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Thursday, February 19, 2004

The French Interventionist Itch

By Michael A. Ledeen


Posted: Wednesday, February 18, 2004


New York Sun
Publication Date: February 18, 2004

The French are getting that interventionist itch again. It strikes them every so often, with no apparent pattern. There seems to be neither a temporal rhythm nor a moral or geopolitical issue that kicks it off, unless it is the very idea that some Frenchman, somewhere in the world, may be in some danger.

In any event, that's their story and they're sticking to it. And since there are many Frenchmen in many places, it works quite nicely.

You may recall that at the very same time President Chirac was lambasting his American counterpart for an excess of unilateralism with regard to the dictator of Baghdad, the French Foreign Legion was dispatched to Ivory Coast to put down a popular insurrection against an Ivorian government favored by the Quai d'Orsay.

Things did not go as smoothly as Mr. Chirac had hoped, and for a couple of wonderful days there were thousands of demonstrators in the streets of Abidjan, carrying banners and placards calling for "regime change" and an American armed intervention. The French press amused itself at his expense, and he no doubt has been looking for another opportunity to pursue the "glory" that General De Gaulle saw as the essence of La France.

The French have recently noticed that things are going badly for the government of President Aristide in Haiti, a country that was once part of the glorious French Empire, whose people actually speak a sort of French lingo, and there is considerable talk in Paris about the possibility of a "humanitarian mission."

The justification is the presence of about 2,000 French citizens, who are at some risk in the rapidly expanding conflict between Mr. Aristide's police force and a rebel force of perhaps 300 thugs, led by a notorious killer long since sentenced to death in absentia.

Mr. Aristide is poorly placed to deal with this insurgency, having dismantled the armed forces after having been defenestrated by them some years before and then restored to power by America's Marines. The talent of the police force can be judged by the fact that they were driven out of the city of Hinche by "about 50 rebels," according to the Associated Press.

The French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, in an interview on French radio, observed that there is plenty of French military might in the region: some 4,000 troops in Martinique and Guadeloupe, which were, he said, well trained in "humanitarian work." French diplomats were talking to "all of our partners in the framework of the United Nations."

However, Secretary of State Powell has said that "there is frankly no enthusiasm right now for sending in military or police forces to put down the violence that we are seeing," and called for "a political solution," which could then be supported by an international police force.

In other words, the American inclination is to let the conflict run its course and only then try to help the beleaguered Haitian people. Mr. Powell's reaction is certainly understandable. Mr. Aristide has proven to be a corrupt leader--sham elections four years ago were so obviously manipulated that foreign aid was blocked--and is clearly incapable of managing good government, despite years of American and other international support.

Yet the French reaction is also understandable, and in many ways quite in harmony with President Bush's call for the spread of democracy. To stand aside and let the bloodshed spread is not good for anyone, and whichever side wins, the Haitians will lose.

The happy thought of a "political solution" cannot be managed so long as Mr. Aristide remains in power--his opponents have said they will not participate in new elections until he is removed--and the thugs who are attempting an armed takeover do not seem at all inclined to embrace democratic principles.

The best way to think about the events in Haiti is to remember that Mr. Aristide is a part of the Clinton legacy, a presumed success of "humanitarian intervention" to make things better without actually imposing our will on a foreign culture.

Back in the happy 1990s, this sort of thing was quite popular, except for the locals, who knew they were the victims of a scam. Over the past decade, poverty has worsened in Haiti, a major achievement for a country that was always at or near the bottom of the world's misery index.

Humanitarian interventions only work if the international community has a clear vision of what is to be achieved and the will to impose the kind of political and moral order that any country needs to live decently. The sort of half-baked approach used to install Mr. Aristide will always lead to the current unhappy situation.

So let's try the old-fashioned way. Let's join with the French, proclaim a pox on both houses in the current conflict, depose Mr. Aristide and let him face the judgment of his own people, arrest and try the killers on the other side, install an interim government by force of arms, organize a serious privatization and aid program, and then conduct elections in six months or a year, under international auspices, with guarantees of future elections at regular intervals. And let's call it a democratic revolution.

It's good to remind the world that democracy is often spread by force of arms; it's delicious to get the French to participate in just such an enterprise, and it might even make it harder for them to oppose the spread of democracy in the Middle East. They'd feel so good being able to scratch their interventionist itch, they might forget how annoyed they are at Mr. Bush.

In the words of one of my favorite songs from the old days, "Delicious, Mr. Masoch? Delightful, Count de Sade."

Michael A. Ledeen holds the Freedom Chair at AEI.


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