WASHINGTON, 26 February 2004 — The crisis in Haiti confronts the Bush administration with a problem well known to decades of its predecessors: How to undertake swift triage on the hemisphere’s poorest country without taking responsibility for a convalescence that will be long, costly and uncertain.

Repeatedly over the past century, the United States has stepped in to avert calamity in the onetime French slave colony, only to back away when the crisis has abated. But these fitful efforts, starting with Woodrow Wilson’s dispatch of Marines in 1915 to quell disorder, have never solved the problem — indeed, according to some analysts, they made them worse.

Now, US officials are trying to bolster the rickety Haitian government by brokering a power-sharing deal between a president they distrust and an opposition that many experts believe incapable of running the country. Adding urgency to the mission, bands of rebels not under control of the opposition are threatening to overrun the capital. The Bush administration continued Tuesday to push for the power-sharing plan, although an opposition spokesman said they had rejected it. Yet, even as they become more deeply involved in the diplomacy, US officials are trying to limit the American commitment. They have ruled out military intervention and are not promising a bonanza of financial aid.

But if the compromise fails and insurgents seize Port-au-Prince, precipitating a humanitarian disaster, US officials may find it harder to stand by. Should a wave of Haitians set out to Florida in boats, that could have political consequences for the president in an election year.

The Americans “will want to do the absolute minimum necessary to keep the situation from exploding,’’ said Daniel Erikson, a director of the Caribbean program at the Inter-American Dialogue. “The open question is: What’s the US tolerance for chaos in Haiti?’’

President Bush said when he took office that he was skeptical of commitments to “nation building’’ of the kind that would be required in Haiti, a nation which is as bad off as some of the poorest African countries, by many measures. And despite the White House’s departure from that policy in Iraq, administration aides have pointed to Haiti’s long downward slide in the 1990s as proof of how massive a project it would be there.

In 1994, the United States sent 20,000 troops to help to restore duly-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide after his ouster by a military coup, and the force occupied the country for two years. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, was part of the team that arranged the restoration. A United Nations contingent remained for four more years to help foster a return to democracy.

But in 2000 elections, Aristide was blamed for widespread fraud. As his tenure in office lengthened, he was accused of funding violent pro-government militias, suppressing the opposition, and ruling by decree.

After 2000, the United States and international donors cut back aid. Conservative Republicans in Congress argued that the 1994 intervention had been a massive waste of resources that should not be repeated. US officials criticized the country’s weak judicial, law-enforcement and education systems, and the dysfunction throughout the government.

A State Department official recalled recently how the Haitian bureaucracy was unable to arrange to refuel new cars and trucks shipped to Haiti by international donors. Government workers drove them until they were out of gas, then abandoned them by the roadside, the official said.

American officials insist there is little public support for a prolonged US stewardship of Haiti. In the mid-1990s, President Clinton was hailed by supporters for trying to aid an impoverished country that had been ignored at least in part, they felt, because of racism. But even Clinton was unwilling to maintain the US commitment for more than two years, analysts have noted.

The Clinton administration cut back aid to Haiti in 2000, during its last days in office. The Bush administration continued to restrict aid even as the country’s deterioration accelerated.

“The Bush administration’s policy was pretty much identical to Clinton’s at the beginning, but it has been more damaging because the situation has gotten worse and worse,’’ Erikson said.

James Dobbins, Clinton’s special envoy to Haiti from 1994 to 1996, said he blames Aristide, above all, for squandering the opportunities of recent years to move Haiti toward political and economic reform.

Yet he also believes that successive US administrations must share blame for a contradictory, start-and-stop approach to the problem. He says they have been spending too little on a problem which, because of Haiti’s proximity to the United States and poverty, should have a far higher priority.

Despite the $55 million in aid requested by the administration for Haiti for fiscal 2005, the country will receive only about one one-hundredth of the aid Iraq is receiving, Dobbins said — even though Iraq’s average per capita income is about 10 times higher than the average Haitian’s. Haiti received about $200 million a year at the 1990s peak, after the 1994 invasion, he said.

Despite this reluctance to intervene, the threat of large-scale emigration has made it impossible to ignore Haiti.

In recent days, both of Florida’s Democratic senators, and also some of its Republican House members, such as Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, have expressed concern about the possibility of a large new wave of emigration.