Throughout its history, the US has been interested in the promotion of democratization, and at various points that has included the objective of defining the terms of and then defending the preparation and maintenance of free and fair elections. Beginning especially with US support of democratization in the Western hemisphere during the latter half of the nineteenth century, American support for projecting democracy abroad expanded under President Woodrow Wilson. The 1915 US intervention into Haiti is particularly instructive. The US military was used first to quell the insurgency and then to stabilize the country and prepare for free and fair elections, which were a moderate success. The end game, however, was American withdrawal from Haiti in 1930 as the country descended again into violence. The lack of democratic tradition, the taint of the government as being too pro- American, the perpetual poor state of the Haitian economy, and eventually the loss of American public interest for democratizing Haiti, doomed the American occupation in the end.
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