In September 1994, the United States was about to invade Haiti.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country’s first democratically elected president, had been ousted in a military coup three years earlier. Haiti had fallen into chaos. Gangs and paramilitaries terrorized the population by taking hostages, murdering dissidents and setting fire to crops. International embargoes had choked the economy and tens of thousands of people tried to immigrate to America.
But just days before the first US troops were to land in Haiti, Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a senator on the foreign affairs committee, spoke out against military intervention. He argued that the United States was going through more pressing crises — including ethnic cleansing in Bosnia — and that Haiti was not particularly important to American interests.
“I think it probably isn’t wise,” Mr Biden said of the planned invasion in an interview with television host Charlie Rose.
He added, “If Haiti — a terrible thing to say — if Haiti were to quietly sink in the Caribbean or rise 300 feet, it wouldn’t matter much in terms of our interest.”
Despite Mr Biden’s fears, the invasion continued and the Haitian military junta surrendered within hours. Aristide soon returned to power and the Clinton administration began deporting thousands of Haitians.
Nearly a decade later, Haiti’s constitutional order would collapse again, leading to another US military intervention, more migrants and more deportations. When rebels threatened to invade the capital in 2004, Aristide resigned under pressure from US officials. A provisional government was formed with American support. The violence and unrest continued.
That cycle of crisis and US intervention in Haiti – punctuated by periods of relative calm but little improvement in most people’s lives – continues to this day. Since July, a presidential assassination, an earthquake and a tropical storm have exacerbated the unrest.
Mr. Biden, now president, is overseeing yet another intervention in Haiti’s political affairs, one that his critics say follows an old Washington playbook: providing support to Haitian leaders accused of authoritarian rule, either because they violate American interests. or because US officials fear the instability of a power transition.
Understanding US policy in Haiti over the past few decades — sometimes driven by economic interests, Cold War strategy and migration issues — is vital to understanding Haiti’s political instability, and why it remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere , even after infusing more than $5 billion in US aid in the past decade alone.
A bloody history of American influence looms, and a century of American efforts to stabilize and develop the country have ended in failure.
The American Occupation (1915-1934)
The politics of slavery and racial prejudice were key factors in early American hostility to Haiti. After the Haitian Revolution, Thomas Jefferson and many in Congress feared that the newly established Black Republic would spread slave revolts in the United States.
For decades, the United States refused to formally recognize Haiti’s independence from France, sometimes attempting to annex Haitian territory and conduct diplomacy through threats.
Against this background, Haiti became increasingly unstable. The country had seven presidents between 1911 and 1915, all of whom were assassinated or removed from power. Haiti was heavily indebted, and Citibank — then the National City Bank of New York — — and other US banks confiscated much of Haiti’s gold reserves during that period with the help of US Marines.
Roger L. Farnham, who managed the National City Bank’s assets in Haiti, then lobbied President Woodrow Wilson for military intervention to stabilize the country and force the Haitian government to pay its debts, convincing the president that France or Germany could invade if America didn’t.
The military occupation that followed remains one of the darkest chapters of US policy in the Caribbean. The United States installed a puppet regime that rewrote Haiti’s constitution and gave America control over the country’s finances. Forced labor was used for construction and other work to pay off debts. Thousands were killed by US Marines.
The occupation ended in 1934 under the Good Neighbor Policy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As the last Marines left Haiti, riots broke out in Port-au-Prince, the capital. Bridges were destroyed, telephone lines were cut and the new president declared martial law and suspended the constitution. The United States did not completely relinquish control of Haiti’s finances until 1947.
Even after the United States grew tired of Duvalier’s brutality and unstable leadership, President John F. Kennedy objected to a plot to remove him and impose free elections. When Duvalier died nearly a decade later, the United States supported his son’s succession. In 1986, the United States had spent an estimated $900 million supporting the Duvalier dynasty as Haiti plunged deeper into poverty and corruption.
Favorite candidates
At pivotal moments in Haiti’s democratic era, the United States intervened to pick winners and losers — fearing political instability and a wave of Haitian migration.
After Mr. Aristide was ousted in 1991, the US military reinstated him. Less than a decade later, he resigned in disgrace, but only after American diplomats urged him to do so. According to reports at the time, the George W. Bush administration had undermined the Aristide administration in the years before his resignation
François Pierre-Louis is a professor of political science at Queens College in New York. He was a member of Mr Aristide’s cabinet and advised former Prime Minister Jacques-Édouard Alexis. Haitians are often suspicious of US involvement in their affairs, he said, but still take signals from US officials seriously because of the country’s long history of influence on Haitian politics.
For example, after the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, US and other international diplomats pressured Haiti to hold elections that year despite the devastation. The vote was disastrously mismanaged, with international observers and many Haitians deeming the results illegitimate.
In response to allegations of voter fraud, US diplomats insisted that a candidate in the second round of the presidential election be replaced with a candidate who received fewer votes — at one point they threatened to cut aid for the dispute. Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State, confronted then-President René Préval with the fact that he had put Michel Martelly, America’s favorite candidate, on the ballot. mr. Martelly won that election in a landslide.
A direct line of succession can be traced from that election to the current crisis in Haiti.
Mr. Martelly approved Jovenel Moïse as his successor. Moïse, who was elected in 2016, ruled by decree and turned to authoritarian tactics with the tacit approval of the Trump and Biden administrations.
Mr Moïse appointed Ariel Henry as acting Prime Minister earlier this year. On July 7, Mr. Moise killed.
Mr Henry has been accused of being involved in the assassination plot, and the political infighting that had been silenced after international diplomats endorsed his claim to power has reignited. Mr. Martelly, who had clashed with Mr. Moïse over business interests, is considering running for president again.
Robert Maguire, a Haitian scholar and retired professor of international relations at George Washington University, said the Washington instinct for members of Haiti’s political elite who appeared to have ties to American interests was old, with a history of failure.
A different approach could be more successful, according to Mr. Maguire and other scholars, Democratic lawmakers and a former US envoy to Haiti policy. They say the United States should support a grassroots commission of civic leaders who are drawing up plans for a new provisional government in Haiti.
However, that process can take years.