Post-Duvalier Role Of The Armed Forces Haiti's defense
traditionally has fallen victim to political vagaries. A
readiness for battle and the initiation of defenserelated
engineering projects in the first two decades of the nineteenth
century turned out to be costly preparation for conflict against
phantom armies. The engineering projects included construction
of the citadel of La Ferrière in northern Haiti. Soon afterward,
Haiti turned its attention toward the rest of the island of
Hispaniola (La Isla Española), which Haiti controlled between
1822 and 1844. Controlling the whole island, however, drained
the national treasury and induced torpor in the battle-hardened
veterans of the wars of independence. The gap between Haiti's
fears and its military capabilities widened. The army lost
institutional coherence and its ability to pursue missions of
national defense. The only thing that assured the nation's
safety until the twentieth century was the jealousy among the
great powers -- France, Germany, and, by the