DID THE AMERICAN MISSION MATTER?

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WHEN THE POST--COLD WAR book of rules for global intervention is written, the lesson of the Haiti chapter will be this: define your goals so minimally that it will be easy to meet them, declare victory and go home.

Back in September 1994, when Bill Clinton itemized his intentions for Haiti, he kept them basic, so now he can tick off the accomplishments. The main goal of Operation Uphold Democracy was to restore the legitimate Haitian President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to power and in so doing halt the flood of boat people. With 20,000 U.S. troops and a little help from Jimmy Carter, Clinton did it. Objective No. 2 was achieved last week when Rene Preval took the presidential oath and Haiti experienced its first-ever peaceful transfer of power from one popularly elected leader to another. At month's end Clinton can chalk up the final--and maybe most important--mission accomplished: to leave. The U.S. troops will return home, having suffered the loss of only one soldier.

So if the operation was a success, how come the patient is dying? The Administration may have called it a "humanitarian" mission, but this was old-fashioned gunboat diplomacy: send in the Marines, depose a government you don't like, install a friendlier one and leave the natives to fend for themselves. Any impulse of Clinton policymakers to actually lift Haiti out of political, social and economic destitution--what is widely derided as "nation building"--was fatally tainted by the American fiasco in Somalia. "We achieved the objectives we aimed for," says U.S. Ambassador William Swing, "so from our point of view it has been a success."

Down in the cesspool of Port-au-Prince, it does not feel that way. A brutal dictatorship, a repressive army and organized political violence have been banished, but crime and mob rule are filling the vacuum of authority. Five thousand ill-trained, ill-equipped and immature policemen must control a desperate population of 7 million, propped up by a rapidly dwindling U.N. force. The country has acquired the image but not the substance of democracy: it has a duly elected President and parliament but a completely dysfunctional government. The economy is still at ground zero: no jobs, no investment, no roads, virtually no electricity or telecommunications or running water, sporadic fuel. The people's adoration of Aristide has buffered their bitter disappointment, but they do not hold Preval in the same regard, and he will have to produce concrete proof of democracy's shiny promises.

He will have to do it largely on his own. The U.S. gave Haiti $235 million last year; this year Clinton has asked for $115 million, and Congress has so far coughed up almost nothing. International lenders have turned off the spigot until Haiti adopts austerity reforms. Washington has declared the country a "safe and secure environment," which allows the peacekeepers to depart. By the measure of organized assassination, violence has subsided: only 20 killings that the U.N. delicately calls "commando-style executions" have taken place, a huge improvement over the 3,000 or so notched up by the military regime from 1991 to 1994. But Haitians complain that the respite will be temporary because the U.S. and U.N. chose not to disarm the rank and file.