Research for Uphold Democracy

This paper combines material from the session on Haiti and Operation UPHOLD DEMOCRACY at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) 1995 Annual Conference: 'Military Support to Complex Humanitarian Emergencies: From Practice to Policy.' The Haiti panel discussion was part of Session I: 'Reports From the Fronts: What Our Military Does Today to Support Responses to Complex Humanitarian Emergencies.' Although the proceedings from the conference have been published elsewhere, this paper incorporates conference read-ahead material with session details that have not previously been published. The paper has two parts. The first part contains material distributed before the sessions began. The second section is an edited summary of the Haiti panel discussion.

On 19 September 1994, U.S. troops began a permissive entry into Haiti. This occurred the morning after President Clinton stopped an invasion with airborne forces already in the air. Perhaps most appropriately called an intervasion, somewhere between an invasion and intervention, Operation Uphold Democracy came almost exactly three years after the Haitian armed forces overthrew the government of Jean Bertrand Aristide, the first democratically-elected president in Haiti's turbulent history. The 1991 coup and the use of military forces to restore President Aristide fit into a long-term pattern of Haitian political instability and violence. The United States led the international intervention (intervasion) to restore the democratically elected President to power. This paper reviews Haitian-American relations and events in Haiti leading to the operation, discusses the operation through its three phases, evaluated the intervention, and describes some potential lessons to be learned from it. Table 2 provides a list of US Operations in the Caribbean, 1991-1995.