:

If I implied that Iran is building a huge embassy, then I overstated the case; what I think I said was that RG members are working out of the Iranian embassy in Managua, and that the staff there is the largest Iran has overseas. I don't see anything in these stories to change that, though if it has a larger staff somewhere else, I stand corrected. It's correct to point out that Iran's grandiose promises to Venezuela and Nicaragua have not materialized, and for that reason I didn't mention them.

Much as I appreciate fact-checking, though - facts are important -- I think we should stay focused on the larger ones. Chavez and Iran have formed an alliance that is potentially harmful to the US-- and spare me the "axis of evil" distractions. Hezbollah -- which acts as an overseas arm of Iranian foreign policy -- is in South America, and has entered through Venezuela. Chavez is actively promoting, through his contacts with Iran, with his oil money and through other means (like supporting the FARC) an agenda that is harmful to our interests.

I certainly agree that we have a checkered past in Latin America (though not as checkered as many think), and that we should quietly support the growth of democratic states and free economies without being overbearing or interfering in the internal affairs of countries in the region. I agree with General McCaffery that we need constructive policies down there, but those constructive policies have to be developed with an appreciation of our national interests, not freighted down with '80s guilt any more than they should be by the neo-imperialism of earlier times. Chavez may eventually collapse of his own weight, but in the meantime he and his pals have to be taken seriously; at a minimum, we should aid other countries in the region whose democracies are in danger of being subverted.

Andy, Rachel:

In reply to Andy's note -- where are the Venezuelan ICBMs? -- and Rachel's, let me say first that no Latin American scholar would mistake me for one; I had a finger in the wars of the '80s and commanded JTF-B, but like most of us I spent most of my life facing east and west, not south. (They wince in pain at the Mexican restaurants when I try to order a taco en espanol.)

I agree with Rachel's prioritization -- Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, Iran, China. Then Chavez. But he cannot be ignored, and he is steadily becoming more than just an irritation, as Latin America becomes more important to us. Have you taken a look lately at the composition of the American body politic? I suspect if there were anybody on this address list with a Latin American surname we might have a different perspective. (We will in a generation!)

Aside from the long- term concerns for democracy in the region -- and Rachel's last two paragraphs are exactly right -- Chavez is actively working against us; his two most important overseas allies are Russia -- which is reportedly about to build a naval base on the Venezuelan coast -- and Iran. According to the Department of State, Venezuela has become a transshipment point for Iranian influence in Latin America, both through support for Hezbollah activities there and through the Revolutionary Guards, who apparently make up a good percentage of the staff of Venezuelan embassies in some countries, particularly in Managua, where the Iranian embassy is reported to be the largest anywhere. Again according to State's reports on terrorism, Venezuelan passports are available to anyone who comes in on the weekly Tehran-Caracas direct flight. A quick stroll on Google would be enlightening. I personally always thought Chavez was just a clownish dictator who was going to eventually crash; I think we need to look again at what he's accomplishing in the region. Iran may eventually collapse internally -- recent events continue to be hopeful. But if in its travails it decides to be more externally aggressive, we should look to Venezuela to be a conduit.

Finally, Chavez & Co -- including Iran, Hezbollah and AQ -- are involved in the Latin American transnational crime stew that is causing such turmoil at our borders and inside the United States. There is a crossover point at which Venezuela's support for the FARC, the criminal gangs like MS-13, and the Mexican Cartels all make common cause, though indirect, against the governments of Latin American states and the U.S. Honduras is about to be attacked along this line. My friends who are real Latin experts tell me the young, all-male pro-Zelaya mobs in Honduran, for example, are rented by Chavez.

One of the Big Pictures that us national-security types are missing is this slow assault on civil government on several fronts, by combinations of thug-type criminal gangs and Chavez and his cronies, who together constitute a different kind of insurgency that requires a different kind of response, certainly more low-level than infantry brigades but (because of that) more difficult to identify and coordinate. No ICBMs, Andy, but a serious threat nonetheless, and one in which progressives and conservatives should make common cause.

I just ran across this from that famed strategist Lao TZU:

"If a ruler behaves as if he invented the world, He will do no good at all;

The earth is a sacred vessel vessel - and it cannot be owned;

If you try to possess it, you will destroy it;

If you try to hold onto it - you will lose it."

Or, in current American venacular, maybe it's time for our masters in Washington 'to chill out'

cheers,

Michael Brenner

The crux of the issue here is whether the US has either the duty or the obligation to try to determine political outcomes in Latin America. Frankly, we have a tragic track record in this regard, with uneven support for democracy at best. Given that history, we are better off invited in to assist or mediate, not pontificating about democracy or verbally (or otherwise) trying to undermine "beard pullers" like Chavez. One day we may learn that we are neither the "exceptional" nor the "indispensable" nation, and that events and political change in other countries are not things we can control or direct, just things we must live with.

As a non-Latin America expert myself, I hate to throw my hat in the ring here--but the level of debate is declining. I disagree with the seriousness of national security import Bob puts on Chavez; it clearly falls in priority below the issues we face in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, Iran, and China.

But look: Chavez clearly allowed the FARC safe haven and arms--that threatens our partnership with Columbia, our effort to eradicate drugs, and supports a terrorist group that had spent decades destroying the lives of Colombians. As a progressive, the human rights aspect of Chavez's meddling should cause real disturbance.

As a national security issue, funneling arms to organizations like FARC undermines an ally. Moreover, there have been reports--though I do not know how well founded--that the FARC participates in the tri-border area trade in which Hamas and Hezbollah clearly participate, and in which there are rumors that al-Qaeda gains funds.

Finally, there is an issue of democracy. Autocracies breed violence, overshoot in their attempts to put it down, and create increasing spirals of extremism. We've seen this in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and throughout Latin America with right wing governments in the 1980s -- it's a similar phenomenon to the Accidental Guerrilla syndrome Dave Kilcullen writes about. Chavez is authoritarianism 2.0 -- a softer breed that uses the democratic system against itself, not unlike Putin. It's a problem, for those of us who think democracy does lend stability, but can't be brought neo-con style, at the point of a gun. If it can't be brought at gunpoint, the best way to bring it is the slow, deep changing of culture to be democratic.

Once the democratic mores of Latin America are undermined, it will be harder to bring them back. The right in Latin America has been no great shakes on eradicating poverty--but I don't give left wing soft authoritarians any better odds. Less voice on that continent likely leads over time to more refugees, more illegal immigration, etc. for America.

Bob Killebrew pays more attention to Latin America than I do. But in describing Chavez as an "increasing threat to core American interests"
could he bring us up to date about Venezuela's order of battle? Carrier battle groups? Mechanized divisions? Long range ballistic missiles?
Weapons of mass destruction? Just wondering.

Why does the "return of the Left" in Latin America concern the United States? Latin America's experiment with the Right -- the Washington Consensus -- seems not to have provided a solution to the region's problems. Why not give the Left a chance? Frankly, who cares? Why not let Latin Americans pursue their own destiny?

I think we generally agree, Dov.

But the most important point I wanted to leave you with is that though we're hitting about the right notes for now, we had better be prepared to support the present interim government -- which is constitutionally elected -- against what I am dead certain is going to be a Chavez-inspired (if not directed) offensive. Put another way, Honduras is going to become a test between Chavez and his allies and us and ours.

In a spooky way, this resembles the '70s, but the comparison is not exact. The return of the Left would be far less important if Chavez and his allies weren't channeling Iran the way they are, or if we weren't becoming so susceptible to turmoil south of our border (and inside the US, where Latin immigration has given us both a huge, vigorous new population and serious organized crime problems). My guess is that time will take care of Chavez, as it apparently is going to of Iran, but we're in for a rocky ten or twenty years. The anti-gringo generation, and the present incursions of Hezbollah and the RG in South and Central America, are going to last for awhile.

The crux of the matter is not whether a government is left or right, but whether the government is abiding by democratic principles and maintaining the norms of responsible engagement in the hemispheric community. The mere act of winning elections is insufficient, particularly when one controls the levels of government and electoral results can be manipulated. Nuance is required. The governments of Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and others—leftists all—lead strong, vibrant democracies and have proven to be robust partners for the United States across a range of issues. Others, such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, have defined themselves in opposition to the United States and have worked assiduously to create environments supporting authoritarianism and actions inimical to democracy.

What’s needed is a clear-eyed analysis of our interests and objectives in the hemisphere, and an understanding of the tools available to achieve them. For example, many people talk about the OAS, but despite the much-heralded Democratic Charter, the institution has been unable to stop the slow-motion democratic deterioration in the hemisphere. At the same time, the United States cannot go it alone without becoming the focus of attention once again and emboldening those who define themselves in opposition to the United States. That calls for a more active outreach to other nations in the hemisphere, first and foremost with Brazil and Mexico, and perhaps enlisting help elsewhere, such as from Europe, which might be willing to work in tandem with the United States to stand for democracy across the region. Of course, that’s difficult, too, given the traditional Latin American reluctance to highlight publicly the shortcomings of fellow Latin American nations.

The real story is not the overthrow of Zelaya in Honduras, which in any event could be relatively quickly resolved by moving up the scheduled elections from November 29 to, say, August 29. (The candidates had already been chosen and the election was already well underway when the coup occurred; Zelaya is limited to one term and thus could not run again, while de facto President Micheletti already lost in the primaries and similarly would not be able to run.) Rather, the more profound question to be asked is where the hemisphere itself has been as nation after nation has elected leaders who then use the institutions of democracy to attempt to perpetuate themselves in power. And, equally interestingly, where have all the think tank experts been who issued numerous and sundry reports for the new administration, calling attention to all the failings of the United States while completely missing the story on the state of democratic governance in Latin America?

Some of this conversation is way overboard. Chavez is only a threat in the imagination. He is only really a problem for his own people and it is up to them to seek out the change they need and deserve. Better to examine why he had support to begin with, which had something to do with US regional policy under the Bush administration.

It is seriously time for the US to engage differently in the region, a process begun carefully, maybe even too carefully, by the Obama administration. I hold no proxy for Zelaya, but, again, this is largely a problem for the Hondourans to solve. If they want mediation or a US role, it is for them to ask.

To cook up a new, threatening "axis" of Latin American evil seems to me a dramatic and regressive overstatement of the risks in the region. And to make Iran the devil incarnate in the region smacks of a desparate search for an enemy. As if the region were reeking with dangerous elements tempted to adhere to Islamic fundamentalism! Strikes me more as folks working hard to "tweak" Uncle Sam's nose. Not worth the hyperventilation.

The pressure on Honduras to restore "Mel" Zelaya has been more than "a little rough" on that country. After all, Honduras opted for democracy, and then watched its President attempt to chip away at its governmental structure, using Chavez's behavior as his model. We must recognize that what happened in Honduras was not a garden variety military coup. Zelaya's ouster had the support of the Honduran Congress and of the judiciary, which ruled that his proposed referendum on permitting him to run again for office was illegal. Instead of initially demanding Zelaya's immediate reinstatement, the United States should first have emphasized its willingness to mediate between the ousted president and the government, with one critical precondition, namely, that there be no changes to the Honduran constitution. By initially emphasizing that the coup was anti-democratic, but not equally stressing the anti-democratic nature of Zelaya's machinations, the Administration unnecessarily appeared far too close to Hugo Chavez than should have been the case. The United States must always come down on the side of the national constitutions of our Latin American neighbors. In that regard, however, there is no reason why we should in any way empower the likes of Chavez, Ortega, Morales of Bolivia or Correa of Ecuador to subvert their democratic institutions. This does not mean we should actively seek their overthrow. Washington need not return to the hard line that it pursued during the Cold War era, for the simple reason that all Latin American countries, with the notable exception of Cuba, are still democratic, in form if not in substance. We have not, and should not, destabilize the governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia or Nicaragua, as we once did in Allende's Chile in the early 1970s, or tried to do in Ortega's Nicaragua in the 1980s. By now Washington should have recognized that regime change tends to be a very risky business, with uncertain results. At the same time, however, we should not stand in the way of those who wish to protect their national forms of democratic governance, As we have now done with respect to Honduras, we always can and should offer our good offices to ensure that the substance of democracy, as well as its form, is preserved and sustained.

The Administration has, so far, hit all the right notes on this one; Obama and Clinton's first reaction -- that the U.S. does not condone military coups -- undercut Chavez and put the United States on the right side of the OAS at the beginning of the crisis. It also put the U.S. -- not Chavez -- in the position of being the negotiator between Zelaya and the interim Honduran government, instead of Chavez or others of his camp. First set to the United States.

Of course this has been a little rough on Honduras. The country has long been our most staunch ally in Central America. I was the commander of JTF-B there in the early '90s, and the Honduran Army and Air Force -- at least at that time, but I doubt that it's changed much -- was shot through with West Pointers and graduates of our various service schools. Their emerging democratic government was awash with Ivy-League graduates and English-speaking democrats who looked to the U.S. as their patrons. Though corruption and crime was, and remains, an endemic problem, the Hondurans could have reasonably expected more support than they initially got when they ran their out-of-control president out. Though it's easy to see how they were driven to their action, they committed a blunder of the first magnitude.

But the bigger game here is Chavez and his so-called Bolivarian Revolution. Though many in the U.S. consider him just a clownish South American strongman, Chavez represents an increasing threat to core American interests, particularly because of his strong ties to Iran and his sponsorship of Iranian influence - including Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guard cadres --in South and Central America. Chavez may be a clown, but he has used Venezuelan oil money and his Iranian ties to become a real force to be feared by many main-line South American states like Brazil and Argentina, where economic disparity and whacko economic polices have long supported the kind of lower-class discontent that keeps him in power in Venezuela. A lot of things are moving in the Southern Cone, and Chavez is a -- if not the -- central focus of anti-American action. In many ways, what's going on down there is reminiscent of the Soviet move into Central America so strongly resisted by Reagan in the '80s, except now there are actors with -- potentially -- access to nuclear weapons as well as alliances with drug cartels and narco-insurgency groups.

So the U.S. challenge is twofold. First, to help the Hondurans return to the fold of democratic states and to the OAS; that will take a little negotiation and time -- their next elections are in November, and that is the timeline we should stake out for easing though the tactical problem of Honduras' political problems. Publicly, we should play the role of the stern uncle in the family feud, setting the tone, demanding apology, but ultimately working it out so the family is mollified.

Secondly, though, we have to confound Chavez, particularly in Central America. I am absolutely certain -- hearing from older Central American hands -- that Chavez was behind Zelaya's attempt to seize power, that had the U.S. not acted as it did, we'd have seen an attempt to overthrow the interim government, and that Chavez and his new buddy Oretga (risen like Banquo's ghost in Nicaragua) are now going to do everything they can to influence Honduran politics, not least by instigating political unrest and a low-grade insurgency against the current government (like, for example, those rent-a-mobs of young, military-age men with crew cuts that we saw right after Zelaya was ousted). This is going to be a testing-time in Central America, between a struggling, pro-U.S. government, and the combined forces of Chavez, Ortega and, behind them, an Iranian government struggling to maintain its own legitimacy by supporting a more aggressive foreign policy). While maintaining the "stern uncle" attitude with reference to the ouster of Zelaya, the U.S. has got to also make it clear that we will tolerate no outside interference in Honduran affairs, and back it up with aid and support. Much more is at stake here than just Zelaya's fate or the survival of the interim government of Honduras.

This issue seems clear to me: gone are the days when ostracism by the United States could help delegitimize a leader. Shunning leftists may give us a temporary sense of smugness, but has no strategic effect. We should hold our nose and deal with them, knowing that they will soon enough prove failures.

That said, we should modulate our relationship with leftists, righists, or any other sort of "ists" who attempt to circumvent democracy and mutate into dictators. Ostracizing Chavez or wanna-be Chavezes will have little effect, but that doesn't mean we should invite them over for dinner.

The terms of much (most?) coverage of leftist trends in parts of Latin America is redolent of the Cold War era. There were bad guys (anyone who didn't curry favor with the United States and/or declared himself 'a socialist') and the good guys (anyone who did the former and didn't do the latter). The consequence was a string of interventions, military & political, direct & indirect, which had no bearing on America's strategic confrontation with the Soviet Union but did keep/place in power various rightest elements - several repressive autocrats. Today. the war on communism is over. The war on terror has been slotted into its place. But there are no violent, anti-American Islamist terrorists in Latin America. So what is the point of the renewed effort to take custodian responsibility for a continent? Or, for that matter, Georgia where we have supported an emotionally unbalanced authoritarian figure whom we gave licence to provoke a conflict with Russia?

The breast beating about Chavez has now been amplified because of Morales in Brazil, Honduras, etc. Chavez still sells us oil, though. Morales is a popular, properly elected populist who is being challenged by extra-legal means by the country's old power establishment. Is our strategic objective to ensure that politics around the globe conforms to our preferences? warped preferences at that? The failures of similar improbable undertakings in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Pakistan where we have apparent (if ill-defined) national interests, should immunize us against the impulse toward global meddling. That a very large slice of the American foreign affairs community is still susecptible to this infection suggests that some serious national self scrutiny is in order.

cheers,

Michael Brenner

Roger Noriega, a Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote:

The rush to judgment in the case of the recent removal of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya has brought to light the challenge of dealing with the emergence of 21st-century “caudillismo” – the new brand of strongmen running roughshod over democracy with the backing of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. Indeed, Hondurans are moving on, and the conflict is not about Zelaya at all. A majority in that country supports his ouster, and most are fiercely united to resist the bullying of Chavez. How this matter is resolved – and the posture of the United States – will determine whether the strongmen have reached their high water mark or whether representative democracy has a fighting chance in the Americas.

In the ten days since Zelaya was arrested by troops and flown in to exile on June 28, several facts have emerged. That early Sunday morning, the military had in hand a June 26 arrest warrant adopted unanimously by the independent Supreme Court. Zelaya’s reckless and illegal actions since March to gut the constitution and to overturn a sacrosanct prohibition on his reelection invoked a self-executing clause that expelled him from office (read Article 239 of the Honduran constitution). The Congress voted 124-4 (including virtually all of Zelaya’s own Liberal Party) to formally oust Zelaya and follow the constitutional succession to name his replacement, another Liberal. The civilian institutions never stopped functioning freely, and the military never took power. One member of the military leadership has admitted that it may have committed a crime by sending Zelaya into exile, and the civilian authorities are investigating. The interim government is committed to holding elections this year and turning over power in January – something Zelaya was not committed to doing.

Backing away from earlier demands for Zelaya’s return to power, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is exercising genuine leadership by blessing mediation by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias. She acted only after Zelaya and Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza of the Organization of American States (OAS) buzzed the Honduran capital in a Venezuelan plane piloted by a fighter jock in a sloppy and dangerous bid to return to power.

The fact that Clinton said that she would not “prejudge” whether Zelaya should be restored – with the man standing at her side – suggests that she’s done her homework and realizes that this was no “coup.” That she blessed the Arias’ efforts signals a lack of confidence in the OAS, which turned a blind eye to Zelaya’s anti-democratic actions. Published reports this weekend that Clinton has decided not to support OAS Secretary General Insulza’s reelection, if true, suggest that she is disappointed in the OAS’s failure to defend genuine democracy from dictators and caudillos in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.

Honduras is a watershed event. It may have stirred our new Secretary of State to act to salvage the region’s commitment to representative democracy. For Hondurans and for all the little guys who are tired of being pushed around by bullies, it is not a minute too soon.

The author was a senior official in the administration of President George W. Bush from 2001-2005. His firm, Vision Americas LLC, recently worked for a Honduran private sector group.

Michael Shifter, Vice President for Policy at the Inter-American dialogue, wrote:

The Obama administration’s response to the Honduras crisis not only reflected a principled stand, but also helped neutralize Chavez’s role and influence in pursuing a solution. If the administration had not condemned the coup, describing it as “illegal” and calling for Zelaya’s reinstatement as president, most Latin Americans would have been very disillusioned. The Obama administration is understandably trying to repair the damage to US credibility on the democracy question, after the Bush administration had made a terrible misstep, unfortunately expressing its delight at the coup directed against Chavez in April 2002. This time, Chavez seems frustrated. After all, the “empire” doesn’t want to act like an “empire.”

Now comes the hard part. Having rightly condemned the coup, the Obama administration is getting pressure from both sides of the Honduras conflict to help work out a solution. But the positions are far apart, and an agreeable formula is not in sight. The sticking point is Zelaya’s return, which for the de facto government appears to be a non-starter. The Obama administration may have defended the rule of law, but helping impose or force Zelaya’s return – with unpredictable consequences in a highly polarized and volatile situation – may be a bit risky. This is especially so since Zelaya is far from clean and probably does not inspire a lot of trust in the Obama administration. Few doubt that his unconstitutional power grab helped bring on the institutional crisis that resulted in the coup.

It is hard to argue with the claim made by many that this case is thick with ironies, hypocrisies and double standards. The problem is not how the Obama administration reacted in this situation, but rather the remarkable passivity of US administrations in the face of the clear erosion of democratic sagfeguards and checks and balances in a number of Latin American countries. For all the progress made since the end of the Cold War, there is a huge – and growing -- democratic deficit in Latin America.

In Honduras, the coup was in clear violation of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, but the fact is that Zelaya’s conduct prior to the coupe also raised serious questions, as have other situations in the region that have been met with silence. Many have referred to Chavez’s circumvention of the rule of law by stripping away significant authorities of Venezuelan officials elected last November, as well as Nicaragua’s electoral fraud – both of which also violated the same Charter but provoked little or no reaction. In Ecuador, during the course of a decade (1996-2006) three elected presidents were removed from office. In all cases, the military was the final arbiter, and yet in none was there a reaction remotely comparable to what we’ve seen in Honduras.

The collision in Honduras had been brewing for months, and the Obama administration would be smart to continue to work multilaterally, through the OAS and other regional bodies, to figure out how to head off such crises in the future. Alert mechanisms are always tricky. They involve sensitivities about sovereignty, which are especially acute in Latin America. But such a change in the system is needed. Also crucial would be a reform of the Charter so that in the future not only the executive, but other branches of government, and opposition forces, could request action by the OAS. That reform would take into account situations that are typical in the region today, including Honduras.

For the Obama administration the challenge is less how to deal with governments commonly described as of the “left.” After all, the Cold War is over, and those ideological labels have less and less meaning. Rather, the challenge is how to deal with complicated situations that involve the erosion of democratic institutions and the rule of law. These situations may be more marked in the Venezuela-led coalition, but they are by no means limited to Chavez’s allies. That would be an oversimplification. Under Bush it was very difficult to make progress in this area, since anti-US sentiment was so high, and distrust so profound. The hope is that the Obama administration’s refreshing pragmatism will help reduce the disconnect between the US and Latin America so that other major regional governments like Brazil and Mexico will begin to call attention to the region’s recent democratic slide that has been ignored too long.

Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote:

The media coverage of Honduras has drawn a sharp contrast between the Obama administration’s response to the coup in Honduras and that of his predecessor to the military coup in Venezuela in 2002. But in reality there are much more similarities than differences. When the Venezuelan military overthrew Chavez in April of 2002, the Bush administration initially supported the coup.But within a day, Latin American heads of state meeting in a Rio Summit made it clear that no one would recognize the coup government; the Bush Administration quickly switched its position and opposed the coup government.

Similarly, the Obama administration’s first response to the coup differed from all other governmental responses in the world in that it did not criticize the coup. Rather, it said called upon “all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.”

For those who know anything about diplomatic language, this really makes it clear that the Obama administration is not on the same page as the rest of the world, when it comes to this coup. The coup leaders only need to run the clock for the few months remaining in Zelaya’s term, and everything that this administration has done so far is consistent with this goal – including the arrangement of a mediation effort with Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, which was doomed to fail from the beginning.

Looking forward, Washington will still play an important role. Zelaya will likely return to Honduras, setting up the political confrontation that the coup leaders hoped to avoid by taking him out of the country. The only way they can win this political battle will be through repression. As reported in the Miami Herald, the coup government has used widespread media censorship and repression to control information. It has shot and killed demonstrators, and yesterday there was a report that a trade union leader was murdered. The Obama administration has been almost completely silent in the face of this repression. Will they remain silent as it intensifies if Zelaya returns?

POOR HONDURAS---

Honduras faces extreme poverty, fundamental injustice in society, enormous crime levels, environmental ruin, unwise and incompetent leadership, a dangerous friend in Venezuela, and unhelpful neighbors.

Hard to see a useful role for the US --- except to not make mistakes. We should unashamedly stand on our principles. We support the rule of law and the democratic process. We are opposed to the Armed Forces of Honduras hustling the President out of country in his pajamas. We should help negotiate a solution as a neutral observer and friend of the Honduran people.

Zelaya was headed down a predictable path to hijack the Honduran State. Mr. Chavez who now dominates every societal and political structure in Venezuela is complicit in the plot. The terrible injustice, corruption, and economic inequality of the Honduran State makes all of this possible. The same conditions in Nicaragua brought the Sandinistas into power. The same conditions in El Salvador created a bloody civil war for a decade.

The US needs engagement. We need active political strategies. We need to remind ourselves how much Latin America means to vital US economic, political, and national security interests. We lost most of our leverage and credibility during the Bush years. Now is the time for patient re-building of a Latin American long term engagement policy. President Obama made a good beginning at the Summit of The Americas.

The leftist authoritarian regimes emerging in the region have no solutions (Venezuela, Bolivia, to some extent Ecuador, Nicaragua.) However, they will dominate the political process for the coming 25 years if we do not develop a serious, resourced hemispheric engagement policy with our important neighbors on the North-South Axis.