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.
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