Prediction: US Will Intervene In Haiti Mess

FOREIGN policy specialist Zbigniew Brzezinski predicts the United States will eventually intervene with military forces in strife-torn Haiti.

The decision will be a ``hard call'' for President Clinton, Dr. Brzezinski told a Monitor breakfast meeting. He says the White House will be prompted to act by domestic political pressures. Brzezinski, who was national security adviser for President Carter, expressed concern that intervention could leave the US ``stuck'' with the multibillion dollar job of rehabilitating that impoverished nation.

Helping Haiti will also mean aiding its island neighbor, the Dominican Republic, Brzezinski predicts. ``Then everybody else in the Caribbean is going to say, `Well,...what about us?''' he says.

Complaints are growing in some quarters, including Congress, that Clinton policies toward Haiti are ``racist.'' Randall Robinson, executive director of the TransAfrica lobbying group, has conducted a hunger strike since April 12 to protest the Clinton policy of turning away Haitian boat people, most of whom are black.

At the same time, public sentiment against large-scale immigration - from Haiti or elsewhere - has grown steadily. The president's immigration policies are particularly criticized by governors, Democrats, and Republicans, for failing to guard the nation's borders.

Turning to China, Brzezinski says he strongly supports the effort to protect human rights there, but US policy must be guided by geopolitical needs.

The US's greatest leverage with China is trade, which provides the Chinese with huge profits. Some members of Congress threaten to take away China's most-favored-nation trade status unless its human rights record improves.

Yet Brzezinski says US trade leverage should be used, primarily to get China's full cooperation on the critical issue of North Korean nuclear weapons.

Brzezinski would then rely on the swiftly growing Chinese economy to move China toward greater human rights. Pushing them too hard also flies in the face of the long history of Occidental oppression in that nation, he says.

Brzezinski says the world appears to be entering a new era of turbulence. The US has three main interests: European unification, Mideast stability, and the evolution of a new balance of Asian power between Japan and China.

Mr. Clinton fails to spend sufficient time focused on such issues, he says.