To reorient the military's procedures to make them more cost-effective for aid and to retrain personnel to be more effective in aid missions could erode the forces' fighting edge. However, in the past, the U.S. military regularly balanced conventional military operations with relief and quasi-police operations. That pattern might reassert itself. Balance Between Disaster Relief and Preventing Conflicts. Even when interception commands widespread popular support, as in the cases of mass exoduses of Haitians and Cubans to Florida in summer 1994, such actions typically generate public and legal challenges.
Repatriation is the only way to reverse the build-up of refugees.
In 1992, 2.4 million refugees returned home, including 1.5 million to Afghanistan and 178,000 to Mozambique. However, voluntary repatriation must usually wait for a change in the domestic conditions that generated the flow of refugees in the first place. Furthermore, a continuing international military presence may be required to reassure returning refugees that they will be safe from violence and persecution. For example, consider the case of Rwandan Hutus, who have been reluctant to return to their country after the departure of their French protectors for fear of reprisals by the new Tutsi-dominated government. Forcible repatriation, as with Vietnamese boat people in the late 1980s and Haitians in 1994, is generally not favored by the market democracies, and has been on a smaller scale.