clearly into two periods. From his election to his overthrow by the military, he concentrated largely on dismantling much of the Duvaliste political apparatus. Little else was accomplished. Neither the president nor his cabinet had experience in governing, and they came to power with no coherent economic program. Instead radical rhetoric--nothing more than words, to be sure--had the effect of frightening the business community and foreign investors, some of whom dismantled their assembly operations, the country's only real source of income except for remittances from immigrants abroad and illicit traffic in drugs. Aristide faced an uncooperative national assembly dominated by the opposition and did not hesitate to use intimidation, threats, and even violence against political opponents. Before matters could degenerate further, the military stepped in.

The second phase followed his restoration to power in late 1994. Under pressure from the United States, Aristide tempered his inflammatory rhetoric and promised to work for national reconciliation rather than a settling of accounts. Two respected Haitian economists were brought in to develop an economic reform plan. The Haitian army was dissolved and in its place the United States and other Western hemisphere democracies lent their skills to create a supposedly non-political national police force. By January 1995 the international community had appropriated an unprecedented $1.2 billion in emergency aid and development assistance. Aristide was forced by international (read: U.S.) pressures to step down in 1995 at the end of the term for which he was originally elected, even though he had hoped to extend it sufficiently to compensate for the years lost by the military hiatus. In his place René Préval, an Aristide protégé, was elected as his successor.

Even before Préval took office, however, it was obvious that Aristide's movement--a broad coalition known as the Lavalas, derived from the Haitian Creole word "to launder"--was beginning to split apart, with many veteran followers of Aristide becoming disillusioned with his authoritarian style and refusal to listen to criticism or other points of view. In fact, by the time of Préval's election Lavalas had already split in two, with the Aristide-controlled portion renaming itself the Lavalas Family. Far more troubling, however, was the fact that many of Aristide's one-time associates now lived in mortal fear of their lives. Behind the façade of "democracy restored" and the flood of international assistance, the sinister aspects of Haitian politics were slowly reemerging.

Shades of Papa Doc

In 2000 Aristide returned to the presidency by overwhelming (but not unanimous) popular acclaim. This time, however, he was far less inclined to compromise either with his domestic critics or foreign friends. He backtracked on earlier commitments to economic reform, and the Haitian National Police virtually dissolved under the weight of its own corruption. Worse still, legislative elections held at the same time were clearly fraudulent. Several opposition candidates were murdered, and the electoral court was browbeaten into awarding ten Senate seats to Aristide's party. Ironically, Aristide would have won them in a free vote anyway. He nonetheless preferred an authoritarian solution, driving the opposition parties to boycott the national assembly and to begin organizing a national movement of opposition. That movement, the Democratic Convergence, eventually comprehended sixteen different parties and spanned the entire ideological spectrum, from followers of the Duvaliers to the Communists. For his part, Aristide increasingly relied upon gangs (the so-called chimères) to intimidate critics. The deteriorating political and human rights situation led not only the United States but France, Canada, and the European Union to suspend aid to the government.

Although Aristide has traditionally enjoyed a certain cachet in liberal and left-wing circles in Europe and the United States, his radicalism is largely for foreign consumption. In most ways his approach to Haitian politics is not very different from previous despots. Whatever loathing he may harbor for the United States or sympathies he may have for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, he is far from a revolutionary socialist, or for that matter, a socialist of any other kind.

In fact, the leader Aristide most nearly resembles is the late Dr. François Duvalier, who ruled Haiti for fourteen years and bequeathed the country to his son for another fifteen years after his death. "Papa Doc" Duvalier--a public health doctor trained in the United States--was also a genuinely popular figure at the beginning of his career. Like Aristide, he was something of a "Black Power" candidate for the presidency, an office traditionally reserved for the light-skinned, French-speaking elite. Both men were feared and loathed by Haiti's traditional upper class, though possibly for slightly different reasons. Not too much should be made of the fact that Aristide was democratically elected--so was Duvalier on the first occasion; in fact, the two are the only two Haitian chief executives ever elected in truly competitive races! Once in office neither had much use for pluralism or dialogue with opponents. Instead of Aristide's chimères, Duvalier had the Ton tons Macoute, a well-organized band of thugs who intimidated and sometimes murdered opponents.

There were and are two important differences, however. Duvalier relied upon voodoo to give his regime a true Haitian mystique and was perfectly happy to rule without international support; Aristide deploys the language of third-worldism and Afrocentrism, two ideologies that have particular resonance in certain circles in the United States. And this brings us to the principal distinction between the two men. Duvalier never had any reach into the U.S. political system; Aristide has the Black Caucus of the U.S. Congress and (for a time) had the Clinton administration. After reinstalling Aristide, however, the latter rather shamefacedly retreated into a diplomatic silence over what it had wrought. Even so, it joined Canada and France in suspending aid to the Haitian government after the fraudulent elections.

Panhandling as a Development Strategy

For the past four years the economic and social situation in Haiti has deteriorated dramatically. To hear Aristide tell it, his government was destabilized by a lack of international assistance, which starved his people into rebellion. In fact, however, since 1994 the United States alone has poured $850 million into the country, most of it funded through nongovernmental organizations. (If one took into account the cost of U.S. troop deployments to stabilize the crises until the National Police were in a situation to take over from a multinational force, or the repatriation of refugees, the figure would come closer to $3 billion.) Significant sums have also been forthcoming from Canada, France, the European Community, and the United Nations Development Program.[2] What Aristide wanted--and did not receive--was a series of blank checks made out to his government, with no questions asked. This he was never able to parlay, even out of friendly foreign governments.

No amount of humanitarian aid, of course, can push any country into "development"; what Haiti needs is political stability, the rule of law, and proper inducements to foreign and domestic investment. These were things for which Aristide and his associates had no particular taste. His political demise was therefore only a matter of time.

A Failed State but Not a Failed Nation

It goes without saying that Aristide's departure does not necessarily solve Haiti's problems--far from it. But in the short term it puts an end to two parlous situations--the breakdown of security with the proliferation of both pro- and anti-government armed bands and a food crisis of major proportions. Without doubt the provisional successor government will receive the kind of aid formerly withheld from Aristide, and a multi-national military force will assure order until the National Police can be reconstituted. One can expect, then, a period of relative calm for the next year or two, possibly longer, depending on how deeply engaged (and how financially committed) the United States and other friends of Haiti (notably France and Canada) remain.

Meanwhile Haiti's demons will not be automatically exorcised. The sheer size and breadth of the opposition to Aristide does not point in any particular direction; indeed, its very diversity suggests that in the not-too-distant future the forces that brought the president down will turn to fighting among each other, though hopefully within the framework of open, representative institutions. Certainly the present demands of the Democratic Convergence are reasonable and well within the realm of possibility--the dismantling of the chimères, a reform of the National Police, an end to impunity, and free elections under international supervision. A far more difficult task lies down the road. As Gary Pierre-Pierre, editor of New York's Haitian Times, wrote in the Wall Street Journal (March 6), the country cries out for "a strong cadre of technocrats who would . . . do the unglamorous job of nation building." If Aristide's successors do not do better, he will be back, or even if he is not, another figure similar to him will appear on the scene. Moreover, Aristide's followers, if not the former president himself, still represent an important part of the Haitian political puzzle. They presently constitute somewhere between a quarter to a third of the population, possibly even more. For democracy to work in Haiti, they cannot be ignored or pushed aside entirely.

Haiti is a curious, contradictory, but also fascinating country. It is frequently referred to as a failed state, but it is certainly not a failed nation. It is the second oldest republic in the Western hemisphere after the United States and one with a unique culture and a strong sense of identity and self. It occupies an important place in the history of African--descended peoples as a slave state that, against incredible odds, managed to liberate itself from its colonial masters and survive military attempts at reconquest and international embargo that lasted for nearly a century. Its greatest challenge now comes from within. The United States and other countries can and should help, but they cannot substitute for the efforts Haitians must make themselves. The present hiatus gives them one more chance; one can only hope they will make the best of it.

Notes

1. See my article, "What 'Operation Democracy' Restored," Commentary, May 1996.

2. These figures do not include the nearly $8 billion that entered the country from 1994 to 2004 in the form of remittances from Haitians living abroad.

Mark Falcoff is a resident scholar at AEI.