Ambassador Dan Foote on Learning from America’s Failures

Transcript:

MARK HANNAH: Welcome to None of the Above, a podcast of the Institute for Global Affairs at the Eurasia Group. My name is Mark Hannah.

Today, we're turning our attention to Haiti, a nation embroiled in a cycle of turmoil and intervention.

Since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021, the country has been in a state of political uncertainty. After assuming power with the backing of the United States, then acting Prime Minister and President Ariel Henry suspended elections indefinitely and failed to rein in the gangs who have competed for power and now seized control of the capital city Port-au-Prince.

Interlude featuring archival audio.

NEWSANCHOR: Haiti is on the brink of becoming a failed state.

NEWSANCHOR: Prime Minister of Haiti, Ariel Henry, has agreed to resign and make way for a transitional authority.

NEWSANCHOR: The Biden administration is facing pressure from some lawmakers to do more to stabilize the situation in Haiti.

HANNAH: The United Nations approved a security mission to Haiti seven months ago. However, the situation on the ground has only worsened since then. Thousands have died, and over 350,000 have been displaced from their homes. International assistance, spearheaded by a seven-nation security mission, is underway, though the details remain uncertain.

Today, we're joined by Ambassador Dan Foote. He was the United States Special Envoy for Haiti until two years ago when he resigned in protest. And he’s going to discuss with us the island’s recent history, the challenging role of international intervention, and the urgent need for rebuilding Haitians’ trust in their democracy.

We confessed to the Ambassador that although our team spent quite a bit of time researching this episode, we found Haiti’s recent history difficult to sum up quickly or clearly.

FOOTE: Oh my God, Haiti is so complicated. If you had to dig deep into everything you do, you'd never do anything but that, I don't think.

HANNAH: Well Haiti in particular, I mean, the world is a mysterious and enigmatic place but Haiti is famously that, right? What is it about the island country that makes it so impenetrable and so difficult for American audiences to imagine?

FOOTE: So, I think a part of it is in the State Department we are attracted to different parts of the globe based on culture or language or whatever. I'm a Latin Americanist. I speak Spanish. And Haiti is in our Western Hemisphere Bureau in the State Department. So the only people we can get to go to Haiti are either the really adventurous ones or guys like me with some ambition who want to get ahead and are asked to serve in Haiti.

So, that's how I got to Haiti right after the earthquake. But most of our French speakers, you know, they’d go to West Africa before they’d go to Haiti. I think a lot of the enigma within the US is just the fact that we have never had a cadre of Haiti experts in the State Department. And there's a few floating around in the stratosphere here but they're few and far between, and the one thing they all have is they've all lived there. If you haven't lived there, it's very difficult to understand.

HANNAH: Right. And so you did resign in 2021 as special envoy, as the country's top representative to Haiti. In your resignation letter you wrote, “The hubris that makes us believe that we should pick the winner again is impressive.” What instances or policies were you referring to when it came to that hubris?

FOOTE: Haiti had a father-son dictatorship team, the Duvaliers. Papa Doc and Baby Doc. When Baby Doc was forced into exile in 1986, Haitians rewrote their constitution, had elections in 1990. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Catholic priest, was the first democratically elected president and he was inaugurated.

Within a year, there was a military coup. He was thrown out in 1991. In 1994, Bill Clinton took Aristide and 20,000 American troops and jammed them back in Haiti's ear to restore democracy. And that's one instance where we went back in. And then a UN mission started, or what would become a UN peacekeeping mission, in 1994 and that helped to stabilize things with a lot of international police, a lot of resources to security, et cetera.

Then Aristide, you can only serve one term as president of Haiti. He was replaced by his vice president, Préval. Then he won again in 2000. In 2004, Aristide says the United States kidnapped him and took him out of Haiti. The United States says we saved Aristide’s life by getting him out of there.

And then in 2010 post-earthquake elections, like most countries in the world except for the United States, if the top vote-getter in a presidential election doesn't get 50 percent of the votes, there's a runoff with the top two a little bit later on. Hillary Clinton took the third place finisher in the 2010 election, elevated him to the runoff. He wound up winning and his party has been pretty responsible, with the US backing, for sinking Haiti into this catastrophe that it's in today.

HANNAH: What did that look like? Was that with the intelligence community?

FOOTE: I wasn't there at the time. But Haiti’s had so many bad elections over the years that we're used to seeing the US going in and kind of taking a bad election, trying to make the best of it, right? So, with the first round, Sweet Micky, Michel Martelly, a bawdy singer who performed in pink dresses, finished number third. Jude Célestin was number two, and Mirlande Manigat was number one. And Hillary – because she was very impressed with Martelly, an English speaker, a US resident, his wife's American – she juggled the system for the second round of the elections in Haiti and Martelly was in the second round, and he won a pretty landslide victory. And since then Haiti has gone to hell in a handbasket.

HANNAH: I want to get to that hell in a handbasket. And eventually I want you to paint us a picture of what that hell looks like because you were on the ground. But I want to ask about US intention right now. Why do you think the United States historically has pursued a policy of interference rather than enabling or supporting Haiti as it tries to solve its own problems or sort of advance its democracy? You mentioned we sent in the military as sort of…

FOOTE: In '94, I didn't mention, we did it in ‘04 with 20,000 troops as well, and again in 2010, post-earthquake, we sent 23,000 troops there.

HANNAH: So, between the military interventions and the political interference you described from the likes of Hillary Clinton and others, what accounts for this tendency, historically, that the US has for getting involved in Haiti's domestic affairs?

FOOTE: I think it's two things. The first thing is the Jeffersonian adage which has set our policy for Haiti since Haiti became independent in 1804. And that's, “These dumb black people can't govern themselves.” Nothing could be further from the truth but I have heard that whispered in the hallways of the State Department. And you can just see if you look at the history of Haiti that that's exactly the case. And that's what's going on right now.

HANNAH: I'm sorry, just real quick. It sounds like you're caricaturizing the attitude or did you actually hear that verbatim whispered.

FOOTE: I actually heard – as I just told you Mark, I actually heard that numerous times. I've heard that throughout my career in the State Department.

HANNAH: By people who are making decisions at the State Department?

FOOTE: Correct. By policy makers and senior diplomat level people. Not in meeting scenarios, but in hushed tones in the corners or over there in the hallways. Or something like that. So that's had a big impact on things over the time.

And then US interest in Haiti has only been stability. We don't care about prosperity, we don't care about democracy, we care about stability so that black people aren't washing up in the Keys. Which happens. And in the 80s and 90s, we let Haitian migration lure us into trying to help the Haitians more, and now we're just picking them up and sending them back. We're thinking of using Guantanamo as a processing center for them. And Haitians wonder, why doesn't the US just build a cage around the island at this point.

HANNAH: Wow. Wow. And you mentioned that we had good intentions at certain points.

FOOTE: At most points, I would say.

HANNAH: Yeah, but you just mentioned that also our interests are primarily in stability rather than truly a Haitian form of democracy. And yet it sounds like you're suggesting that US policy has destabilized the country. So, is this just a classic case of blowback or a security dilemma? Has Haiti failed despite our best efforts and we're not the cause of its failure?

FOOTE: So, most US efforts – the Clintons, the post-earthquake, all of the NGOs and religious based organizations in Haiti – are all well intentioned and are trying their best to help people down there. But the United States, in the name of stability over the past – just from 2010, we chose Michel Martelly because we thought he would deliver stability.

But the problem is, and in 2015 and 2016 there were poor elections in Haiti. First round, second round for the president and the US at the end of the day said, ah, it's good enough for Haiti. So, the last president, Jovenel Moïse, who was assassinated, spent his whole term not completely legitimate because of these poor elections.

The US traditionally picks a leader and that leader promises to be compliant with the US, which in the last three years has mainly involved accepting deportees. And then that leader welcomes impunity. They don't answer to the Haitian people mind you, they answer to the United States, which is not down there monitoring them every day. So we create a system of corruption and impunity, yes.

Many wonder why Washington continued to support Henry long after he appeared to have any popular legitimacy with Haitians themselves. Dan shed some light on that for us.

So, Michele Sison and Victoria Nuland, I believe, got together and decided that Ariel Henry was the best option for the US because of his desire to take all the deportees that they could send back there. And I think they kind of worked that behind the scenes before it went to the National Security Council. And it did, but I almost got a sense later on that Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and some of the other more senior policy makers didn't really play a major role in this decision to change the Haitian leader in midstream.

HANNAH: You spent your career as a diplomat. Right now, you're a lot more outspoken. I just want to kind of get your sense of how it feels right now to be as direct in your characterizations of these things that you've had to be somewhat roundabout and diplomatic in your characterizations in the past.

FOOTE: It's a little bit liberating. Talking about Haiti post-earthquake, I and the US government learned how not to fix Haiti. I sat in the room as we planned reconstruction with $5.1 billion appropriated by the US Congress, and I was struck that there were no Haitians in the room. There were, like, three but they're, like, engineers who work for USAID and the embassy. There's no Haitian representatives in the room. And I can remember as a former Peace Corps guy, leaning over to somebody and saying, “I don't think this is going to work very well.” And it didn't. So we can see right there, in the last 14 years, a great example. I sat in the room. I failed at making Haiti better because I didn't listen to the Haitians. So, I think it's my responsibility to tell everybody that we continue the same exact template for trying to fix Haiti and it's failed eight, ten times to date. It's time for a new way forward.

HANNAH: Out of everything going on right now, what are your most pressing concerns for Haitians? It's obviously a catastrophe.

FOOTE: Security.

HANNAH: Okay. Their own physical security?

FOOTE: Their own physical security. If you're a Haitian living in Brooklyn and your aunt is in Port-au-Prince, she can't get out and get food. I mean, she's opening the door and running down the street at a time when there's no people out there. The gangs are terrorizing the citizenry of Haiti and the gangs were made powerful by Michel Martelly, the president that Hillary Clinton got into the second round by Jovenel Moïse, who started using the gangs as his muscle and his own security, which forced all the other politicians to do that.

So, security is horrendous. The hospitals can't get fuel or operate or the doctors and nurses can't get back and forth. Schools aren't open. The airport's closed because of the gangs. Haiti is being choked by the gangs. And it's weird because weeks ago when the gangs sprung the prisoners from prison and took over the airport, they were talking about if an international solution is imposed, there would be a genocide.

And then about a week later, they started talking about a revolution, which is kind of what the people of Haiti have been talking about for the last three years. They don't want the gangs speaking for them or leading their revolution unfortunately, but in a perverse way, the gangs are almost speaking for the Haitian people politically with the international community.

HANNAH: So, the gangs have become political actors here in this drama that's unfolding, to some extent, and trying to be representative of people's will. But what are their primary motivations behind the conflict and the fighting between the gangs and how have they managed to seize control? You mentioned the US-backed leader that empowered them. But more recently, what is the mechanism they have for seizing control?

FOOTE: So, the gangs, until a month ago, were mercenaries. They're out for their own pocketbook, their own power, their leader, and they'll change allegiance at a moment's notice for a new AK-47. However, the United States also, right after the assassination, anointed Dr. Ariel Henry extra-constitutionally completely, and he's been leading Haiti for the past three years.

He did nothing against the gangs and made them stronger and stronger and stronger. So when he left the country, the gangs, who’d had enough of him despite the fact he's empowered them exceptionally, got together and united against him, shut down the airport, broke the doors down at the prisons and let, you know, 8,000 prisoners out into the streets of Haiti.

And that's still the situation today. And they're still raising hell because they don't like this presidential council new solution that's been posited by the international community. However, this unity will fall apart immediately as soon as it's in one of their interest to do so. And they've changed from only caring about money and power to now they're thinking about, okay, post-catastrophe, what's happening?

And now they're talking about amnesty. So, the gangs are looking to find a way to reassimilate into society. The Haitian people won't have that with the leaders at least. And there's going to have to be some kind of national dialogue, like in Columbia with the FARC that was done to determine what's the justice that people want. But the gangs are united now. Tomorrow it could all come apart and they could be at war with each other.

HANNAH: But it's fair to say that Haiti still is a leaderless country, right? So, politically, it's chaos there.

FOOTE: The gangs are almost the leaders on the ground. Ariel Henry and the international community’s ignoring of the situation in Haiti has given the gangs a voice, given the gangs a political voice. If Haitians want to hold a national dialogue to find the answer to this, the gangs have to cooperate, right? That's the only way you can do it.

HANNAH: You've mentioned that they're sort of consolidating their control. They're unifying with each other. And yet you don't think the United States should intervene to stop this chaos, right? You have been a vocal opponent of some people who are calling for the US sending in troops. Is that correct? And why, if so?

FOOTE: I have been a vocal proponent and I was 100 percent theoretically opposed to any political intervention whatsoever and a military intervention. It's gotten so bad. And my friends on the ground in Haiti are like, the police here cannot do it by themselves. There needs to be an intervention of some sort.

But it needs to be planned. There is an intervention planned through the UN led by Kenyans of a small force of international police officers. Anything done in Haiti needs to be led by a country that has experience in building police capacity and experience in restoring security like the US, France, Britain, etc. Not Kenya.

HANNAH: Let's get to the path forward. Given the political vacuum in Haiti, what do you see as the most viable path going forward? And how can Haiti rebuild trust in its democracy?

FOOTE: You just hit the nail on the head. Trust in its democracy. Without that, everything that everyone's doing, spinning their wheels and gnashing their teeth, is going to have the same outcome that it's always had. Which is kind of where we are now.

HANNAH: But how does that translate to US policy though? The US can't just inspire people to trust in their democracy.

FOOTE: Well no, no, no. But the US needs to promote and empower a government construct, a transitional government construct, in Haiti that has the possibility of being trusted by the 11 million Haitians who eventually are going to vote in elections that are administered by the government. So when I went as special envoy, my goal was to get down there, hold elections as quick as possible, right? And I got there realizing that I had played a role in messing Haiti up before by going to tell the Haitians what to do when we don't know what they should do. And all of the political class and the civil society folks were the people I worked with as the embassy deputy ten years ago.

So I knew them all. I'm friends with all of them. And they all said, “Dan, stop, stop, don't, no, no. You do this every time. You give us some BS provisional government that we don't want, we don't choose, and they rush towards elections and we hold elections, and then we don't accept the results of the elections because we didn't do it ourselves. We need to come together and find our own provisional transitional government.”

And I listened to them and I was like, you know, that makes a lot of sense. And we really never have given the Haitians a chance to set their own political foundation and a social contract between the citizenry and the government. Prior to Moïse's assassination, a civil society group called the Montana Group got together because it was just coming undone at the seams. The government was not governing and they were already looking for a way forward. After Moïse was assassinated, they redoubled their efforts and eventually found a consensus political agreement that included about 80 plus percent or represented 80 plus percent of the people in Haiti.

That is the kind of construct that can move forward because if the Haitian people feel they're represented, then they might trust the government and they might trust elections. If they're not going to trust this, and they won't trust the current presidential council because it was imposed on them, they will buy into it and Haiti may finally have a chance to govern itself the way it wants to do.

They're going to need help. They're going to need resources. They're going to need technical and security support, there's no question. But if we don't let them set the political foundation for once, we're going right back into the same cycle of international intervention, stabilize, internationals pull out, it gets crappy again, because the government doesn't answer to the people. It answers to the Americans and the white people.

HANNAH: Right. And that is at the root of the rot of the trust in the government, right?

FOOTE: Absolutely. Haitians arguably have never had a government. In 1804, they became independent. Everybody hears Toussaint Louverture as like the father, the George Washington of Haiti. He was already in prison in France at that point in time. The first leader, Dessalines, immediately named himself emperor for life and was dead within a year. Haiti won its independence from France but it's never gotten its sovereignty politically. And this is an opportunity and Haitians see this as an opportunity. And I think somehow or other, they're going to rise up and take this opportunity, one way or another.

HANNAH: You mentioned trust is a precondition for democracy in Haiti. What are other conditions for a thriving, fruitful, equitable democracy there? And do you think that the US, in its hubris, tends to assess other countries’ form of government to the extent they resemble our own? When Baby Doc was in charge, it wasn't a flourishing democracy, right? It was a bit more autocratic. And yet, they were anti-communist so we supported – we backed them during the Cold War and it was part of the hypocrisy of that strategy.

As a personal note here, because my father had a Haitian roommate in college, he and my mother went in 1977 honeymooned in Port-au-Prince and honeymooned in Haiti. And it was a very different country then, and some would argue it was a safer, more prosperous time for the Haitian people. Is there something to be said for, maybe we shouldn't be holding it up to this kind of Jeffersonian standard of democracy infused with European enlightenment ideals, or do you think that's just a polite way of saying these guys can't govern themselves?

FOOTE: I do think it's a polite way of saying they can't govern themselves. But that said, it's up to the Haitians. And when I was there living from 2010 to 2012 and going out with the people, I saw almost all the old timers – like my age and older, I'm 61 now, so folks who lived under Duvalier – would, when asked about it, kind of get wistful and glance into the distance and say it was much better. We didn't need a fence around our house. They picked up the garbage. We had jobs, buses ran and stuff. And until the late 70s, early 80s, Haiti was much nicer than its neighbor, the Dominican Republic, where I also served.

And so, you've seen a complete flip flop over the past 50 years. And now Haiti is this terrible place and the Dominicans are building a wall to keep them out there. So, it's up to the Haitians. I believe the Haitians want a democracy. They don't want gangbangers running around their country. They don't want, unlike Americans, they don't want criminals to lead their country.

They want a fresh start here and they need empowerment to do it. And if we don't give it to them, it's going to get bad. And you know what? If we give them empowerment and they wind up with a dictator, so be it. It's their country, my goodness.

HANNAH: And that's kind of what I was getting at. I want to make it very clear that I'm not suggesting Haitians shouldn't pursue democracy. And you've said this elsewhere, it sounds like Haitians need a Haitian solution to a Haitian problem. And it's almost a logical impossibility for the United States to promote democracy there and self-determination, and yet be handpicking its political leader. So, we undermine our own efforts.

FOOTE: Exactly. Exactly. In the name of stability. Which hasn't worked at all, because it's arguably the least stable place on earth, right? Although Sudan might make an argument. Ukraine, Gaza certainly.

HANNAH: Right, right. So, it sounds like you would be sanguine about Haitians picking a form of democracy that might look like a different model of democracy, Japanese or Indian democracy or something. What do you think the US role should be in resolving this crisis? We just talked about Haitian solutions to Haitian problems. Do you think the United States should play any role in resolving this crisis?

FOOTE: They should play zero role in resolving the political crisis because that's the problem. When we stick our nose in politically, the Haitians see the government as the United States, not Haiti, not working for them. So the United States should do nothing politically, unless they want to send a group of mediators, three mediators, who have no ties to any government or something, to go down and hold a national dialogue.

And then they should empower a national dialogue via resources to rent space, security stuff, that empower the Haitians to get together. If it takes them four, six, twelve weeks to come to a consensus, it's well worth it. We have gone almost 34 months since the assassination of the president in Haiti and at the time, I told the Secretary of State that Haiti was one of the most urgent issues on his plate, and it's only gotten more urgent since then.

HANNAH: What conditions and limits do you think the US should set for itself on any intervention? You mentioned no political interference whatsoever, but you seemed somewhat ambivalent or there was a bit of a shift in your position on whether we should send in troops to help the police stabilize the security situation.

FOOTE: So yeah, let me – I don't want to be ambivalent. I don't believe that international security interventions every five to ten, 15 years are the answer for Haiti. A year ago I would have been completely opposed to it, but Haiti needs a security intervention and one that is led by the United States, Canada, France, the UK, a country with experience building security capacity because we have to build up the Haitian national police. We just can't go in and kill a bunch of gangsters and leave. We need to leave an organic security force behind us.

HANNAH: It does seem that American news organizations and journalism has started to treat this situation with the urgency it deserves. But you've mentioned elsewhere that the situation was urgent for 32 months, 34 months – was never treated as such. Is that just apathy or lack of curiosity, what is that? Is that just a general lack of interest in the Global South? What accounts for that?

FOOTE: Well, I think it's apathy on the part of this administration. Remember when President Biden was a senator, he said Haiti could sink ten miles into the sea or rise up ten miles into the sky and nobody would care. And that's his administration's approach to it. And I think by doing nothing, they think they're helping the situation. But by holding a US leader or government in charge of Haiti and holding the Haitian population hostage to that, they're actually working against their goals.

HANNAH: So let's talk for a minute about your resignation. I've read in some accounts your frustration with the response to deportations. Others that emphasize your deep disagreement with the Biden administration on the decision to back Ariel Henry. What was the primary motivator for you to resign in such a public way?

FOOTE: I couldn't do my job. I was hired to restore security and democracy to Haiti. Kind of a broad job description. I once had a boss tell me, “Take the hard jobs, not the impossible ones.” But that was my job. We had an ambassador at the time in Haiti who had been there for four years, had shut down the embassy because of security reasons, and nobody in the embassy was talking to anybody in Haiti other than the president and his administration.

So, when he was killed and the ambassador to Haiti was one of the people who chose Ariel Henry, that was her guy, right? So she dug in her heels immediately. I go down there to the Haitians and they're like, this ain't gonna work. And so we were on completely different pages from the get-go. Ariel Henry clearly was not the answer and we, at the time, predicted exactly what was going to happen.

Continued erosion for two or three years until a complete breaking of society. And I wanted a consensus, not with Ariel Henry's party, which broke Haiti, but with the rest of the folks there, which they did get. The deportee thing was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. That wasn't the reason I resigned, but I actually went back and turned on the news at my house and saw all these Haitians under the bridge in Del Rio, Texas, and I realized they were all gonna be deported. And I knew they were there but nobody talked to me about deporting them. So I went into the office the next day and I was like, “What's going on here? You’re gonna deport – I mean, do you think the envoy to Haiti maybe should have had part of this discussion?” I got a condescending, “Dan, you're getting a little big for your britches. You're not going to sit at the table with the big boys on immigration policy.”

HANNAH: What are US interests in Haiti? Not what does the US think its interests are, and you mentioned it cares about stability over democracy and things like that, but you spent time there, you care about this region. Why should our listeners care about this region? What are the adverse effects for the US of continued instability and gang control there? Other than it being a humanitarian catastrophe, what are the vital US interests in this country?

FOOTE: National security. It is currently a failed state 600 miles from Florida. It is the hub in the Western Hemisphere for illicit goods, including people, money, drugs, and most troubling, arms. The Russians are in there poking around, the Chinese not yet but at some point they will be. Having a failed state that close to your own borders and a population of almost 12 million people desperate to get out of there is not in the US best interest at all. And we're already seeing evidence of Haitian gang influence in Little Haiti in Miami. So this is gonna creep up this way like it always does.

HANNAH: How confident are you that Haiti will eventually find a path to a real democratic process and an open and free society?

FOOTE: Absent another revolution or the US and our international pals admitting that we get it wrong every time and empowering a Haitian solution, I'm not confident at all. If we keep doing the same thing, it's going to have the same results. That's how it works. Einstein taught us that we're insane if we think we're going to get a different result from the same inputs.

I think that Americans have this sense that Haitians are cursed, and they made this deal with the devil, and this voodoo craziness is flying around down there, and they just, poor Haitians, they can't seem to get it right down there. I wish we could help. It's not their fault. Again, as we've talked this whole time, it's others imposing bad political solutions on the Haitians that just makes it worse and worse and worse and worse. So, don't blame the Haitians when you look and see the problem in Haiti. Blame the politicians in the donor countries and scream at them to empower the Haitians and only then are you going to see Haitian progress.

HANNAH: I am so delighted to have been joined by Ambassador Dan Foote, who was until 2021 America's special envoy to Haiti before he resigned over a disagreement with the Biden administration. Dan, thank you very much for joining us.

FOOTE: Thanks a million, Mark. It was a great time.

HANNAH: Though rich countries like the United States might be able to help mitigate the situation in Haiti through humanitarian aid, Dan believes political intervention would probably just continue the cycle of crisis and intervention. It’s this vicious cycle that has eroded Haiti’s democracy over the last few decades. In order to build a resilient democracy which answers to its citizens’ needs, Haitians will need the political sovereignty to devise their own solutions.

I want to give a special thanks to Ambassador Foote for joining us today. Thank you also to our None Of The Above team: Olivia Chilkoti and Lucas Robinson. Our intern Eloise Cassier also helped with this episode.

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