The 1994 Haiti intervention: A unilateral operation in multilateral Clothes

Abstract

Observers of United States (US) interventions have almost universally characterized the 1994 Haiti intervention as multilateral, a model for how international cooperation can achieve common security goals. A closer analysis of the intervention reveals that the planning and execution of the intervention were almost entirely unilateral and therefore cost the US few if any of the theoretical costs of coalition warfare, including interoperability and policy compromise. Mapped onto the unilateral strategy and operation of the intervention, however, was a multilateral diplomatic effort that secured United Nations Security Council authorization and provided a cover for an intervention that the US had already planned and intended to execute with or without that authorization. That the US sought a multilateral cover for an intervention that it could easily accomplish unilaterally shows the importance of two factors: A domestic audience that opposed unilateral peacekeeping but would accept using US resources as part of a broader multilateral operation, and a local population that would be more responsive to a multilateral coalition than a use of force that was perceived to be unilateral. The Haiti intervention shows that the determinants of success in operations other than war are as much political as military. When the US already has overwhelming military superiority vis-à-vis its adversary, building military coalitions becomes as much about enlisting political support as aggregating material capability.

Key words:

• Interventions
• multilateralism
• coalitions
• international organizations

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Richard Betts, Stephen Biddle, Daniel Byman, Gustavo Flores, Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Walter Kretchik, Tony Lake, Alexander Lennon, and Thomas Mahnken for their comments on this research. Any errors or shortcomings are my responsibility.

Notes

¹George H.W. Bush, ‘Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit’, 11 Sept. 1990; available at <http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/papers/1990/90091101.html>.

²Strobe Talbott, ‘Status Quo Ante: The United States and its Allies,’ in Joseph S. Nye and Roger Smith (eds.), After the Storm: Lessons from the Gulf War (Lanham, MD: Madison Books 1992), Ch. 1, 3 – 30; 4.

³Prior to the Gulf War, the only intervention that had been formally multilateral was the Korean War, which received UN authorization only because of a Soviet boycott of the Security Council on the day of the vote. Most other interventions during the Cold War took place outside the UN Security Council and usually according to a ‘sphere of influence’ modus operandi in which the great powers were at liberty to act unilaterally in pursuit of their interests. What emerged in the post-Cold War environment was a greater emphasis on multilateralism, both through the UNSC but in terms of representation from countries other than those with direct strategic interests. Countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan, for example, became highly participatory in multilateral interventions even in regions in which they had an indirect interest (e.g., Pakistani participation in Somalia or Bangladeshi participation in Haiti). Increased multilateralism after the Cold War is well documented; Andrea Kathryn Talentino documents the post Cold War increase in multilateralism as 356 per cent compared to those during the Cold War. See Military Intervention after the Cold War: The Evolution of Theory and Practice (Athens, OH: Ohio UP 2005). Martha Finnemore also documents the post-Cold War proliferation of multilateralism compared to the ‘spheres of influence’ system in The Purpose of Intervention (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2003).

⁴David Malone, ‘Haiti and the International Community: A Case Study,’ Survival 39/2 (Summer 1997), 126 – 46.

⁵Expected utility theory of international conflict assumes that ‘one nation's probability of success in a contest with another nation (or coalition of nations) is a direct, positive function of each relevant nation's power compared to that of each other relevant nation’. See Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, ‘An Expected Utility Theory of International Conflict’, American Political Science Review 74/4 (Dec. 1980), 917 – 31; 918.

⁶See Talentino, Military Intervention after the Cold War, 32.

⁷Carl von Clausewitz, ‘Superiority in Numbers’, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton UP 1989), 194 – 7.

⁸Paul Cornish and Geoffrey Edwards, ‘The Strategic Culture of the European Union: A Progress Report’, International Affairs 81/4 (2005), 801 – 20. Similar arguments have been made in Seth G. Jones, Jeremy M. Wilson, Andrew Rathmell and K. Jack Riley, Establishing Law and Order after Conflict (Arlington, VA: RAND Corp. 2005).

⁹On the legitimacy of multilateralism, see specifically Finnemore, Purpose of Intervention.

¹⁰G. John Ikenberry and Charles A. Kupchan, ‘Liberal Realism: The Foundations of a Democratic Foreign Policy’, The National Interest 77 (Fall 2004), 38 – 49.

¹¹In the context of Darfur, for example, a NATO peacekeeping mission may be considered a tool of neo-imperialism because of Africa's colonial past. (See, e.g., Samantha Power, ‘The Void: Why the Movement Needs Help,’ The New Republic, (15 May 2006)). If this is the case, a UN peacekeeping mission may offer a more objective tool for peacekeeping than the largely Western-only force NATO can offer.

¹²Robyn Read, ‘Coalition Warfare: Coordination and Planning Options’ (Maxwell AFB, ALA: Airpower Research Institute 2003).

¹³James D. Morrow, ‘Arms versus Allies: Tradeoffs in the Search for Security,’ International Organization 47/2 (Spring 1993), 207 – 33; 208.

¹⁴Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: McGraw-Hill 1979), 166.

¹⁵Paul A. Papayoanou, ‘Intra-Alliance Bargaining and US Bosnia Policy’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 41/1 (Feb. 1997), 91 – 116.

¹⁶James D. Morrow, ‘Alliances and Asymmetry: An Alternative to the Capability Aggregation Model of Alliances,’ American Journal of Political Science 35/4 (Nov. 1991), 904 – 33.

¹⁷Morrow, ‘Arms versus Allies’, 231.

¹⁸David C. Gompert and Uwe Nerlich, ‘Shoulder to Shoulder: The Road to US-European Military Cooperation: A German-American Analysis’, (Arlington, VA: RAND Corp. 2002), 2. After action reports on Kosovo drew similar conclusions about the impact of the US-European capability gap on interoperability. See John E. Peters, Stuart E. Johnson, Nora Bensahel, Timothy Liston, and Traci Williams, European Contributions to Operation Allied Force: Implications for Transatlantic Cooperation, (Arlington, VA: RAND Corp. 2001).

¹⁹‘Allied Contributions to the Common Defense’, A Report to the United States Congress by the Secretary of Defense (March 2001) <http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/allied_contrib2001/index.htm>.

²⁰As a result of the capability gap between the US and its partners, Rumsfeld notes that ‘we did a couple of other things I think that were helpful. One was we said there's not a single coalition. Had there been, that coalition, the first person that peeled off on something they wanted to do, we would have said it's crumbling, it's all over, we've lost the coalition. So we from the get-go said look, there are floating coalition, and the mission's going to determine the coalition. The coalition is not going to determine the mission because it will dumb down everything to the lowest common denominator. So as people help in one way and not in another way we have been fortunate.’ See Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld news transcript (16 Nov. 2001) <www.dod.mil/transcripts/2001/t11212001_t1116sun.html>.

²¹Lisa Martin, ‘Interests, Power, and Multilateralism’, International Organization 46/4 (Autumn 1992), 765 – 92; 792.

²²Philippe R. Girard, Clinton in Haiti (New York, NY: Palgrave 2004), 75.

²³Michael Rubner, ‘The Reagan Administration, the 1973 War Powers Resolution, and the Invasion of Grenada’, Political Science Quarterly 100/4 (Winter 1985 – 86), 627 – 47.

²⁴Stuart Taylor, Jr, ‘Legality of Grenada Attack Disputed’, New York Times, 26 Oct. 1983, A19; for other analysis questioning the legality of the Grenada intervention, see Detlev Vagts, ‘International Law under Time Pressure: Grading the Grenada Take-Home Examination’, American Journal of International Law 78/1 (Jan. 1984), 169 – 72; Maurice Waters, ‘The Invasion of Grenada, 1983, and the Collapse of Legal Norms’, Journal of Peace Research 23/3 (Sept. 1986), 229 – 46.

²⁵‘A UN License to Invade Haiti’, New York Times, 2 Aug. 1994, A20.

²⁶It should also be noted that some legal scholars have suggested that the request for intervention by Haiti's democratically elected but exiled government provided sufficient grounds for a unilateral intervention by the US; see Simon Chesterman, Just War or Just Peace? Humanitarian Intervention and International Law (New York: OUP 2003).

²⁷Hans Schmidt, The US Occupation of Haiti, 1915 – 1934 (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers UP 1995), 6.

²⁸Mary A. Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of US Imperialism, 1915 – 1940 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press 2001); see also Chetan Kumar, ‘Sustaining Peace in War-Torn Societies: Lessons from the Haitian Experience’, in William J. Lahneman (ed.), Military Intervention: Cases in Context for the Twenty-First Century (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2004), 105 – 32.

²⁹Kumar, ‘Sustaining Peace in War-Torn Societies’, 110.

³⁰See the State Department's statement on the Good Neighbor Policy available at <www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/id/17341.htm>.

³¹Schmidt, US Occupation of Haiti, 6.

³²See Malone, ‘Haiti and the International Community’, 131.

³³In particular, the Congressional Black Caucus applied the most political pressure on the Clinton administration, charging that the pre-intervention policies were tantamount to racism and a holocaust. See Girard, Clinton in Haiti, 91.

³⁴See ibid., 74.

³⁵See Alex Thompson, ‘Screening Power: International Organizations as Informative Agents’, in D. Hawkins, D. Lake, D. Nielson and M. Tierney (eds.), Delegation and Agency in International Organizations (Cambridge, UK: CUP 2006) Ch. 8; 872.

³⁶Richard L. Millett, ‘Panama and Haiti’, in Jeremy R. Azrael and Emil A. Payin (eds.), US and Russian Policymaking with Respect to the Use of Force (Arlington, VA: RAND Corp. 1996).

³⁷See, for example, Girard, Clinton in Haiti, 39. Girard writes of Clinton's efforts to build on the ‘new world order’ spirit of his predecessor, President George H. W. Bush.

³⁸Admiral Miller, quoted in Walter E. Kretchik ‘Planning for ‘Intervasion’: The Strategic and Operational Setting for Uphold Democracy’ in Invasion, Intervention, ‘Intervasion’: A Concise History of the U.S. Army in Operation Uphold Democracy (Ft Leavenworth, KS: Command and General Staff College Press 1998).

³⁹Kretchik, Invasion, Intervention, ‘Intervasion’, Ch. 2.

⁴⁰Chetan Kumar and Elizabeth M. Cousens, ‘IPA Policy Briefing: Peacebuilding in Haiti’, <www.ipacademy.org/Publications/Reports/Research/PublRepoReseHaitPrint.htm>.

⁴¹Kretchik, Invasion, Intervention, ‘Intervasion’, Ch. 2.

⁴²For a thorough analysis of the effect of domestic politics and lobbying on the decision to intervene, see Girard, Clinton in Haiti, 61 – 102.

⁴³Ronald H. Cole, ‘Grenada, Panama, Haiti’, Joint Force Quarterly (Autumn – Winter 1998/99), 57 – 64; see specifically 62 – 3.

⁴⁴Kretchik, Invasion, Intervention, ‘Intervasion’, Ch. 2.

⁴⁵Richard Haass, The Use of American Military Force in the Post-Cold War World (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press 1999), 25.

⁴⁶‘Still a US Invasion. Still Wrong’, New York Times, 2 Sept. 1994, A24.

⁴⁷Kretchik, Invasion, Intervention, ‘Intervasion’, Ch. 2.

⁴⁸Haass, Intervention, 158.

⁴⁹Cole, ‘Grenada, Panama, Haiti’, 63.

⁵⁰See Figure 7, ‘Multinational Force, Haiti, October 15, 1994’, in Invasion, Intervention, ‘Intervasion’, Ch. 2.

⁵¹See Table 4, ‘MNF, Haiti, January 13, 1995’ in Invasion, Intervention, ‘Intervasion’, Ch. 2.

⁵²Girard, Clinton in Haiti, 76.

⁵³Ibid., 206, note 1.

⁵⁴David Malone, for example, has argued that Haiti shows the value of taking a ‘multilateral route to promoting national interests’ in ‘Haiti and the International Community’, 126.

⁵⁵These states constituted the ‘Friends of the Secretary-General of Haiti’ or simply the ‘Friends of Haiti’ group that periodically convened to discuss potential actions regarding Haiti <www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/1982.htm>.

⁵⁶Talentino attributes the increase in post-Cold War multilateralism to self-interest cloaked in multilateral cover as a potential critique of her explanation but dismisses it by connecting the US unilateral action to a broader multilateral process. By using Haiti as an example, I suggest that at least this intervention was indeed self-interest cloaked in the flag of an international organization. Talentino, Military Intervention after the Cold War, 29.

⁵⁷Frederick Rawski and Nathan Miller, ‘The United States in the Security Council: A Faustian Bargain?’ in David M. Malone, The UN Security Council: From the Cold War to the 21st Century (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2004) Ch. 24, 359.

⁵⁸President Bush issued an Executive Order that would exempt US-effected industries from the embargo. See Malone, ‘Haiti and the International Community’, 129.

⁵⁹Kumar, ‘Sustaining Peace in War-Torn Societies’, 115.

⁶⁰See President's Letter to Congress on Policy Toward Haiti, 25 April 1994, <www.ibiblio.org/pub/archives/whitehouse-papers/1994/Apr/1994-04-25-Presidents-Letter-on-Haitian-Policy>

⁶¹Ian Martin, ‘Haiti: Mangled Multilateralism,’ Foreign Policy 95 (Summer 1994), 72 – 89.

⁶²See Malone, ‘Haiti and the International Community’, 131.

⁶³Kumar, ‘Sustaining Peace in War-Torn Societies’, 115.

⁶⁴‘A UN Licence to Invade Haiti’, New York Times, 2 Aug. 1994, A20.

⁶⁵Robert Pastor, for example, argues that UN authorization and international cooperation for a democracy mission was a unprecedented event for the UN and international cooperation in general. ‘See Restoring Democracy to Haiti’, in Dana Francis (ed.), Mediating Deadly Conflict: Lessons from Afghanistan, Burundi, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Haiti, Israel/Palestine, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Sri Lanka (Cambridge, MA: World Peace Foundation 1998), 6 – 20 (see 8).

⁶⁶Ruth Wedgwood makes a similar argument about power politics and UNSC paralysis in ‘Unilateral Action in a Multilateral World’, in Stewart Patrick and Shepard Forman, Multilateralism and US Foreign Policy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2001), Ch. 7, 167 – 89.

⁶⁷Malone, UN Security Council, 8.

⁶⁸Through a formal model and theoretical logic, Erik Voeten has effectively shown that the combination of capability and a willingness to operate unilaterally actually creates more opportunities for multilateralism; other parties would prefer to have some rather than no influence over US behavior. See ‘Outside Options and the Logic of Security Council Action’, American Political Science Review, 95/4 (Dec., 2001), 845 – 8.

⁶⁹Kretchik, Invasion, Intervention, ‘Intervasion’, Ch. 2.

⁷⁰Bob Woodward, The Commanders (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster 2002), 170 – 171.

⁷¹Steven Livingston, Clarifying the CNN Effect (Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy School of Government 1997), 4.

⁷²Foreign policy restraint is defined as the use of force to coerce an aggressive state; internal political change is defined as changing the political regime within another state via the use of force; humanitarian intervention is the use of military power to assist in providing relief in cases of famine (e.g., Somalia); these categories rest on the argument that the principle policy objective (PPO) of an intervention affects the degree of public support. See both of the following: Bruce W. Jentleson, ‘The Pretty Prudent Public: Post Post-Vietnam American Opinion on the Use of Military Force’, International Studies Quarterly 36/1 (March 1992), 49 – 73; Bruce Jentleson and Rebecca Britton, ‘Still Pretty Prudent: Post-Cold War American Public Opinion on the Use of Military Force’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 42/4 (Aug. 1998), 395 – 417.

⁷³See Jentleson and Britton, ‘Still Pretty Prudent’, 395 – 417.

⁷⁴For interventions in which the US expects its vital interests are targeted, preferences for unilateralism versus multilateralism are virtually indistinguishable. See Jentleson and Britton, ‘Still Pretty Prudent’, 406 – 7.

⁷⁵For public opinion data across interventions, see the following sources: Richard Eichenberg, ‘Victory Has Many Friends: US Public Opinion and the Use of Force, 1981 – 2005’, International Security 30/1 (Summer 2005), 140 – 77, 147; see also Jentleson and Britton, ‘Still Pretty Prudent’.

⁷⁶For an excellent treatment of public support for the Haiti intervention, see Kenneth Schultz, esp. Fig. 2 (multilateralism and support for the Haiti operation, 1994), 122. ‘Tying Hands and Washing Hands’, in Daniel Drezner (ed.), Locating the Proper Authorities: The Interaction of Domestic and International Institutions, Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press 2003), 121.

⁷⁷Tony Lake, the National Security Advisor to President Clinton, suggests that multilateralism offered domestic legitimacy in the US and offered a way to gain the US public's advocacy; personal interview with Prof. Lake on 30 May 2006.

⁷⁸Kenneth Schultz neatly captures the distinction between unilateral and multilateral support for the Haiti intervention in ‘Tying Hands, Washing Hands, and Dragging Feet’, 122.

⁸¹Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, ‘Statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’, 9 March 1995. Available at <http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/bureaus/lat/1995/950309TalbottHaiti.html>.

⁷⁹In Eichenberg, ‘Victory has many friends,’ the level of public support for various interventions is compared in Table 2. The Lebanon intervention of 1982 – 84, for example, had a low level of support, 40 percent, but was undertaken in spite of this. It should be noted, however, that after the attacks on the Marine barracks in 1983, the US quickly withdrew the troops, in large part because of low levels of public support.

⁸⁰Eric V. Larson and Bogdan Savych, ‘American Public Support for US Military Operations from Mogadishu to Baghdad’, (Arlington, VA: RAND Corp. 2005), 1.

⁸³J-7 ‘Operational Plans and Interoperability Directorate, Military Operations other than War’, 3.

⁸²Kretchik, Invasion, Intervention, ‘Intervasion’, Ch. 2.

⁸⁴As recently as the year before, the US had experienced the consequences of not being accepted by the local community. In Mogadishu, the locals had viewed the Americans as invaders rather than liberators, thus reducing their willingness to accept US/Coalition stabilization efforts.

⁸⁵Tony Lake cites the need for an ‘international face’ on the intervention as a way to increase the likelihood of acceptance by the local government. Personal interview, 30 May 2006.

⁸⁶Richard Haass discusses some of these trends in Intervention, 12.

⁸⁷This finding confirms the speculation of Ruth Wedgwood, who suggests that ‘there is a potential difference between operations and authorization. The military execution of multilateral mandates may have a single country at its center’ yet the overall intervention may be authorized by a multilateral organization. The Haiti example confirms Wedgwood's hypothesis, 175.

⁸⁸Thomas E. Ricks, ‘Situation Called Dire in West Iraq: Anbar is Lost Politically, Marine Analyst Says’, Washington Post, 11 Sept. 2006, A01.