- The making of a failed policy in a diplomatic process that proved to be painfully unprofessional
- Ineptitude and chaos on Hillary Clinton’s watch
Once the Honduras crisis came onto its agenda, Washington irresponsibly threw away an extraordinary opportunity to rehabilitate its tattered reputation most recently formed under the Bush administration. The Obama administration was all too ready to turn its back on upholding principles that reject an extra-constitutional change of government for a policy charted by the absence of both a Plan A and a Plan B. Rather than adhering to a policy that had been adopted by the entire international community, almost without exception, the State Department repeatedly first affirmed and then backed away from a strategy in which chaos ruled the day. Easily, the most obvious casualty, in terms of a damaged reputation, was Secretary of State Clinton, who at every policy juncture affecting Honduras shepherded a self-caricaturing policy of too little and too late accompanied by gross illogic. She was perpetually behind the curve when it came to the day-to-day articulation of Washington’s mooncalf Honduran policy. Instead of crafting a stance that would prove harmonious with domestic and international goals, Washington’s failed Honduras policy became an embarrassment for its lack of grace and class.
As established by the Honduras crisis, the faulty mathematics of the Obama administration’s regional policy are dramatically clear cut. Certainly, a prima facie case can be made that Clinton, as a surrogate for the Obama White House, rather than acting as a harbinger of hope and change when it came to Latin America, brought nothing of the kind. Rather than an improved U.S. hemispheric policy pointing at an innovative direction or noticeably advancing the U.S. national interest abroad, Clinton acted as if her post was in a third term of the Bush administration. Her management of the crisis added nothing to this administration’s credentials for constructive engagement or as a vigilant sentinel guarding a democratically-elected leader against the extra-constitutional plotting of the Honduran military and a historically corrupt bureaucracy. If anything, Clinton’s Central American policies bolstered regional suspicions regarding the true nature of Washington’s commitment to defending democratic governance throughout the developing world.
What has been so surprising, and at the same time so disappointing, in regard to Clinton’s Honduras policy, is that it seems to have lost so much valuable ground and gained so little in return. To begin, Clinton has merely prolonged this country’s maddening indifference to formulating an engaged and progressive U.S.-Latin American policy. Washington’s traditional club-footed attitude towards the region, stretching back at least to the Nixon and Reagan administrations, comes at a time when Washington was totally absorbed first by the Afghan, then the Iraq, and now once again the Afghan conflict, and seeks to repeat this sterile formula.
When an opportunity to drastically affirm Washington’s commitment to democracy was afforded by the illegal Honduran coup, Secretary Clinton balked, or better-said, began to repeat some of the egregious shortcomings of President Clinton’s policies towards Haiti and Cuba. In a sense, the Honduran crisis could have represented a home-run pitch to the Clinton team. By siding with deposed President Zelaya she would have placed the U.S. firmly on the side of the rest of the hemisphere, including the OAS and UNASUR, as well as the UN and the EU, in upholding the process of democracy-building and preservation in Honduras and elsewhere in the Americas.
Perhaps the most startling aspect of the current U.S. policy toward Honduras was its implausibility. While Clinton as well as Thomas Shannon, the then leftover Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, rushed to call Senator DeMint to reassure him that Zelaya’s participation in a unity government – which the State Department itself had formulated – would not be required to get the U.S. to recognize it. They then convinced the South Carolina arch-conservative to lift his hold on several key State Department appointees, and in doing so, may have swapped Brazil for Honduras. Brazil has not tried to conceal its outrage over Washington’s sabotage of its own peace plan, and this episode is sure to bedevil future Washington-Brasilia relations. Ultimately, this was a deal of amateur inspiration; behind the thrust of this kind of U.S. policy, the potential for loss was so much greater than the prospect for gain. If Clinton’s strategy could be defended on humanitarian grounds, then surely the same argument could have been made in calling for a similar policy for Cuba and other left-leaning pariahs that historically have felt the lash of Washington’s Cold War wrath.
In response, the administration couldn’t be persuaded that precious time was being wasted as the Honduran economy slid into desperation. Meanwhile, Washington must have been cognizant that de facto leader Roberto Micheletti knew all along that he held no formidable cards in his hand to play, and if the U.S. had showed some backbone, he surely would have folded. To the contrary, he did all he could to brazenly brag that in his corner was Panama’s president Ricardo Martinelli as well as Costa Rica’s arch-dissembler and legendary forest of softwood, rather than teak, President Oscar Arias. Of course, the list now includes the U.S. and its South American servitor, Perú’s President Alan García.
Admittedly, in talking about Honduras, one is not referring to a Central American superpower. However, President Obama and his regional policymakers must understand that there are still costs – potentially heavy ones – to Washington’s erratic current Honduran policy. Too many Americans and even more Latin Americans are passionately devoted to the region. If legitimacy is born from the smoothing of the path that extra-constitutional Honduran authorities are now walking, which Brazil has denounced, this actually may not be much of a deal. While the White House’s new management team emerged from the U.S. presidential election with long promises of a new enlightened vision for the region, now many of these advocates of the administration’s cause are troubled by what they see in Washington’s hardly reformed regional policy.
The disenchantment began several months ago when Washington articulated its new Cuban policy. This turned out to be as much a Mickey Mouse project in content as it was a brilliantly conceived and dramatically revised strategy. This early failure in presenting a progressive new hemispheric policy, rather than limited to revoking the Bush administration’s draconic add-ons, soon found itself keeping company with Washington’s extraordinarily inept plan to resolve the Honduran morass, by purportedly making its own policy consonant with that of the international community. But soon the State Department was not emphatically insisting that the illegal government in Tegucigalpa must respond to the demands of the global community. Instead of offering the very generous terms contained in the Tegucigalpa and San José accords (which already were patently unfair to Zelaya), and would have returned ousted-President Zelaya to live out the weeks of his presidency stripped of his powers under a regency rather than as a fully sovereign leader.
Secretary Clinton and her throne room advisors have chosen to pursue a unilateral trajectory, regardless of how multilateral they are in tone. She has managed to subvert her policy in order to woo a man of ill-intent like Senator DeMint, whose indifference to Latin America is otherwise all things Brobdingnagian, indicating that the elections that took place on November 29 would be recognized by the U.S. even if Zelaya was not made part of a unity government.
It is disappointing that when it comes to Latin America and latinos in this country, Obama seems to be clueless. I believe when Clinton was first appointed that she smacked too much of a Cold War liberal who was use to the U.S. having her way with the countries of the South. Obama better start rethinking his strategy because he is losing friends quickly in these two communities. The U.S. belingerency toward Latin America must stop, and Latinos need to get an immigration reform program that is really fair.
Mr. Birns, we are once again grateful to you for defending our Latin American dictators. Given the success Chavez has had in fighting obesity (30% fall in domestic food production), conserving energy (blackouts), controlling population growth (the highest murder rate in the hemisphere), and fighting global warming (30% drop in oil production) it is truly amazing that Clinton and Obama would resist having another dictator in Honduras. And although Cuba may be one of the poorest counties in the world, you have to give the Castros credit for putting together the world's finest penal colony! Keep slugging away, Larry. You are always good for a laugh.
Mr McDonald is right on target!! Castro, Chavez and all these dictators are criminals of the worst kind. Wake up people. America is a great country. If we continue to misunderstand the "idealistic intentions" of these Latin American power hungry thuds they may cause irreparable damage to this country , just as thy have done to their own. Believe me, you would not want to live in the hellish paradise created by Castro in Cuba. However, if you believe in him why dont you move there and live as the Cubans have to live, surrounded by fear, poverty and despair? I can assure you that you would pack your bags in a hurry and kiss the ground when you get back to USA.
You keep forgetting, Mr. McDonald, that it was the U.S. who installed the dictatorial regime in Cuba against which Castro et al. rebelled. And it is also true that the U.S. blockade only served and serves to keep the Castros in power. So in a way, it’s all the U.S.’s own doing.
Could not agree more. I was waiting to see Birn's comment on the recent ousting of a Dutch member of parlement in Nicaragua. Chavez c.s. contribute so much to democracy.
Keep on dreaming
Excellent analysis. Keep them coming. My only quibble is that you pretty much gave Obama a pass. We didn't blame the fiascos of the Bush years on Condi Rice, so, while I do blame Clinton, Obama has to be held responsible too.
The Bill Clinton administration ceded Latin America policy to Jesse Helms. I wonder if Jim DeMint is the new Jesse Helms? That might make an interesting COHA paper!
This interpretation of the events is much too generous towards the Obama administration. The high level of the apparent bungling suggests that the U.S. actually supported the coup from the start and, by acting like it was upset by the event, merely sought to minimize the damage to its false progressive image. In the meantime, the U.S. is working to unseat other leftist leaders that it sees as vulnerable in Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Paraguay. We could see more political gimmicks, such as claims of corruption, regional separatism, or sex scandals, to bring down leftist leaders in those countries.
I would hope that by now the escalation in Afghanistan and the cave-in on most other liberal issues would have convinced most progressives that the Obama administration is not going to change the direction of U.S. policy anywhere. The corporate interests that run our country, and the Obama White House, are not going to cede their interests in “their territory” of Latin America. We had better hope that progressive Latin Americans have the guts to stand up to the U.S. military and covert power under the cover of Obama’s phony progressive rhetoric.
Larry, you are pretty much right on target, in spite of the stupidity of Mr. McDonald's comment. However, I don't think that Hillary failed. I think she got exactly what she set out to get: a military overthrow of an elected government in the Americas–to show everyone who the biggest kid on the block still is. Eva Golinger has an excellent article on "Smart Power" in which she makes it very clear that Hillary got what she wanted. She played out the clock while pretending to assist a "negotiated" settlement between the golpistas and the elected President–which is ridiculous in itself. She also pleased her old friend Lanny Davis–Bill's lawyer in the Monica saga and her advisor in her presidential campaign–who has been shilling for Chiquita Banana in the Honduras saga. A truly shameful and victorious process.
And as much as I wish him well, when Obama allowed Hillary to keep thugs like Llorens (Honduras) and Callahan (Nicaragua) and Negroponte (State), he gave away the store and established himself as Bush III in the region. Living in Nicaragua I can assure you that his popularity in the region is right up there with Bush right now–which is a tragedy in itself.
Mr. Morris, with normalized oil prices your hero Chavez has Venezuela circling the drain – the same one that Castro flushed his country down decades ago. Can you name a dictator in modern history who has led his country to success? Exactly what evidence supports your conviction that these egotistical Leaders-for-Life are good for their countries? Elitist leadership has been bankrupting the people of Latin America for 500 years, whether the leaders purport to be leftists or Opus Dei. It appears that the only quality that Mr. Birns and his followers require of a leader is that they sufficiently hate the United States.
There was not much the Obama Administration could have done to resolve this situation. I think the Obama Administration was right to implement a policy of wait and see. If we all remember in the beginning we allowed the Organization of American States and the President of Costa Rica to mediate the situation. Is it not what the OAS was created to help resolve situations like this so it does not seem that we are always interfering in the internal affairs of a country.
The blame should be placed on the OAS not the Obama Administration.
The OAS has done a stellar job of upholding democratic principles in the region on this issue, which is more than the US can say for itself. Holding onto a principle was worth it here, if holding into democracy is a mere principle.
The OAS needed the US to stand with it instead of against it on this one, and they were let down big time. If I have read this situation correctly, the US has done nothing more here than to isolate itself from the region, and proved that it is still willing to support coup governments in Latin America, even when it's little Honduras (who let's admit isn't strategic ally number one for the US). It will come back to haunt Obamalater. Let's not forget what Brazil's position on this coup was from the start.
Mr. Larry Birns once again you are RIGHT on target.. I'm glad to see you are stirring up people like Henry, it sounds like he needs a good stirring up if he thinks that all leaders that associate with Chavez ought to be ousted. Henry, O! Henry.
I applaud COHA for penetrating mainstream media with a voice that is both logical, and principled on Honduras.
Keep it up COHA
Larry,
If I remember correctly, you once awarded me the "corona" as the best feature reporter out of Nicaragua in the 80's, but the times have changed. It appears that you haven't kept up with those changes. Obviously, we were once on the "same side", but apparently not any more. How can you continually turn so called "reporting" into propaganda for persons who want to change their Constitucions in order to stay in power forever, like Fidel Castro. I still live in Centro America, and I can tell you I haven't met or talked with anyone who hasn't applauded and celebrated the courage of the Honduran people, that turned out in larger numbers than any electo presidente in Centro America. And the voto of the Honduras Congress against the restitution de Zelaya confirma this voto. If you want to consider yourself as a reliable source about Latin America, you better put more boots on the ground and stop being redactado "si sea espiritualmente" por Havana.
Con Cordiales Saludos,
Paul L. Goepfert
Mr. Birns, your analysis of Latin America has always created a positive stir within myself. Also, I am glad to see that are democratically elected are seen as "radicals". Presidente Jacobo Arbenz was such an example. I am not saying that Zelaya was a perfect leader-he had his faults as many leaders do-but he was democratically elected and was ousted because he wanted to have a poll about adding referendums. Also, maybe the fact that he raised the minimum wage of maquiladora workers may have alienated some of the elites in Honduras could've played a role in his departure. Also, let us not forget that Alvaro Uribe is toying with the idea of making legal for him to run for a third term. Uribe who is a close ally of the U.S. has received little or no criticism for his corruptive ways of earning a third term. Let the people of Honduras decide the fate of their democracy, not the elites of Honduras.
The Obama Administration's decision to embrace the compromised elections in Honduras drives a wedge between the US and the most powerful fully democratic and independent countries of the Hemisphere. It has prompted widespread disenchantment with the US. Pity Tom Shannon; if the right wing Republicans in the Senate finally let him be confirmed as ambassador to Brazil he will spend his tenure defending his role in legitimizing the golpistas at the most critical moment.
How can we avoid suspicion that Washington was either incompetent at brokering a smooth reversal of the coup or that an anti-left transition managed by old allies in the oligarchy was our goal from the beginning? The Bolivarian tendency in the Hemisphere will gain sympathy for its charge that Obama is not such a big change after all.
The bottom line reality is that with two-thirds of the Honduran vote counted, only 49% of those eligible participated, a dramatic drop from the 62% figure spun on election day, and notably down from 55% in 2005.
The best non-violent solution I can imagine now is for President-elect Lobo to pledge to fully pardon Zelaya of the phony charges lodged by the coup makers and to make him responsible for organizing an assembly to rewrite the Constitution that was drafted by the last military junta. Otherwise disgruntled conservatives may conclude that extra-constitutional removal of elected left governments will be tolerated by Washington.
John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development
It's a great way to ensure that you don't have elected Presidents who might attempt to stay in power forever to have a military empowered to regularly throw out elected governments.
Like someone said above, you had to have militaries end the democracies of Chile and Guatemala because people had elected the wrong leaders, and the militaries knew how to correct that. Then once they get rid of the wrong people, the militaries can allow the right people to be elected.
This way the military can help democracy by not allowing people to choose their leaders incorrectly. The best democracies are the ones in which the militaries help the people choose the right leaders.
And how do we rate bad leaders? And how do we predict the future? Because you seem to know that Jacobo Arbenz wanted to stay in power as soon as he got elected. And Arbenz was overthrown for his land reform policy, not his desire to remain in power. And how do we rate the right leaders? By remaining allied to the desires of elites who care nothing for the majority who are poor?
Sorry, I was being sarcastic to the point of silliness. I guess there are so many people saying such things seriously that it's now difficult to tell the difference. In a sane world, everyone would agree that it's not "democratic" to have a military serving as a check on elected government, but since we don't find ourselves in a sane world, I guess you have to spell it out for people like you would have had to 300 years ago.
Within these comments I realized much of short-sighted patriotism due to misinformation. After thanking Larry Birns, this is my comment:
In 1979 professor of finance Edward Herman and professor of linguistic Noam Chomsky wrote the book, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism: The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I, and Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.
“Chomsky and Herman cite official statements by State Department planner George Kennan, to illustrate the mindset behind US policy in Latin America and around the world. In 1948, Kennan wrote Policy Planning Study 23, stating that if the U.S. wanted to maintain (and expand) its position of world dominance, it could not truly respect human rights and democracy abroad. The document said:
We have about 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only about 6 percent of its population…In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships that will permit us to maintain this disparity…To do so we will have to dispense with sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives…We should cease to talk about vague and…unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization.
Kennan elaborated on this concept in a 1950 briefing of U.S. ambassadors to Latin American countries. Of prime importance was to prevent the spreading of the idea “that governments are responsible for the well being of their people.” To combat the proliferation of this idea, Kennan argued that “we should not hesitate before police repression by the local government…It is better to have a strong regime in power than a liberal one if it is indulgent and relaxed and penetrated by Communist.” (1)
That concept seems to dominate the USA until now, it puts ideas across why they are resenting Cuba its pioneering task in the matter of independence within their back yard, and why they don’t be afraid of hidden wars carried out by therefore educated terrorists such as Orlando Bosch Ávila and Luis Posada Carriles.
That is why they are desperately fighting by their propaganda campaigns for reviling any form of socialism as “populism” or even “Stalinism” in Latin America and else where.
(1) s., Hans Bennet, http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/01/edward-herm…
Within these comments I realized much of short-sighted patriotism due to misinformation. After thanking Larry Birns, this is my comment: In 1979 professor of finance Edward Herman and professor of linguistic Noam Chomsky wrote the book, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism: The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I, and Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.
“Chomsky and Herman cite official statements by State Department planner George Kennan, to illustrate the mindset behind US policy in Latin America and around the world. In 1948, Kennan wrote Policy Planning Study 23, stating that if the U.S. wanted to maintain (and expand) its position of world dominance, it could not truly respect human rights and democracy abroad. The document said:
We have about 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only about 6 percent of its population…In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships that will permit us to maintain this disparity…To do so we will have to dispense with sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives…We should cease to talk about vague and…unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization.
Kennan elaborated on this concept in a 1950 briefing of U.S. ambassadors to Latin American countries. Of prime importance was to prevent the spreading of the idea “that governments are responsible for the well being of their people.” To combat the proliferation of this idea, Kennan argued that “we should not hesitate before police repression by the local government…It is better to have a strong regime in power than a liberal one if it is indulgent and relaxed and penetrated by Communist.” (s., Hans Bennet, http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/01/edward-herm… ; )
As much as one agrees with the basic sentiments of Mr. Birns, it would have been nice if he had mentioned the reasons for defending Zelaya:
1. A defense of the principle of due process, enshrined in international as well as Honduran law, and disregarded in Zelaya's case,
2. A defense of freedom of the press: all opposition media were harassed and most were closed down. A number of reporters were beaten, kidnapped, and tortured.
3. A defense of the right of freedom of speech and association: 300 candidates withdrew, citing the atmosphere of violence and intimidation, and many were outright murdered. The resistance-supported candidate for president had his arm broken and was beaten.
We are supposed to get excited about the Venezuelan regime, where Chavez's opposition has an almost complete lock on media, or on Cuba, where we've already imposed a blockade and imposed punishing sanctions, not to mention broadcast in alternative media. But in Honduras, where the media supporting the dictatorship controlled perhaps 98% of the market even during Zelaya's time in office, the public is adequately informed and they should just be left in peace to murder the resistance.
To say that our policies are inconsistent and hypocritical is to barely touch the surface of what has become an international embarrassment.: the US State Department.