Policy confronts reality: was the resolution of the Haiti crisis a victory for democracy or just for common sense?

HAITI is such a small and poor land that policy-makers can perhaps be forgiven for thinking it infinitely malleable. Is it really possible that the colossus that crushed Saddam Hussein cannot bend the Haitians to its will? So it seems, and the story is a cautionary tale.

The official American version goes something like this: Haiti had a free election in 1990 and the winner was Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He was governing Haiti under very difficult circumstances-new experiment with democracy, same old wretched poverty-when the army overthrew him, and so the U.S. sponsored an OAS embargo of commerce with Haiti. The goal was to add economic to diplomatic pressure and force the military to restore democracy to Haiti and Aristide to power.

Now, the official version continues, those pressures have resulted in a compromise agreement: the Haitian parliament is choosing a new prime minister, who will consult regularly with Aristide and prepare the way for his return from exile. This selection of a new civilian government will be rewarded with the lifting of the embargo. And with the embargo off, and calm returning to Haiti, the Haitian "boat people" can now in good conscience be sent home.

This version is not actually believed by many American officials, and it is not accurate. The U.S. Government got itself buried in a deeply flawed policy, and managed to climb out only by tacitly abandoning it.

The first American mistake was to equate Aristide and democracy. While Aristide was democratically elected, he did not rule as a democrat. He espoused and applauded mob violence against his political opponents, intimidating them, the press, the Church, and the parliament. Moreover, as the State Department Human Rights report on Haiti put it, "The Aristide Government repeatedly attempted to interfere with the judicial process or usurp it through 'mob justice.'" When the parliament met to consider a no-confidence vote against Aristide, its members were threatened with "Pere Lebrun," the Haitian term for necklacing. To oppose Aristide was to court injury or death.

All of this explains the military's and the Haitian elite's-reluctance to accept Aristide back as president.

Does this mean the military was right to overthrow him? Clearly not, but it does mean the Latin American and U.S. protestations are too simple. When U.S. and Latin diplomats said Aristide's return was the key to "restoring democracy" in Haiti, Haiti's elites knew they were either ignorant or dissembling. Of course many U.S. officials fully understood all this, but policy-once uttered by Secretary Baker himself in a stirring speech to the OAS-is policy.

The second U.S. mistake was to allow our policy to be very largely made in Latin America. To the Latins, Haiti isn't a country at all, it's a principle: No coups. The harsher the punishment of Haiti, and the sooner Aristide returns, the safer many Latin democrats will feel. The near-miss coup in Venezuela has presumably strengthened this view.

But Haiti is not just a principle, after all; it's a country filled with poverty and violence, where none of the sides has a fully defensible position. Like Algeria or Georgia today, or Germany in 1933 and Chile in 1973, it raises a difficult question: What attitude should democratic countries take toward governments that come to power in free elections, but then undermine democratic institutions? When we duck this question, we are very likely to end up with a policy that simply does not reflect reality.

The third U.S. mistake was to impose on Haiti an embargo that further impoverished the poor and led to a wave of boat people, without having much of an impact on the rich. For years the United States Government had importuned American companies to invest in Haiti and create jobs there. The embargo spoiled those investments in a flash, because the goods being produced could not be exported. The factories closed, and many will never open again.

This left the U. S. Government in the untenable position of attacking Haiti's economy, destroying jobs, creating emigrants-and then telling them "No!" when they sought a haven in this country. On the legal point the Administration was clearly right. The Haitians' case may be immensely attractive from the humanitarian point of view, for most of them seek an escape from desperate poverty. What most are not is refugees, a legal term denoting individuals who can show a well-founded fear of persecution and therefore have a right to safe haven. The key here is targeting-they are after you-and a generalized fear of violence or poverty won't do. More than one-third of all the Haitian boat people were able to convince Immigration Service officials that they had such a well-founded fear, which seems high but may be accurate. After all, emigrants are a self-selected group.

But it would be a mistake to call all the boat people refugees. That term, with its right to special treatment, should be reserved for individuals truly in fear of persecution. Alas, we will no doubt be seeing plenty of these emerging from countries around the world in the coming years, and the protections of refugee status must be maintained.

The real issue has been whether to give a sort of temporary humanitarian safe haven to any Haitian who can get to the United States. The Haitians would be so much better off that one can hardly resist. But will there be a numerical limit? Should we take only the first ten thousand, those already on Guantanamo? What about the next ten, or fifty, or one hundred thousand? Should we suspend all numerical limitation on entry of Haitians? For how long? Until Aristide is back? Until the embargo is lifted? For thirty days? Given the manifest inhumanity of creating emigrants via our embargo, the Administration's position was doomed: it had to drop the embargo unless it took the emigrants, or take the emigrants if it wanted to maintain the embargo. As Guantanamo filled up, the Pentagon began to press for an answer, and, anyway, in an election year this was a mess that had to be resolved fast.

Facing Facts

SO FACTS had to be faced, and were. The embargo was "modified," which was a signal to Haiti's political actors that the United States had decided to back away from the French and Venezuelan embrace of Aristide. Aristide figured out that he had to negotiate, and did so.

The agreement that was reached last month between Aristide and the parliament is pretty good; it emphasizes the role of the one legitimate, elected institution in Haiti, the parliament, which selects the prime minister and presumably can replace him if he performs badly. It includes an amnesty for participation in last year's coup, an unavoidable concession to the army. It leaves the army's commander in place, a good feature as-despite Aristide's hatred for him-General Cedras is more likely than any alternative candidate to keep the army under control.

And, last but not least, it states no date certain for Aristide's return. In reality, once the parliament is functioning and the embargo lifted, Aristide's return will become a steadily receding goal. He will not be back in Haiti this year, and perhaps not for many more. And here lies the agreement's weakest point: should Aristide turn against it and urge his followers into the streets, violence will rise fast, and the army will meet it with even more violence. Aristide, even in exile, thus remains a key figure, and we may all come to regret yet again that the U.S. was not more forthright during this crisis in denouncing his non-democratic methods and beliefs.

What should the United States do now? A brief study of why many White House, NSC, and Pentagon officials seemed to grasp the situation better than Mr. Baker's State Department might be in order. On the economic side, it is difficult to know how to repair the damage the embargo did, but perhaps a special program of help to investors is in order.

More important, the U.S. should continue the search for common ground among the elected Haitian parliament, the army, and the tiny but brave group of Haitian centrist democrats. The latter need our help and should get it. (Here, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti has been playing a key role, and Ambassador Adams has emerged from the recent crisis as he went into it: trusted and respected.) We should worry about the views of those democrats, not about the opinions of Aristide or his Latin American (and French) defenders. And we should make it clear that elected leaders who subvert the rule of law and assault the very democratic institutions that brought them to power will forfeit American support.

Mr. Abrams is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute.