” We will not have another Mariel boat life.”
President William J. Clinton
Just as hundreds of unseaworthy rafts flounder northward across the shark-infested waters of the Florida Straits … American foreign policy wallows in a sea of uncertainty and indecisiveness, without direction and often accomplishing little. Driven primarily by domestic opinion polls and posturing for partisan political advantage, the Caribbean has become a daily reminder of a series of misjudgments and missed opportunities.
The first of these festering sores is Haiti. Shortly after President Aristride was deposed by a military junta, waves of refugees began arriving off the Florida coast. While some were fleeing political persecution, most sought to escape ruinous economic conditions in their homeland.
Attempts by both Bush and Clinton Administrations to convince the General Cedras and his henchmen to step down peacefully proved ineffective and were subsequently followed by an escalating series of military threats and tighter economic sanctions. Two years later, Aristide remains a pretender to the Haitian presidency while the junta seems in no hurry to make way for his return.
The decision to detain and process intercepted refugees either at sea or at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base slowed the unwelcome migration of Haitians significantly. Meantime, President Clinton and his policy wonks continue to beat the drums of war, leveraging America’s economic muscle to fashion an “international” coalition to invade the New Hampshire-sized island nation.
Regretfully, there appears to be no more prospect of a rapid, successful and predictable post-invasion exit strategy for Haiti than existed for Somalia. When all is said an done, most of the troops will return home to another round Rose Garden ceremonies and local parades while the families of a dozen or two service men and women will have to find solace in the posthumous medals awarded to their sons and daughters. It’s speculative, at best to assume any democratic institutions froced on that nation would survive.
Suddenly, in mid-August Haitian policy moved to the back burner. What began as a few boat loads of disheveled Cubans arriving in the Florida Keys became a daily flotilla of hundreds of refugees hoping to reunite with family members in the United States or simply seeking the freedoms and opportunities only America can offer. Recently, others have taken to sailing, swimming and even running a gauntlet of minefields just to reach the Guantanamo … which now houses more than 26,000 Cuban refugees.
As with the 1980 Mariel boatlift, the Clinton’s Administration never anticipated either the flood of Cuban refugees who would head for American shores or that such a migration would have the tacit support of Fidel Castro.
For thirty-five years, Castro has bedeviled nine successive administrations. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and Moscow’s cutoff of some $6 billion annually aid, there had been hope political changes might follow in Cuba. Yet, as with many other third-world despots, Fidel defied the beltway seers … surviving even as his people suffered and witnessed the death throes of their revolutionary dreams.
Today, United States policy toward Cuba remains mired in Cold War ideologies, held hostage by legislation including the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act, passed to placate the narrow political agenda of Cuban-American activists. It’s key feature is a tightening of economic sanctions unless and until there are “unspecified positive developments in Cuba”.
In this decade alone, the United States has orchestrated international economic sanctions against the Serbia, Iraq, Haiti, and Cuba. Yet, Milosovich, Saddam, Cedras and Castro all remain in power. Meanwhile, the oppression endured by the people of those sovereign nations has been exacerbated by chronic, sanction related shortages of food, clothing, medicine, power and other essentials to a normal life.
America’s political leadership must recognize times have changed … gunboat diplomacy, absent any clear and present danger to vital United States interests, while it can achieve short-term military successes against small, impotent nations, is morally bankrupt and unlikely to change history in the long run.
Where Haiti and Cuba are concerned, past policies should be abandoned. Cuban and Haitian, as well as the American, people will be better served if the U.S. opens broad dialogues with both nations, without any preset agendas. Offers of economic assistance, reestablished diplomatic relations, and attempts at good-faith negotiations on areas on which differences remain can go a long way toward breeding democratic and market-based institutions … while concurrently improving the lives and health of the citizens of both nations. If, in the process, we have to provide General Cedras and Fidel Castro sufficient wiggle room to ensure their places in history as they make a diplomatic exit into retirement, it would be a small price to pay.
