CLINTON’S FOREIGN POLICY,” says a friend of the president who discusses policy with him, “belies the idea that he’s always watching the polls.” Sure do es. For months, administration offIcials have been touting last year’s invasion to restore Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, but all that ended on Nove mber 11. On that day, Aristide “eulogized” a cousin who had been shot dead four days earlier as he and another politician left a bank carrying several thousand dollars in cash. Aristide exhorted his followers to “go after the people with the big guns.” A week-end of rioting ensued, in which 11 people were killed. Aristide’s own interim security units launched early-morning raids on the houses of opposition politicians.
On November 24, Aristide addressed a crowd that interrupted him with chants of “three more years!” — a reference to the possibility he might continue in power despite elections scheduled for December 17. He agreed not to run in the elections as a precondition for the U.S. invasion, and has promised to step down in favor of the election’s winner. But U.S. sources say the chanting was orchestrated by Aristide security aides. Last week, Aristide met with top cabinet advisers and legislators to discuss holding a plebiscite on whether he should remain in power.
Dealing with Aristide has been an American headache for years, but now his shenanigans are dividing Clinton’s foreign-policy team at the outset of its most diffIcult venture, in Bosnia. The president’s national security adviser Anthony Lake, and his deputy Sandy Berger, have mused that it might be better to let Aristide have his three years, especially given the economic extremism of his hand-picked successor, Rene Preval. State Department Haiti coordinator Jim Dobbins urges patience with Aristide, saying his moves must be understood in a Haitian context and that he will eventually behave as he promised.
But a large and growing group of skeptics takes a harder line. Misgivings are gravest among Adm. William Owens, the departing Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman, and Deputy Secretary of Defense John White. More surprising are the concerns of Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, a reliable domestic liberal who has been involved because Justice runs the police training program that has been the invasion’s one unqualified success. A deputy for Gorelick has expressed alarm at Aristide’s use of un-vetted police to carry out special operations outside the constitutional chain of command.
Al Gore’s national security adviser, Leon Fuerth, once an Aristide fan, has wearied of the Haitian president, says an administration source. Gore paid a visit to Port-au-Prince in October, during which Tipper Gore’s motorcade was stoned by an organized mob. But that doesn’t mean the vice president has changed direction. “Gore didn’t like that, but it wasn’t anything new to him,” says an administration source. That is, he’s always disliked Aristide. The administration has put this personal antipathy to use, deputizing Gore to deliver its harshest messages to Aristide, even in the past weeks. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott is more sympathetic to Aristide, and so ” there’s a tendency to use Gore as the bad cop and Talbott as the good cop,” says an aide to one high-level policymaker.
Aristide’s boast that if Clinton “is to have a successful 1996, I must have a successful 1995” may be correct, but he’s wrong if he thinks he can call the shots. The administration may not be able. to permit an Aristide “auto-coup” even if it wishes to. An amendment to the foreign operations appropriations bill, authored by Florida Republican Rep. Porter Goss, would cut off American aid to Haiti after March 1 of next year if there has been no succession.
So the elections will probably take place, and on February 7, Aristide will be succeeded by Preval. He’s a graduate of the Soviet Union’s Patrice Lumumba University, the world’s key training ground for international terrorism, and a veteran of the Marxist guerrilla movement in Guinea-Bissau. Three weeks after Preval’s inauguration, U.S. occupying forces will begin to withdraw as scheduled. That’s the earliest we’ll be able to tell whether President Clinton’s first venture into the headwinds of negative polls on foreign policy was a success or a failure.
By Christopher Caldwell
