http://hondurasemb.org/2009/11/18/the-j ... democracy/
The joke and the jokers: Old Hawk Diplomacy and Multilateralism: the Role of the US in the Crisis and Honduran Democracy
By Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle
The joke and the jokers: Old Hawk Diplomacy and Multilateralism: the Role of the US in the Crisis and Honduran Democracy
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” – John F. Kennedy
A long introduction
Someone has to say it to the American people. The people of Honduras feel betrayed by the United States government and resent the bad joke played by American diplomats at its expense. We were led to believe first that the US government sympathized with our plight, only to discover gradually that it is willing to back and whitewash the dictatorship imposed on us. It is not a personal impression; the jokers have names and faces, which we will take note of and remember. Nor is it a matter only of declarations. The facts that speak for themselves, and are of, as yet, unknown but almost certainly terrible consequences. Mark Weisbrot, Co-director of The Center for Economic and Policy Research, based in Washington observes:
The Obama Administration has never once condemned the massive human rights violations committed by the coup regime. These have been denounced and documented by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), as well as Honduran, Central American and European human rights organizations. There have been thousands of illegal arrests, beatings and torture by police and military, the closing down of independent radio and TV stations, and even some killings of peaceful demonstrators.
In fact more than twenty opposition members have been murdered. Uniformed officers assault Resistance member’s homes at night, without search warrants, beat people up and leave. But there has never once been a sign of solidarity, much less of condemnation, from the US. We would not have US military intervention. And we are not asking for particular reprisals (those are sovereign decisions) but only that the US be consistent with the position to which it had committed itself, of working within regional multilateral organizations. It has now turned its back on this stance with the unilateral declaration that it supports and will recognize elections in Honduras a few days from today, in the midst of nationwide protests against the coup and subsequent repression–elections under the de facto regime (which the US has said is “illegal”) rejected by the international community at large.
I will not try to analyze the role played in the Coup by private North American interests. Nor will I focus on the role of American media, be it the more liberal N.Y and L.A. Times, which have been consistently critical of the coup or the conservative (from the Miami Herald to the Wall Street Journal), apparently inspired by a crusade against Chavez. I am often consoled by the lucidity of the larger academic community, but will not invoke it here. Nor will I scruinize here the contradictions of extremist politicians, who have actively defended a regime, infamous to the rest of the world because of its human rights record; at the same time they denounce violations in Cuba or in Venezuela, where, as of today, there is no evidence of torture or selective murder. I will not indulge either in the intricacies of think tank diplomacy, the vagaries, uses and perversions of lobby.
We all know of the open and vocal involvement of Ambassador Otto Reich and his lackeys in providing advice, technical expertise and support to coup leaders. And also of U.S. military officers who led people to believe anything against Venezuela would “go well in the end”.[AP1] I am acutely aware of the importance of these actors. Of the way in which they shape American public opinion, naïve and uninformed which, in turn, conditions policy. I simply have not enough information to venture an interpretation of these parallel, covert and disperse impulses and activities much of which is inevitable in an open society. And supposedly the State is above them and resolves their “contradictions”. So I will focus on the official stance of the U.S.
Even this can be complex and has its own mystery. I also understand that, for the U.S. Administration, the Honduran question is of secondary importance and not only with respect to the war theaters with major geostrategic implications, in which American armies are in a quagmire, but also in regional terms; presumably this is the reason President Obama would not receive President Zelaya in any of his six visits to this country before or since the coup. It is not a matter of “policy”.
There is no such thing as a policy toward Honduras. I suspect there is no “Policy” toward Central America as such and have difficulty understanding what could be U.S. Policy toward Latin America: to act multilaterally as Obama promised his peers in Trinidad in order to build a “new relationship”? To exacerbate regional contradictions and rivalries, in a game to divide and control[AP2] ? To contain the Chavez “threat” at any cost? I can’t say for sure. There are too many inconsistencies.
It would seem important to understand that larger policy as context of more pressing problems, that might inspire officials with the idea that they must make “pragmatic decisions” and take cynical choices in Honduras. But since I hold that underlying and overarching policy to be absolutely enigmatic, rather I will concern myself here with official rhetoric, its phrasing and construction, its supposed logic and transparent pretense, its justification…and with the concrete actions that derive from these.
A historical perspective
Everyone in Latin America has heard the old joke that asks, “Why is it that, in the U.S., there never has been a coup de Etat?” The answer is, “because there is no American Embassy in Washington”. Like most good jokes, this one may be unfair, but is based on hard facts.
I myself have yet to see evidence that the U.S. government was involved in most of the coups that I have been witness to in Honduras, since the one against Villeda (1963), who was cooperating with the CIA and a friend of J. F. Kennedy. At least one of these coups seems to have been an indirect result of U.S. pressure against its protagonists, rather than the other way around. But there is a real problem. U.S. involvement in and support for coups and for dictatorships in Latin America date back to the dusk of the 19th Century. Since 1898, the U.S. has overthrown over forty governments in Latin America, many deservedly not mourned. And coups have followed a pattern. Many have been justified by accusing presidents of trying to perpetuate themselves against constitutional limits, paradoxically perhaps, since in the United States you have reelections. The coup against Goulart in Brazil in 1964, is an example. Meanwhile U.S.- backed dictators such as Trujillo remained in power for decades, while maintaining “constitutional” structures in place. And coups have taken place mostly against left-leaning governments or against the perceived threat of the left. In the first 30 years of the Twentieth Century, years of “Gunboat Diplomacy”, there were 20 US military interventions in the region, five in Honduras: 1903, 1907, 1912, 1919, and 1924, not counting the successful 1911 invasion by American privateers with machineguns. Repentant General Smedly Buttler is said to have said of the first of these, “I made Honduras right for the American fruit companies”.[1]
More recently and typically under Republican administrations, which seemed particularly prone to back dictators until now (although, as the old saying goes, “Democrats and Republicans are all gringos”), the Nixon Administration was involved in the Pinochet coup against Salvador Allende in 1973 and the Bush White House welcomed the last failed coup against Chavez in 2002, although that precocious applause was cause for embarrassment hours later. [2]
Central America has been particularly vulnerable. The United States has pampered, armed and rescued our worst dictators, from Estrada Cabrera (1892-1920) to the last Somoza and systematically organized violent coups against left-leaning governments, since the, J. F. Dulles and United Fruit Company inspired Castillo Armas’ “Revolution” against Arbenz (1954) up to the ten year illegal War against the Sandinista Regime in 1981-1990.[3] The United States militarized Honduran society under the careful guidance of Ambassador Negroponte throughout the nineteen eighties, training officers and terrorists such as Micheletti’s Security Chief Cl. Billy Joya while he christened our trademarked Constitution. This trajectory and the perceptions thereof have bred generations-old resentments against the United States, which you here, with a curious twist of logic, call “anti-Americanism”. This is a resentment which has become part of a mindset, a slogan that has been consecrated in poetry, and has become a code of identity, hard to fight. More recently in Honduras the Bush Administration, through Ambassador Ford, a specialist on Soft Power, pressured the Zelaya Administration against an accord with Petrosur that provided us with a very convenient oil supply… with commercial reprisals. Though this concept of soft or smart power should have maybe warned us, we were inspired to expect a change when we heard President Obama declare “I am absolutely opposed to and condemn any effort to overthrow democratically elected governments…the test for all of us is not simply words, but also deeds.”
Now, there is no consensus as to the origin and nature of the Coup against the Zelaya government. Two opposing theses prevail. ALBA countries and The Left argue, on the basis of historical analogy and of end results more than on hard facts, that the coup is the product of a U.S.-backed conspiracy to intimidate other left-leaning governments. There seem to be some U.S. congressmen and women who would like the leftist version to be true, and as many coup proponents as opponents are convinced of it and promote this version, each for their own usage. The other version, espoused by the U.S. government is that the coup is a product of local political mismanagement, that the United States opposed it from the outset, and that it wants to back a process through which, accompanied by the OAS, Hondurans can “reach an understanding” on the basis of defending the status quo ante, “the democratic system”, theoretically threatened by the non-binding poll that was to take place on the 28th of June on constitutional reform, invoked as the legal explanation of the coup by its perpetrators. Both these theories ignore basic facts. But only the “American” theory concerns us here.
I do not believe the coup was made in Washington or at the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa. (It was made in Coyolito and Casamata). But I do think it has demonstrated how profoundly silly “smart power” can be, how finally ridiculous are the claims to have “solved the problem” and how there has been no real change in attitude. If one connects the dots, one clearly sees that in Washington the hawks are in control.
US policy: Cynical procrastination in support of “democracy”
Ambivalence and contradiction have characterized U.S. positions and declarations and given them a veneer of cynicism. Weisbrot points out that, though it voted for the OAS Declaration which demanded it, Washington has never called for the “immediate and unconditional return” of President Zelaya to power. Repeatedly asked to clarify, Secretary Clinton has refused to say if “returning to constitutional order” as the United States proclaimed, meant restoring President Zelaya to power, although it clearly implies the de facto regime is not constitutional. Days after the Coup, the U.S. Southern Command declared to the international press “everything is normal with our forces in Honduras; they are performing their usual activities and joint maneuvers with the Honduran Armed Forces”! What does it mean when Ambassador Amselem declares in OAS that President Zelaya’s return to the country is “foolish and irresponsible” a few hours after Sec. Clinton has declared this “would facilitate dialogue”?
While suspending diplomatic visas of some officials and announcing measures that affect innocent people who solicit visas, the United States has refused to suspend for the most part the funding that the Millennium Program provides for large infrastructure investment.[4] Although initially the international financial organizations (WB and IADB) suspended loans and operations with the de facto government, beginning two weeks ago they have resumed loans to both government and prominent businessmen behind the Coup.
And most importantly, from the beginning we have read the words of U.S. diplomats published in Foreign Affairs and listened to diplomats, anonymously quoted up to the week before last (by Time magazine for example), advising the State Department against the stance of the regional community (of repudiating the results of elections that could be held under the de facto regime), since such elections are according to them “the way out” and to reject them would prolong the crisis. The official stance continued to be that the United States would follow OAS determinations, until the United States blocked a Declaration against elections under the de facto regime five weeks ago. Ambassador Llorens had declared President Zelaya had to be restored to office as stipulated by The San Jose Accords and that every U.S. official had recognized the coup regime was not constitutional. But suddenly last week it didn’t matter anymore, when Ambassador Shannon declared to CNN the United States would recognize elections, whether or not the elected President had first been returned to office. And now all U.S. spokespersons have declared that the United States will accompany the electoral process and recognize its results, despite the fact that the Continental Community of Nations continues refusing to do so, while insisting “the U.S. is working with the regional organizations”. Both things can’t be so, at the same time. Several U.S. congressmen and women have complained about this apparently abrupt “change”.
Shannon’s revelation was, if you will, the punch line. In more elegant terms–because this is tragicomical–in literary theory we speak of the moment in which protagonists finally see clearly the truth that had been veiled to them although it be obvious to knowing spectators from the beginning. That is always the center of the piece. This was such a moment, maybe planned from the beginning. And I confessed I laughed, though pained. Now Ambassador Llorens hails the electoral process to take place two weeks from yesterday as the fulfillment of Honduran’s sacrosanct democratic rights at the same time he confesses he “obeys orders even when he disagrees with them”, which seems reasonable if sanguine.
After falsely leading President Zelaya to believe that he would be restored to his position at the beginning of this month in order to get him to sign the “Agreement”, U.S. diplomats proclaimed a “solution”, and now that it has become evident there was no such thing they offer him backing for his restoration “after elections” with a clear goal of thus consecrating election results. The United States has not in the meantime condemned Micheletti’s proclamation of a “unity government” he has selected singlehandedly and under his command. And now senior officials declare cynically that President Zelaya has “backed out of the accord after realizing his support in Congress to be weaker than he thought”, when in fact, President Zelaya exhorted Congress to pronounce itself and de facto authorities have refused to convene Congress for the decision.
The other game in which the Obama Administration seems to have been entertained from the outset is the question of definition. Is this a military coup? The theory implies that a “military coup” would have “interrupted the democratic process” while a coup by Congress say, or the Supreme Court named by Congress, could be a “defense of Democracy”? One only has to see General Romeo Velasquez’s grin when he responds gaily to the press “if this had been a military coup, I would be in charge.” He is laughing at the dilemma and the theory behind the question: that the military obeyed “orders” from Congress and The Supreme Court –although not completely– when they took the President hostage and flew him forcibly to Costa Rica! It is supposedly because of this lack of definition that most aid has not been cut. In fact, all military coups in Honduras have had the backing of political parties and of official circles in the past. And others may not, but the American government knows full well that the military made the crucial decisions on the 28th of June and are in command.
In consultation exclusively with the lawyers of the party they wish to favor, lawyers from the U.S. Law Library of Congress based an analysis of the coup on a formulaic misinterpretation of treacherous laws,[5] paradoxically concluding that Honduran democracy was threatened by our proposal of constitutional reform to amplify representation and direct citizen participation, so that ousting the elected executive was but “a peaceful and legitimate constitutional transition in defense of democracy”. They replicate the regime’s propaganda and follow up on precedents.[AP3]
“Democracy” nevertheless is the key word, the catchphrase. Everyone is a defender of Honduran Democracy. Micheletti proclaims himself a defender of democracy and peace and sovereignty. Mr. Shannon’s clownishness has gone to extremes in calling Micheletti along with President Zelaya, “a hero of democracy.” Meanwhile, democracy was supposedly imperiled when the Zelaya Administration organized a non-binding poll with open and voluntary participation to ask people whether they wanted to be consulted on constitutional reform. After all, four months before the Coup during the Bush Administration, Mr. Shannon had in fact declared–as if it was his concern and competence–that “Honduras had other more urgent and pressing matters” than discussing or having a referendum on constitutional reform.
And today supposedly, democracy is to be assured with elections–no matter what kind, even under military authority! Understanding these contradictions requires real understanding of our current political system.
Democracy as catchphrase rather than substance
While avowedly committed first and foremost to supporting democracy, the United States seems never to concern itself with the substance of that ideology. Rather, it seems to confuse democracy with and react mechanically to the formalities of an electoral system. Local politicians have clearly identified this weakness and adapted themselves, with a strategy to provide the trappings and forms while denying any substance, manipulating institutions against democratic civic life, following the letter, not the spirit of the thing. And it seems to work perfectly, with a wink and a nod and the complicity of all. It is as if American officialdom had some kind of score card with catchwords and lines for political parties (check), regular elections (check), theoretical universal franchise (check), independent (alas!) electoral tribunals (check) and decided whether they support a system on the basis of whether a majority of the above elements are present. Only in this fashion can anyone conclude that Honduras has had a democracy. What am I missing here?
It is not a new thing, this proclaimed and peculiar American admiration for “Honduran democracy.” For decades now U.S. Ambassadors to Honduras –and I have been privileged to interview them all for different kinds of official reasons– have not only shown complacency with the “admitted deficiencies” of our political system but also praised its “great progress” and twisted it to their circumstantial convenience. Negroponte praised our democracy during the Iran Contra Affair, when hundreds of citizens were disappeared for the crime of dissent, and Almaguer demanded the inscription of a foreign national as presidential candidate, in defense of “democracy.” But what is Honduran Democracy? Por sus frutos los conocereis. “Ye shall know them by their fruits.”
Is it government by the people, of the people, for the people? If so, why is it that after three decades of “democracy” the economy grows, but per capita income in real terms remains virtually stagnant, so that yet 65% of the population remains in poverty and extreme poverty? Why do 30 of each one thousand children born alive, die during the first year of infancy due to preventable causes and 31% of survivors are still malnourished five years later? Why do we have an illiteracy rate of 20% and room for only one third of primary school graduates in middle school? Why do we have to export people to such an extent that remittances are our number one source of foreign exchange earnings? Isn’t democracy about social integration rather than a machine of systemic marginalization? What kind of democracy is this that they are defending, if it does not allow a poll to be taken? What sort of democracy, repudiated by a majority of the population, has to repress popular demonstrations day after day for four months, but will be redeemed by militarized elections? How could participatory democracy in Honduras threaten the United States? Why does the United States stand against reform when its system is a product of such reform? Does it assume paternity of the system?
A short history and portrayal of the Honduran political system
No political system should call itself a democracy when it perpetually condemns two thirds of its population to poverty without efficiently addressing the need of basic services (health and education, justice and elemental opportunities) financed through fair and proportionate taxes, nor should any system pretend to be a democracy when most citizens cannot participate in civic life of their own accord. Yet such has incontrovertibly been our system in Honduras. The Constitution, which limits the right of representation to the traditional party machines, is its lynchpin. And it is impossible to solve the problems of the majority when an unconcerned elite holds power.
One of our foremost legal experts, Efrain Moncada Silva, who has published a History of Honduran constitutions, declared a few weeks before the Coup that none of the dozen or so Honduran constitutions has ever been issued by a representative assembly or produced [AP4] a social pact–an understanding between different segments of the population as to how we were to govern ourselves. Nor can the one we have today be amended to that purpose. The 1982 Constitution was born under a dictatorship. Party bosses selected the candidates to the assembly and it constituted a political system such as historian F. Xavier Guerra calls, apropos of Porfirian dictatorship, “a fiction of democracy,” in which politics are played and power distributed with complete exclusion of the governed. It is the system founded on that document which led to a crisis, of which the Coup is only a consequence.
When Oscar Arias, Nobel laureate, Costa Rican President and the U.S.- chosen mediator, who has repudiated de facto authorities, proclaims that the present Honduran Constitution is “a monstrosity”, he perceives only the tip of the iceberg. He would be further scandalized were he to delve deeper into the complementary laws, the workings of our fictive democracy, in which a handful of political bosses determine the totality of the nominees for elected office without consulting anyone, and in which no one can aspire to participate in elections to even the humblest post of alderman or local party representative without the blessing of those bosses and an affiliation in a nationwide political organization (movimiento) with official certified presence in a majority of counties and departments. It is a ridiculous thing.
Maybe one has to have been in the belly of the monster, of The Honduran Levianthan to fully grasp its inner workings, and that is the reason most foreigners and even most Honduran citizens, who are in fact excluded, have such great difficulty understanding it. I have been there. For in the last twenty years, I have been a candidate in the primaries in the Liberal Party, (despite my opponents and due to inherited privilege) to congress, to the vice presidency and to the presidency on different occasions, and though unfortunate at polling booths controlled by adversaries with a refined culture of fraud, as a result, I have served two terms as a minister and as cabinet coordinator. I have dealt, as a candidate, with the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and Party Commissions and I have served in the Central Committee of my Party, founded at the end of the 19th century & the largest in the isthmus till now.
I know this system well and I have witnessed how rotten it is and have written about it. It is an astute creature, but it is no democracy. Or rather, it is a sham democracy, a racket. And for all who know it or suffer it, it is a shame to have the Great Democracy of the World duped by its racketeers, or complicit with them! To have the United States defend and praise this system, which your government has followed for decades, arguing that it represents huge progress over the military dictatorships of the 1970s, when we are in fact in the midst of a new disguised military dictatorship! [AP5]
It is also an unpopular system which has generated an ever-increasing disenchantment and massive citizen alienation from it, due to a profound lack of credibility. People understand that it does not solve their problems, that it does not even address their worries, that it is a machine that generates electoral propaganda and rhetoric but then afterwards, breeds unavoidable, incurable corruption. So that although thirty years ago almost 80% of the population voted for a Constituent Assembly, now only one half of electorate votes, and parties have to agree to proportional stuffing of ballot boxes in order not to seem ridiculous. It is a machine that has systematically co-opted the people’s will and betrayed their interests; and has produced governments that, after winning elections with promises of redemption, turn their back on the general interest in order to privilege and reward party bosses splendidly and feed profit to economic power groups we aptly call argollas–rings–with ringleaders; una “cosa nostra”, Honduran style.
I did not agree with everything President Zelaya said or did, but I identified with him and many of his collaborators in wanting to change that system–not to establish a dictatorial authoritarian regime, but rather to democratize it, to demand accountability, to raise awareness and foster citizen participation. It is also true that we had somehow managed to prevail in elections within that system, but we were unsympathetic to its perversions, acutely aware of its powerful inertia and convinced we had a responsibility to open a new path.
Since the coup, in order to restore legitimacy, peace and a minimum of security to its citizens, President Zelaya has conceded every point in the San Jose Accord and accepted the unacceptable. Arias, Insulza, every independent dignitary has declared so. He has renounced the call for constitutional reform. He knows he must not be the one to demand it and has been consistent in his position. He has renounced also the offers of amnesty and of deals that would put him personally in comfort and out of harms way. And in this way has preserved personal integrity and popular trust. Only he can restore peaceful governance. On the other hand North American diplomacy, ambivalent and vacillating from the beginning, forced initially to seemingly collaborate with a hemispheric consensus, has imposed the condition that political reform be renounced, and now has backtracked, serving as as fortress and last ditch defense of the coup and a corrupt political system. This is tragic because it feeds popular prejudices and stereotypes of transparent hypocrisy. The old cruel joke again.
Conclusion: The perverse dynamics of defending a dictatorship
With no small insolence, insinuating that U.S. recognition will be enough in the end, U.S. Ambassador Amselem asked the OAS Assembly last week: “What does not recognizing the coming elections mean, not in the the world of magic realism, but in the real world?” Since diplomats won’t, let me explain to such a well-read man that it means that Honduras is headed toward a Revolution, with the backing of the peoples and governments of the continent and, that being the circumstance, perhaps it is not in the interest of the country he represents and which purports to back multilateralism, to stand in our way.
The problem of American policy is not paranoia about Hugo Chavez or Chavez’s paranoia (mirror images of each other) although the paranoid, too, have real enemies.[6] Nor is it that the United States “underestimates the importance of the Honduran crisis,” as Daniel Ortega argues. Rather it is that, as American historian Greg Grandin posits, because these countries are considered inconsequential, U.S. officials think that they can afford to experiment with them, and with their political and human rights. The problem is precisely that there is no coherent policy. The State Department is perhaps logically too focused on other serious problems–as it was before, with the Soviet Union–to see the complexity of the regional panorama and to foresee consequences. And lacking coherence, policy directions are obscured, manipulated, easily derailed by interested secondary actors within and without, and become inefficient. As a result, we have had in Honduras the consolidation of a regime which, despite its control of the media, the backing of a minority (because dictatorship also has a social base) and despite its repression, is strongly opposed (as the United States knows) by a majority, a radicalized faction of which will be justified –shortly- in using violence after all attempts have failed, not to mediate but, to restore legitimate authority.
Violence, crime and instability in the region today are direct descendents of crazed Cold War policies of the recent past, although I suppose people like Mr. Negroponte would not be able to see this. What the United States does or neglects to do today will unfortunately have similar results in the future. In Honduras, the Coup has provoked a Revolution. The system broke. All the king’s soldiers and all his ambassadors won’t put it together again. No matter what happens, the Resistance Movement will in the end achieve the goal of convening a Constituent Assembly. But Revolutions can be peaceful if one deals intelligently with them. Violent if not. Mr. Lanny Davis, the lobbyist formerly employed by Secretary Clinton has confidently declared “A new President will be sworn into office in Honduras on the 27th of January.” That might very well be, but if elected under the de facto regime, that President will not be able to govern peacefully.
In Tegucigalpa, U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens sounds simply ridiculous when he “pleads for elections” and declares that “it would be a crime to deny people the right to vote,” as if someone –in the Resistance- was in a position to effectively deny anything. His statements come despite the fact that candidates that represent opposition to the coup have been systematically harassed, physically abused, extorted and have declared they will not participate; hundreds of Liberal party candidates and several from other two parties have renounced their place in ballots. And despite the fact that the states of the region have declared they will neither observe nor recognize results of those elections. An American journalist asked Mr. Ian Kelly, U.S. spokesman last Thursday: “What does the U.S. think about the human rights situation in Honduras right now? There have been mass arrests, curfews, an emergency decree, and a ban on protests and media closures for three weeks during the presidential campaign. Does that undermine the electoral process, in the view of the U.S.?” Mr. Kelly had no answer.
What we are saying is what the song says: “Estas elecciones no son nuestras,” these elections are not ours… “son del patron.” “They belong to the boss.” Elections won’t solve any problem, much less give us a democracy. And if elections are held under any other than elected legitimate authority, some people will vote (both private entrepreneurs and public officials have warned employees if they do not prove they have voted, they will be fired and the Attorney General has already announced criminal investigations of Resistance members who have declared that they will boycott elections) but the results cannot be legitimate to a majority of the citizenry and there will be chaos and violence of various origins. Already there are reports of military plans to stage feigned Resistance attacks which would justify more repression.
It is not that there will be fraud, but that these elections themselves are a fraud. And if there is no peaceful solution, there will be war. Not an outright war of an unarmed populace against 30 thousand brutal military and police who do not feel obligated to abide by international conventions, but war nevertheless, bloody war, which will get the aid and fall into the logic and rhetoric of the international left. Those complicit will have blood on their hands. And this scenario could replicate itself. The United States will determine in the next few hours which way we go. I have aimed here to convince you that Smart Power Diplomacy has been dreadfully stupid in dealing with the Honduran Crisis. That it is defending the illegitimate owners of a system, that is a fiction of democracy and that its incredible clumsiness will be counterproductive for U.S. national interests in the region. Maybe Utopia is dead and the future belongs to the local “pragmatists” the United States hails as saviors.
I don’t know how it can be done, but the real challenge would seem to transcend formalist cynical conceptions so that you may formulate substantive international policies: to guarantee basic human rights within a democratic framework, whereby majority rights are assured against the police state or oligarchic oppression. At least here. How could we breathe life again into the moribund ideal that the Americas are destined to be homes of genuinely free and democratic societies? Is that not the only thing that could bring us together and facilitate the peaceful integration we all need?
