Wide Angle . Unfinished Country . Transcript

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August 23, 2005: James Dobbins, former U.S. Special Envoy to Haiti, discusses social, political, and economic development in the struggling country with Anchor, Bill Moyers. BILL MOYERS: As special envoy for both the Clinton and Bush administrations, James Dobbins has supervised peacekeeping and nation-building operations in Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. He is now Director of the International Security and Defense Center at the RAND Corporation. Thank you for joining us on WIDE ANGLE. JAMES DOBBINS: Pleasure to be here. BILL MOYERS: So, what did you think as you watched that film? JAMES DOBBINS: Well, the film kind of leaves you wondering, as it probably was intended to do what, what's going to happen, whether they're going to make it. I think it dramatizes the divisions in Haitian society -- the weakness of the state, the difficulties of achieving anything and the basic uncertainty that hangs over this election and the whole future of the country. BILL MOYERS: The statistics are so mind numbing -- the poorest country in the hemisphere, three-quarters of the people living in poverty, the third highest rate of hunger in the world, half the population unable to read and write, the highest rate of AIDS in Latin America. I mean, is this a country, or just one more of history's basket cases? JAMES DOBBINS: Well, it's a country, and it's right on our doorstep and it's a scandal. But, it's definitely a society with a strong sense of its own identity. In many ways it's preserved its culture more than most of the societies of the Caribbean have. It's been less penetrated by globalism and American popular culture. Haitians are very successful immigrants when they come to the United States. BILL MOYERS: There are, what, half a million of them here? JAMES DOBBINS: At least. And, they're hard working. They're family oriented. They place a high value on education. They move economically as they stay longer -- sort of classic successful immigrants. In their own society, it's a basket case. BILL MOYERS: But, given these qualities that you just described, why is it a scandal? JAMES DOBBINS: I think that the society had been heavily corrupted through really two centuries of gross neglect. It was the second independent country in the Western hemisphere. Its revolution succeeded that of the United States by about 30 years. And yet, the United States refused to recognize it for more than half a century, refused to have any relations with it whatsoever. France imposed a huge indemnity on it for damages caused during the revolution, which bankrupted an already poor society in the beginnings of the 19th century. Even when the United States finally did recognize it and begin to have diplomatic relations, it was often neglected. It's had occasional brief moments of interest in Washington and in the United States, but they've petered out very quickly. BILL MOYERS: Is it always because it's a nation of black people? Do you think racism was a factor? JAMES DOBBINS: Well, racism was certainly a factor in the 19th century. I mean, I think that that was certainly the reason why the United States refused to recognize it, why Haiti was excluded from the family of nations for more than half a century after it gained its independence. And that kind of neglect and exclusion -- on the one hand it's built up a very strong indigenous culture, arts, language ... BILL MOYERS: We never hear about those. JAMES DOBBINS: Right. On the other hand, it's led to a very introverted society that didn't experience the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution or any of the other movements of the 19th and 20th century. BILL MOYERS: How do you explain the spiral of violence? I mean, if I remember correctly, only two of the 44 administrations in those 200 years have been peaceful transitions. There's just one violent upheaval after another through the two centuries. JAMES DOBBINS: Well, I think that presents a somewhat skewed picture of the country. It's not a violent country. But, the majority of the Haitian people are poor, unarmed, passive. And, the fact that Aristide could be overthrown and the country taken over by a group of rebels who never numbered more than 200 or 300 is an indication of how weak the institutions of the state were. The state has not been able to preserve the monopoly on force because it has been so weak. Force is routinely used as part of the political dialogue, if you will, but, it's precisely the ability of small numbers of armed individuals to tyrannize a society of essentially passive and certainly non-threatening peasants and increasingly urban slum dwellers that characterizes the society. It's not like Somalia or even Iraq where ... BILL MOYERS: How so? JAMES DOBBINS: ... you know, everybody has a Kalashnikov in their basement and no pickup truck is complete without a 50 caliber machinegun on their back. It's not that kind of place. BILL MOYERS: Yet there have been hundreds of people killed violently this year, and there are something like 14, 15, 16 kidnappings a day, I read, on the streets of Port-au-Prince. JAMES DOBBINS: I think the criminality has become more serious. The figures for deaths were actually higher in the early 1990s, leading up to the Clinton administration's intervention in 1994 where up to 1,500 were being killed every year in politically-related violence. The numbers are not that high. On the other hand, common criminality has probably increased because of the chaotic situation, the weakness of the government, and frankly the relative timidity of the international peacekeeping force that's there. BILL MOYERS: You were President Clinton's envoy to Haiti a decade ago. You had your chance to tackle these problems and yet ten years later, there's so little to show for what you and the administration did. What went wrong? JAMES DOBBINS: I've asked myself that any number of times. I mean, in many ways the 1994 to 1996 intervention was a model of its kind. We got very strong international backing for the intervention, broad international participation. The bulk of the Haitian people were wildly ecstatic and positive about the intervention. We set a series of very clear benchmarks. We achieved all of them. We left on schedule. We held local elections. We held national elections. We installed new democratically elected mayors, legislators and a new president. And we left, and a decade later it doesn't seem to have made any difference at all. I guess I would say that it was leaving ... BILL MOYERS: After two years? JAMES DOBBINS: ... after only two years that was our fundamental mistake. BILL MOYERS: What would it have taken? How many years might it have taken to bring the order to the society that would have enabled what you and your colleagues at the RAND Corporation have written about recently -- nation-building? What would it have taken? JAMES DOBBINS: Well, we've never seen one of these operations succeed in less than seven or eight years -- at least, none of the ones that the U.S. has been involved in. BILL MOYERS: You mean interventions? JAMES DOBBINS: Nation-building operations, which we define as the use of armed force in the aftermath of a conflict to help bring about a transition to democracy -- the sort of thing we did in Germany and Japan after the Second World War, the sort of things we tried to do in Somalia and Haiti, the sorts of things that we've succeeded somewhat better in doing in Bosnia and Kosovo and that we're still trying to do in Afghanistan and Iraq. BILL MOYERS: Is there a country or two that is closer to Haiti in its terrible conditions that has been a success that has turned around? JAMES DOBBINS: There are a number. They tend to be ones where the U.N. rather than the United States was the lead actor. The best example would be Sierra Leone, for instance, which is probably even more of a basket case than Haiti -- much higher levels of violence and intimidation in the society -- which was as the result of U.N. intervention, backed up largely by Great Britain, turned around. They've held democratic elections. It's peaceful. It's not a model society, but they're not killing each other and they are being governed by a democratically elected government.

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James Dobbins, International Security and Defense Policy Center, RAND Corporation