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BILL MOYERS:
There is a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti as we speak. How is it going?
JAMES DOBBINS:
Not terribly well. They've been somewhat timid. The U.S. has declined to provide troops. The U.S. provided the core of the troops for the U.N. force in the mid-1990s. The other countries have not had the credibility to secure compliance without using force in the way the United States probably would have been able to do, and was able to do in the mid-1990s, and haven't been willing to use force as aggressively as the deteriorating security situation might require.
BILL MOYERS:
Didn't the U.N. come to the U.S. government recently and ask for some American troops to be sent there to reinforce the U.N. mission?
JAMES DOBBINS:
They did and reportedly, the American ambassador in Haiti also endorsed that recommendation. The administration decided not to. Given the difficulties of manning the operation in Iraq, it's easy to understand why they were reluctant to commit even a small force to Haiti.
But, I suspect that the experience of the mid-1990s also colored their views. They're reluctant to walk down the same road Bill Clinton did after having criticized him so bitterly during that period.
BILL MOYERS:
You can certainly understand the White House's reluctance to grab what is a tar baby. When you go in there you've got to stay long enough, and we don't seem to have -- the United States doesn't seem to have patience for Haiti.
JAMES DOBBINS:
We never have really. I mean we have gone in for fairly extended periods. I think in the 1920s the Marines went in and we stayed there a reasonably substantial amount of time. But, it's always a transient commitment. And, then it slips down in our priorities and stays fairly far down.
BILL MOYERS:
Which brings me back to nation-building. You and your colleagues at RAND have written what I would call a nation-building manual for dummies like me. But, would you, for the sake of the audience and for me, define exactly what are the steps of nation-building? What is nation-building? How do we know when we see it?
JAMES DOBBINS:
Well, we define nation-building as the use of armed force in the aftermath of a conflict to bring about a transition to democracy. So, there's three criteria. One is you're using armed force. There's an element of compulsion involved. Second is it's in the aftermath of a conflict. Now, we've discovered in Afghanistan and Iraq that some conflicts are more over than others. But, at least it's in the aftermath of a conventional conflict. And, thirdly that the object, the reason that you're using armed force in this situation is to bring about a transition to democracy.
The steps that one needs to take for this are first of all to establish some basic level of security so that goods and people and ideas can move around the society free of intimidation. Secondly, to build up the institutions for local governance -- not to substitute for them, but to build up the capacity of the society to govern itself.
Thirdly, to create an environment in which commerce can begin to resume, in which goods and services can begin to be traded, in which international trade can resume. And fourthly, to begin to promote a process of political reform, democratization, stimulating the growth of political parties, free press, civic society. And, finally, and lastly really in priority, economic development as it's normally thought of. The first task is not to make these societies prosperous. The first just is to make them peaceful and then democratic in the hopes that prosperity will ultimately develop if they make appropriate economic choices.
BILL MOYERS:
So, you need to have security in order to grow a rule of law?
JAMES DOBBINS:
Security is prerequisite for all of the subsequent steps. Economic assistance, growth of political parties, civil society elections will all be washed away like sandcastles on a beach if you haven't established a basically secure environment in which people, goods and ideas can circulate free of gross intimidation.
BILL MOYERS:
If you could wave the nation-building wand, and have America do what you think would work, what would it be right now?
JAMES DOBBINS:
Well, I think as regards Haiti you first have to resolve the divisions in Washington. Haiti is a polarized society, as you saw in the film. But, American policy toward Haiti has been just as polarized. And the polarizations in American attitudes toward Haiti reinforce the polarizations within Haitian society.
BILL MOYERS:
And, how do you see that polarization on our part?
JAMES DOBBINS:
I think that for a decade it circulated around the figure of President Aristide. Democrats were prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. He had been democratically elected. There was a feeling that he should be reinstalled and allowed to serve out his term. Most Republicans were bitterly opposed to the 1994 intervention. Congress changed hands just a few weeks after the intervention went forward, which diminished the support that the administration could get from Congress at the time. It was very controversial and you sort of had a reversal. Of course more recently when Aristide was driven out of power, when the United States -- according to some in the Congress, particularly in the Black Caucus in the Congress -- was complicit in that.
And, you sort of had a reversal of fields. I personally think Aristide bears the principal responsibility for Haiti's failure to take advantages of the possibilities offered by the international intervention in the mid-1990s and I don't think that even most Democrats were sorry to see him go, although many of them were sorry in the manner of his going.
But, I still think that there's a polarized debate within Washington over Haiti. And, I think until Democrats and Republicans can agree on an approach to Haiti any individual administration is going to find its capacity to influence events there very limited.
BILL MOYERS:
If partisanship is supposed to stop at the water's edge, and let's say it did, what might the U.S. do?
JAMES DOBBINS:
I think that you need a fairly long term commitment. I think it should be under U.N. leadership, but with strong U.S. backing and participation.
BILL MOYERS:
A military occupation you mean?
JAMES DOBBINS:
Well, you have a military occupation at the moment in effect. It's not called that. It's called a peacekeeping mission, and I think the term "occupation" fell out of usage after 1945, and we should've kept it out of usage. An international peace enforcement action, if you will, but a stronger force with significant U.S. participation. A much more substantial effort at economic development in the country.
And, the recognition that one election won't create a sustainable democracy, that you're going to have to create a pattern over time of free elections and peaceful transitions from one party to the next. So, I think a decade would be a reasonable timeframe to assess for this.
I think a significant increase in the assistance. I mean, it's pretty remarkable that Iraq in the first year after the U.S. intervention got a 100 times more economic assistance than Haiti got after the first year of the U.S. intervention in Haiti.
BILL MOYERS:
So, if I hear you correctly, Mr. Dobbins, You're saying that the first step is to put enough force in there to maintain order. But, can an outside society do that in a country with, as you've already said, its own unique 200 years of history? Could the United States prevail with military force in Haiti over a decade?
JAMES DOBBINS:
Well, you have to go with and not against the prevailing trends within the society. The United States succeeded in the 1994 to 1996 period in establishing a very high level of security in the country -- not ideal. There was still criminality, and there was even some political violence and indeed several political assassinations. But, the numbers were extremely limited by comparison with what we're seeing today, or what we were seeing before the intervention. Haiti is not Iraq. It's not Somalia. It's not Afghanistan. This is not a population that's heavily armed and employs violence routinely. It's a society of victims, and they're victimized by a relatively small class of armed criminals, thugs and people who are prepared to use violence for political ends.
BILL MOYERS:
How do they get away with it?
JAMES DOBBINS:
They get away with it because the state is very weak. It's incapable of imposing a monopoly of force. And because the international community is loath to become too deeply embroiled in what, as you've noted, is widely regarded as a tar baby.
BILL MOYERS:
But, we seem to have no patience for Haiti.
JAMES DOBBINS:
Well, we tried so many times, and failed so many times that it's not surprising that there's a certain weariness.
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James Dobbins, International Security and Defense Policy Center, RAND Corporation
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