The Foreign Service Journal, February 2005

Agreement now awaiting ratification. While Washington focuses on narcotrafficking and the war on terrorism, genuine democratization and the new populism emerging across Latin America are all but ignored. In fact, one of Powell’s key blunders was his sin- gle-minded defense of the administration’s simplistic war on terror, which alienated skeptical Latin American gov- ernments. At the U.N. Powell tried (but failed) to strong- arm the representatives of Chile and Mexico into backing the U.S. position. He reportedly then pressured the presidents of Chile and Mexico to replace the offending diplomats. The subsequent dismissals were widely viewed as an unconscionable example of U.S. bullying. The Haiti Crisis Perhaps the most career-damning episode, as far as Latin America is concerned, was Powell’s role in the ouster of Haiti’s constitutional president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Powell made no ascertainable effort to distin- guish himself from his predecessor’s distaste for Aristide, whose left-of-center politics and economics once led retired Sen. Helms to declare him a Castro-in- the-making. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations tried unsuccessfully to force the Haitian leader to share power with the island’s brutal military and discredited politicians. The Bush administration seized on the pre- text of minor corruption and relatively small electoral improprieties to justify suspending direct aid (including desperately needed training funds for the national police force and crucial humanitarian projects) to Aristide. At the same time, the International Republican Institute, handsomely financed by taxpayer funds through the Cold War-spawned National Endowment for Democracy and USAID, began a con- certed initiative to support Aristide’s opposition, sparing no effort to render Haiti ungovernable and thereby force his ouster. When an armed rebellion against Aristide reached its final stages last February, led by former paramilitary leaders with ties to the death squads that had operated under the military regime of 1991-94, Powell at first insisted that the U.S. would not support “regime change” at the hands of a “gang of thugs.” But Noriega’s off-the-record statements calling first for power-sharing and later for Aristide’s resignation undermined Powell’s credibility. Simultaneously, Powell refused to approve a regional police mission to protect Aristide and then blocked similar action for a U.N.-sponsored Haiti peacekeeping effort, stubbornly sticking to the bank- rupt formula that such an intervention could occur only after an agreement was reached between Aristide and the country’s middle-class opposition. This stance rein- forced the opposition’s obdurate refusal to even meet with the president, thus dooming him to helplessness as the “gang of thugs” advanced on Port-au-Prince. In the last days of Aristide’s presidency, Powell abruptly reversed his earlier position that the president would not be allowed to be ousted by extra-constitu- tional means, demanding that he step down on “safety grounds.” On Feb. 29, 2004, Aristide was whisked out of the country and replaced by Boca Raton, Fla., expa- triate Gerard Latortue, who was selected as interim prime minister under pressure from the State Department. The resulting Latortue government, ostensibly made up of nonpartisan technocrats, soon lost its meager legitimacy by botching efforts to deal with last September’s severe hurricanes. A campaign of persecution and abuse, led by Latortue’s justice minis- ter against Aristide’s Lavalas Party, led some observers to declare the situation to be Haiti’s worst human rights debacle in decades. Expectations Stillborn The widespread expectation that Powell would pro- vide a rational, moderate voice for Washington’s region- al policy was stillborn, giving way to doubts that this was ever in fact his intention. On the contrary, the Secretary allowed a small clique of political appointees, mainly alumni of Helms’ office with tight links to White House operatives, to dictate U.S. hemispheric policy and speak on his behalf despite their lack of a sensitive compre- hension of the region’s realities. Powell never appeared to possess a “feel” for U.S. hemispheric relations and his tenure was devoid of any innovative initiatives; on the contrary, he seemed con- tent to let U.S. regional affairs drift, while inviting open hostility toward U.S. policy throughout Latin America. His departure may be seen by some as the exit of an upright public servant who was shabbily mistreated by a hard-line administration. But from Mexico City to Buenos Aires, few Latin American leaders will serious- ly lament the departure of someone they hardly knew, who never manifested significant interest in advancing, or even considering, their basic interests. n F O C U S 44 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5