Friday, August 14, 2009

Obama and Honduras

I recommend Tim Padgett's piece "President Obama's Latin Challenge" in Time, which concisely sums up the U.S. response to the Honduran situation.

In particular, two key points:

Obama got off to a good start in Latin America, engaging leaders and
promising a new attitude from Washington. The problem with the shift on coups is
that Latin America now expects action to back it up.

In other words, money must meet mouth. Condemnation is nice, action is better. Second point:
Obama is stuck in the New World's new paradox. Latin America today is less
dependent on Washington, and less tolerant of its interventionism, than it has
been for decades, thanks to the counterweight of rising star Brazil and the
anti-U.S. gospel of Venezuela's oil-rich leftist President, Hugo Chávez. Yet for
all that newfound self-reliance, Latin America still looks to the U.S.'s
superpower leadership to put the squeeze on rogues like the Honduran coupsters.
No other force in the western hemisphere, not Brazil, and certainly not the
Organization of American States, wields the requisite economic and diplomatic
clout to resolve the standoff.

On the latter point, however, I would add that Latin American political actors have barely tried. Unified clout could have an effect, but after the first week or so no one bothered to try anymore.

4 comments:

Nell 6:50 PM  

What specific actions should they have tried?

At the time, your response was to say that the OAS had failed and that the U.S. had stepped (in a classic U.S. bigfoot way), something you seemed to view as good and inevitable despite the bleak outlook for "negotiations" that legitimized thuggery and played into the thugs' time-killing strategy.

The only way for the rest of Latin America to have "tried" after July 5 would have involved a direct confrontation with the new administration, and the imputing to the Obama administration of tolerance for the coup. It's more than understandable that they didn't take that route; now you condemn them for not having done so.

It's the U.S. that is to blame for the paralysis of July 6-30. If Clinton had come back to the OAS with a proposal for sanctions by each of the member countries, united, it would have been a true multilateral effort. Because she swept in with a proposal made in the U.S.A., she made that impossible.

leftside 6:57 PM  

Unified clout could have an effect, but after the first week or so no one bothered to try anymore.

Again with this criticism of Latin American countries... Perhaps we could understand this hankering if we better understood what actions you think Latin America should be taking? The region simply does not have the wide array of cards to play that the US does. I am sure Latin America could have done more from the start - if the US did not sort of take over the direction of events with the Arias plan. But to fault them for waiting and letting negotiations work out seems a little like Monday morning quarterbacking. Particulary when the few folks who did urge skepticism (Castro and Chavez) were castigated by any and all (in the US) at the time.

Nell 6:59 PM  

It's the last time I'll say it here in your comments, but it's directly relevant to the post:

The UNASUR declaration that they will not recognize the results of elections taking place under the coup regime is something, something meaningful and united.

If the U.S. were to join in and publicly make the same commitment, or even better work with the OAS to send a united, hemisphere-wide, unmistakable message to Lobo and Canahuati that their election victory will not be legitimized, it would quickly result in some real movement for a solution.

An LA Times editorial makes the same point.

Justin Delacour 5:19 PM  

At the time, your response was to say that the OAS had failed and that the U.S. had stepped (in a classic U.S. bigfoot way), something you seemed to view as good and inevitable despite the bleak outlook for "negotiations" that legitimized thuggery and played into the thugs' time-killing strategy.

Indeed, Greg's position is quite hypocritical. In the first weeks of the coup, all Greg would do is bad-mouth whatever the Organization of American States tried to do. Now, he turns around and says that Latin America should have done more. Well, if people like Greg wanted Latin America to do more, they shouldn't have joined the defeatist chorus of OAS-bashers to begin with.

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