Cardona
MPSA 2004
1
Introduction
In February 2004, as a small group of armed rebels besieged the capital and the
United States exerted increasing pressure for him to step down, Haitian President Jean-
Bertrand Aristide found himself facing the consequences of a choice he had made ten
years earlier. Restored to power by U.S. intervention after a coup, the then-President
disbanded the national army. While Aristide preserved the national police, which
received retraining from foreign experts, he “refused to risk his survival” on this new
force, preferring to arm private militias loyal to himself.
1
While the choice to abolish the
army reduced the regime’s vulnerability to coup, this safety came, as recent events have
shown, at the cost of vulnerability to a very different kind of challenge: armed
insurrection “from below.” The relatively small size of the rebel force that was ultimately
successful in forcing Aristide’s ouster
2
highlights the extent to which the failure to equip
at least a minimal state security force can expose coup-averse regimes to another form of
instability.
It is the trade-off between coup and revolution with respect to the institutional
design of the public forces
3
that I wish to explore in the dissertation research of which
this paper forms a part. Perhaps Aristide’s dilemma is unique to the volatile politics of
Haiti, one of the Americas’ poorest and most chronically unstable nations. But perhaps
the quandary of how much power to give the military is not a new one for policy-makers
1
Packer, George, “Ten Years After,” The New Yorker, March 1, 2004.
2
“
A convoy of 70 rebels made a dramatic entrance into downtown Port-au-Prince led by Guy Philippe, the
former army officer and alleged coup plotter who spearheaded a month-long rebellion in Haiti’s northern
towns and cities that precipitated Aristide’s fall from power,” Contreras, Joseph, “Enter the Marines,”
Newsweek, March 1, 2004. Naturally, this group of 70 was not the only one involved in the rebellion, but
the fact that a greater show of force in the capital city was not necessary is noteworthy.
3
I will explain the use of this term below; I adopt it from Latin American usage to denote the men with
guns under the direct authority of the state, including both the conventional armed forces (army, navy, air
force, coast guard, and marines) along with the national and subnational police.
Convention