The 21,000 U.S. troops who arrived in Haiti last September will be down to 3,000 by the end of March. That is reason enough for their commanders to fear a coup and warn former Haitian strongmen not to try.
It appears that a United Nations force of 6,000 troops, plus police, should be able to put down any uprising. But Haiti soon will be entering a critical period.
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fired Haiti's four serving generals and 39 majors and colonels in a breathtaking show of authority, only to take one of the generals back as minister of the interior. If the first action was to show visiting President Jimmy Carter that Mr. Aristide is in charge, the second may have reflected the wisdom of Mr. Carter and other American advisers to be less confrontational.
The path to democratic forms is now well charted, with parliamentary and local elections slated for June 4 and run-offs later. That announcement should jump-start conventional politics, to the extent that any institution in Haiti can be called conventional. Parliamentary elections will pave the way for the presidential election in December, for a successor to Mr. Aristide, who under Haiti's constitution may not have a second consecutive term.
Despite the coup that kept Mr. Aristide in exile for most of his presidential term, and despite graffiti by his supporters calling for his retention in office, Mr. Aristide's contribution to Haitian development will be to follow the constitution and avoid becoming a traditional Haitian dictator-for-life-or-until-the-next-coup.
The likelihood of guns cached by dispossessed thugs is too great to be ignored. Most of those guns will not be seized by authorities before the turnover of command from the U.S. to the U.N. That puts a great burden on the coming professionalism of the armed forces and police, which it is the goal of U.S. policy to create. It also creates an imperative for the U.S. command to convince wannabe strongmen that the U.S. is watching and committed to conclude what it began.
The U.S. intervention in Haiti has been remarkably successful so far, but that is no guarantee of continued success. It was meant to be a temporary operation that would leave Haiti permanently a better place. That goal remains to be achieved.