"Why should the USA and its friends worry about an island in the Caribbean going its own way, and wish to interfere with that? True, that doesn't make much sense, but then it never has. Cuba has had similar problems hadn't it?"

Cuba has been an example for nearly 50 years. If it weren't for the Cuban American lobby in Miami we'd be ingnoring them even more than we do now. As for Haiti, it's government has been so fundamentally corrupt for decades that I can't imagine anyone holding it up as a "good" example of anything except as something to avoid.

Who do you think we're worried they're going to influence? Barbados? The Bahamas? Puerto Rico?