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In September 1991, seven months after the inauguration of Haiti’s democratically elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide, Lieutenant General Raul Cedras ousted him from office. In August 1994, President Bill Clinton decided that it was in the U.S. national interest to use military force, if necessary, to remove Cedras and his junta and to restore a Haitian government Under Aristide.
On Sunday, 18 September, Joint Task Force Uphold Democ- tacy was ready to invade Haiti for that purpose. President Clin- l°n had approved the JTF’s execution of U.S. Atlantic Command (USACom) “Plan A.” Three days later, it was by no means Sure that Clinton’s venture would eventually be judged a good 1(Iea. But it seemed evident that a permanent change had taken Place in the way the U.S. military operates.
Under Plan A, the JTF mission was:
^ By force, neutralize Haiti’s armed forces.
^ Remove Cedras and his junta from power.
^ Bring order to Haiti.
^ Assist an Aristide government to return, to establish a professional army and police force, and to hold parliamentary elections in December 1994.
^ Withdraw, leaving to the United Nations the task of assisting in Haiti’s continuing civil ^construction and a presidential eIection in December 1995.
That Sunday evening—soon ufter Cedras learned that paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne division had left the United States—former President Jimmy Carter, former JCS Chairman Colin Powell, and Senator Sam Nunn obtained the signature °f Haiti’s unelected President Emil Jonassaint on a document that described how Haiti’s de facto rulers would transfer power to a government led by President Aristide. Plan A’s overwhelming power had made an assault unnecessary, and JTF Uphold Democracy switched to Plan B, under which the JTF would, With Cedras’s cooperation, enter a permissive environment and continue on the same mission as Plan A.
On that Sunday, Americans who opposed President Clinton’s venture far outnumbered those who favored it. As often happens when a President so acts, public opinion shifted toward favorable. But doubts remained; only time will tell if the venture will succeed.
It started well. Cedras and his junta folded Sunday night simPly because all the players in the chain of command, from the President down to the last helicopter pilots and riflemen, had done their jobs. To Secretary of State Warren Christopher, it Was a “classic case of the use of military force in the service °f diplomacy.”
In October 1993, General Cedras had humiliated President Clinton, who had ordered the USS Harlan County (LST-1196) 'o Haiti with an unarmed troop contingent that was to carry out •he accord he had reached earlier with Cedras at Governor’s Island. When Cedras’s thugs demonstrated at dockside and the
Haitian police who were supposed to make a debarkation possible failed to appear, Clinton ordered the Harlan County to withdraw.
President Clinton’s experience was not unlike that of President George Bush in Panama 1989. In 1992, at Fort Leavenworth’s School of Advanced Military Studies, I heard General Maxwell Thurman—the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Southern Command for December 1989’s Operation Just Cause (the military operation to remove Manuel Noriega)—describe an October 1989 meeting with President Bush and his national security team. Bush had just suffered his own humiliation by not responding well in support of a coup attempt against Panama’s dictator Noriega. Newsweek's next cover read “Amateur Hour!” Its story said that “from the White House to the Pentagon, the management of last week’s crisis smacked of inexperience and unpreparedness.”
General Thurman had taken command in Panama only days before that event. As I recall, this is what he told the students: “On the plane back to Panama, I settled back, took off my shoes, put up my feet, and thought about that meeting. It had produced only a collective frustration, no specific guidance. So I decided to write my own guidance. It was simple: Get ready to do it right the next time.’” 3Vhen that time came ten weeks later, Thurman was ready and Bush triumphed over Noriega.
Clinton’s Harlan County episode took place nine days after the 3 October 1993 debacle in Mogadishu, in which 18 American soldiers were killed—soon after which the President decided to remove U.S. forces from Somalia. I surmise that sometime around then General John Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Admiral Paul David Miller, CinCUSACom, something like this: “We may never use it, but I want you to prepare a plan for using force in Haiti that will do it right if we are called on.
Earlier, as Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, Admiral Miller had sought new ways of packaging naval forces by placing Marine air and ground elements on carriers for forward deployment. On becoming unified commander of the Atlantic Command he developed similar task organizations using forces of the Army and Air Force, and he exercised those combinations. His command’s new mission as trainer of joint forces and developer of joint concepts had just been directed, and his new title—CinCUSACom—symbolized that change. His newly arrived Deputy CinC, Army Lieutenant General William Hartzog, was a trainer of reputation and had been General Thurman’s J-3 (operations staff officer) for Just Cause.
Like Just Cause, USACom’s Plan A called for a massive simultaneous takedown of a country. But as an air/land/sea and all-Service operation—rather than primarily Army/Air Force and air/land—the Haiti task presented a far greater challenge. Operating from the command ship Mount Whitney (LCC-20), the joint task force (JTF) commander would be Lieutenant General Henry H. Shelton, commander of the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps. His deputy would be Vice Admiral Jay L. Johnson, Commander Second Fleet; Johnson would also command the JTF’s Navy component.
Cedras and his junta folded Sunday night simply because all the players in the chain of command, from the President down to the last helicopter pilots and riflemen, had done their jobs.
Detailed plans took shape. Army, Marine, and special operations forces would enter by parachute, helicopter, and watercraft and in a night assault would place some 5,000 troops on the ground to seize dozens of key targets in and around Port- au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, and at Cap Haitien, its second largest city. Light infantry forces would follow in daylight and fan out across the countryside. A military police brigade and civil- military operations teams would quickly arrive, followed by troop and police contingents from Caribbean and other nations. At the right moment, the United Nations would install President Aristide and his cabinet and the conversion to a Haitian civil reconstruction effort would begin.
Plan A assumed that Cedras and his leaders would resist stoutly. Plan B assumed that, recognizing the inevitable, they would not resist—and that entry of JTF Uphold Democracy would not be seriously contested. Plan B would seize most of Plan A’s key objectives—but troops would enter in daylight, not shooting.
Admiral Miller and the Joint Staff in the Pentagon put together for President Clinton a detailed portrayal of Plans A and B. One cannot doubt that the President gained confidence from the assurance and competence that underlay what he saw and heard. He began a full court press to convince General Cedras to give up power before the assault launched.
The planners did not anticipate that former President Carter and his negotiating team would arrange with General Cedras at the eleventh hour a permissive entry, in which Haiti’s de facto regime would remain in place for a few weeks, to cooperate in replacing themselves with a regime led by President Aristide. Cedras himself would not even yield to that scheme— until he learned that airborne troops were on the way. But his turnaround made it necessary for the Pentagon to change orders that had been issued to the troops already on the ground.
The troops, no less than the American public—having been told by President Clinton the preceding Thursday night that Cedras and his cohorts were rapists and murderers—had some difficulty with the new arrangement, in which the same people were portrayed as men of honor who could be relied on to bring about their own downfall. Their army and police could be seen in the streets and on television in the United States beating Haitians who were welcoming the U.S. soldiers. President Clinton and his senior civilian and military officials defended the new approach as justified because it avoided bloodshed. They expressed confidence that 15,000 U.S. troops on the ground would ensure that Cedras and his military would yield to U.S. resolve. But they also warned that blood might well be shed in days to come.
By D-day plus two, Plan B’s entry had gone off well and the second phase, establishing order, was under way. U.S. military police were about to enter the scene, and steps were being taken to create a proper Haitian army and police force. The operation could yet turn into a Vietnam-like quagmire, or a debilitating disaster—like that in Mogadishu a year before—could occur. In any event, President Aristide’s conduct will likely prove decisive. But plans have been made. With good luck they just might succeed.
The Clinton national security team, learning from Somalia, orchestrated Haiti not much differently from the way President Bush and his people handled the Gulf War. They arranged for the United Nations Security Council to approve the action; they built multinational consent, support, and participation; but they gave essential control to the U.S. military chain of com
mand, which produced a favorable result.
Operation Uphold Democracy may have given President Clinton a better understanding of his military establishment. The[ decision to go into Haiti was his alone. But if he comes through the venture with his political skin intact, it will be by virtue of the U.S. military’s fundamental competence—from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff down to the last Soldier. Sailor, Marine, Airman, and Coast Guardsman. That cannot help but influence the President’s opinion of his armed forces. [
With Haiti, the U.S. military establishment can be seen as entering a new era. For one thing, the organization, training, and employment of a multidimensional joint task force has moved to a new level of effectiveness. Like other Services three-star commands under Admiral Miller, General Shelton’s _ XVIII Airborne Corps headquarters had practiced being the nu- . cleus of a joint task force headquarters with an all-Service staff I In a joint exercise three months earlier, General Shelton had - commanded his JTF from the same ship that he used in the Haiti operation, the Mount Whitney. Admiral Miller’s joint training initiatives had paid off handsomely, for all to see.
Shelton’s joint force air component commander (JFACC) for •
Haiti was Major General James i Record, the vice commander of : Twelfth Air Force. General 1 Record had been a JFACC be- i fore, but for Haiti he faced a i new situation. He would have : no fighters to task, but he ' would have to provide the es- i sential control measures for each of Shelton’s subordinate 1 units—the joint special-operations task force, the Marines, the i 10th Mountain Division, and so on—so that each commander could direct his own operation without conflict. A couple hundred helicopters were involved. Before D-day, General Record had simulated the execution of one practice air tasking order (ATO), then a second, and then—because on the second one he thought his grade was only 3.8 out of a possible 4.0—a third- On D-day, the air execution was flawless.
Haiti was a model of all-Service cooperation and adaptation, a prime example being the Navy’s making its aircraft carriers America (CV-66) and Eisenhower (CVN-69) available for use by Army helicopter, ranger, special forces, and infantry units.
For Admiral Miller, such use of the carrier was not “experimental;” it had been proven. And it worked flawlessly. Salt- air corrosion proved to be no problem; the Army pilots adapted well to a floating platform; and with the carrier air wings living in Army tents ashore at Norfolk, there was plenty of space on board for the Army troops (many of whom reported that they enjoyed the accommodations).
Uphold Democracy can be called a prototype of the U.S. military’s new operational style, key features of which would be:
>• All-Service teamwork under competent joint command
► Imaginative use of all capabilities
> Precision
► Swift assembly and simultaneous application of forces
> Dominating maneuver
>■ Overwhelming force at the right places and times.
Such qualities are demanded even more when an enemy is sizeable and has modern weapons.
Uphold Democracy provided all the Services the opportunity to showcase their expeditionary capabilities.
General Cushman, the Naval Institute Proceedings Author of the Year for 1993, visited Headquarters, U.S. Atlantic Command, in the preparation of this commentary.
Operation Uphold Democracy may have given President Clinton a better understanding of his military establishment.