http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/KI25Aa01.html
THE ROVING EYE
The president is in the trunk
For Obama, the ambiguous US stance on Honduras is a dagger pointing to his
heart. It leaves his lofty promise of a new relationship between the US and
Latin America in tatters. Worse still, it unveils how helpless he is facing
his - in theory - subordinates at the Pentagon and the State Department, no
to mention vast reactionary forces across the US for whom multilateralism
means a surrender to "socialism" and to America's enemies.
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times: September 21, 2009
An historical irony has placed little Honduras at the eye of the volcano in
both the United Nations General Assembly in New York and the Group of 20
(G-20) meeting in Pittsburgh this week - even though United States corporate
media would rather focus on Libyan Muammar Gaddafi and the tribulations of
his traveling tent. [1]
As much as the 2008 financial crisis exposed the economic fallacy of
US-propelled neo-liberalism, the June 28 oligarch-directed military coup in
Honduras has exposed the fallacy of the Barack Obama administration's pledge
to uphold democratic values around the world. Stolen elections in
Afghanistan? We don't like it, but ... Military coup in Honduras? We don't
like it, but ...
What passes for official US policy at the G-20 consists of telling big
exporting powers such as China, Germany and Japan to engage in an orgy of
consumption (as the US used to) while vaguely promising the US will finally
boost savings. Fat chance.
As for Honduras, this is now the Obama administration's hour of truth: will
it finally come clean and follow world opinion - also expressed by the UN,
the European Union and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) - in
condemning and isolating the coup plotters?
The stick, or deafening silence
Deposed, rightful Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has been to Washington no
less than six times since the coup. Not once was he allowed to meet Obama.
Then, this past Monday morning, Zelaya showed up at the Brazilian Embassy in
Tegucigalpa, Honduras' capital, after a spectacular run that started in
Nicaragua, involved a flight to El Salvador on a plane offered by Venezuela,
and a 15-hour odyssey across the border to Honduras on foot and by car,
evading myriad checkpoints manned by local intelligence - which is,
crucially, funded, trained and maintained by the Pentagon. Zelaya was
smuggled into the Brazilian Embassy in the trunk of car.
Zelaya may have had help from Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, under the
umbrella of the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA). But now the
strategic game-changer has been to shift the attention towards Brazil - and
that means under the UNASUR.
Whether Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva knew it before hand or
only at the last minute (as the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
insists) is irrelevant. It was not the US that called for an emergency
meeting of the UN Security Council this week; it was Brazil.
Lula forcefully demanded the restoration of democracy in Honduras in his
speech at the UN General Assembly - with strong applause from the plenary.
Obama's speech came right after Lula's. Not a word on Honduras. Obama spoke
of a "new era of engagement" or at best an "inter-connected world" - while
Lula spoke about the emergence of a real multilateral world; its subtext
means the hyperpower does not have the monopoly anymore, be it on the word,
the stick, or deafening silence.
Obama even stressed the US "can't fix it alone" - as if the war in
Afghanistan and confrontation with Iran were global, and not only US,
obsessions. (By the way: Lula met Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad
face-to-face for over an hour on the sidelines of the UN assembly. He later
said that as much as Brazil had the right to develop its own peaceful
nuclear program, so did Iran).
By Obama's own admission, the US can't fix Honduras alone, but at least it
could have emitted the right signals, delegitimizing the coup politically,
militarily, economically and diplomatically from the beginning.
So far, the US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) has engaged
in a pantomime negotiated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias which calls
for Zelaya's return as president, coup plotters integrated into the
government, and amnesty for everybody, including installed coup President
Roberto Micheletti.
This is ludicrous. It's as if in the (failed) George W Bush
administration-supported 2002 coup against Chavez in Venezuela, the plotters
would have been allowed to stay as his ministers.
Only the minimal Honduran oligarchy and the media they control support the
coup. They have no social base. A communique by the National Front Against
the Coup stresses that some businessmen and military who initially supported
the plotters are now leaving the country. The coup plotters - emboldened by
force, as if this was Latin America in the 1970s all over again - reverted
to, what else, mass repression, a state of siege and tear-gassing everyone
in sight.
What the majority of the people in Honduras want is their rightful president
back in power and a constituent assembly, for which they are campaigning all
around the country. Zelaya's own counter-coup has been to risk his life and
install a government in exile - but not in exile, inside his own country -
the ultimate nightmare of any dictatorship. For the coup plotters, there are
only two endgames: unleash state terrorism or get out of Dodge and beg for
asylum in Panama.
The Pentagon power play
Washington's glaring ambiguity is easily attributed to the ongoing, fierce
internal war in the US. The true US supporters of the coup in Honduras are
US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) and the State Department. But even Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton has been forced to back down. On Monday, she
finally was forced to admit "the remainder of President Zelaya's term [is]
to be respected".
Crucially, Obama has to know how the ambiguous US stance on Honduras is a
dagger pointing to his heart. It leaves his lofty promise of a new
relationship between the US and Latin America in tatters. Worse still, it
unveils how helpless he is facing his - in theory - subordinates at the
Pentagon and the State Department, no to mention vast reactionary forces
across the US for whom multilateralism means a surrender to "socialism" and
to America's enemies.
As American political activist, author and lecturer Noam Chomsky has pointed
out, Central America is still traumatized by the "Reaganesque terror" of the
1980s. In a wider context in Latin America, the US used to exert control
either by hardcore violence, direct or indirect, or by applying an economic
stranglehold. This belongs to the past - as much as coup lovers in the
Pentagon may regret it.
Coups, anyway, are far from gone. The Bush administration tried (and failed)
in Venezuela in 2002; now Washington engages in subversion/propaganda via an
extensive media network and National Endowment for Democracy-style support
for the disgruntled local oligarchies. In Haiti, both France and the US got
rid of the government and sent the president to South Africa. Honduras is a
more complex case. The International Monetary Fund has just approved an
enormous loan to Honduras - which will cover for the lack of direct US
"assistance".
Most of all, the US role in Honduras is a Pentagon-playing-the-New Great
Game matter. The coup is intimately linked to ongoing remilitarization of
Latin America - from the reactivation of the dormant Fourth Fleet to the
installation of seven new military bases in Colombia. (See US's 'arc of
instability' just gets bigger, September 3, Asia Times Online.)
In pure Pentagonese, Honduras under Zelaya fell under the good old Cold War
domino theory. The government had to go because it was linked to ALBA, which
means Nicaragua and, above all, Venezuela. Chavez is playing a high stakes
New Great Game - he just bought US$2 billion in weapons from Russia at a
time when Moscow wants access to the Orinoco oil wealth, and he is also
doing energy megadeals with China. The Pentagonese response is an array of
bases in Colombia to monitor him. Now Zelaya's move to the Brazilian Embassy
in Tegucigalpa introduces an even juicier element.
Last December, Brazil struck a strategic military partnership with France -
involving a multibillion-dollar purchase of submarines, helicopters and jet
fighters - with full technology transfer included. Lula is privileging the
French over Boeing - and obviously the US industrial-military complex is not
amused. Brazil projects power independently from the US and France in South
America. This is all about multilateralism in action - of the kind
reactionary forces in the US simply abhor.
Brazil is a key G-20 member at the Pittsburgh summit - the largest economy
in Latin America, swinging its way towards great power status, and still a
key ally and trading partner of the US. Brazil may not solve the crisis in
Honduras. But Lula - whom Obama immensely respects - may convince him it's
time to finally come clean, and side with the people of Honduras.
This might do wonders for Obama's global credibility - especially now that
he has seemingly backed down on his demand for a freeze on Israeli
settlements on the West Bank and East Jerusalem. (See Netanyahu and Obama:
Who's fooling who?, Asia Times Online, September 24)
Were Obama not to make his move, the impression would remain that if he
can't even control his own reactionary/militarist backyard in Washington,
not to mention Latin America, how will he face up to Russia and China on the
global stage?
Note
1. Known for pitching a large Bedouin tent on his trips abroad, Gaddafi this
time pitched it on famous US entrepreneur Donald Trump's 86 hectare (213
acre) estate in Bedford, a town about 50 kilometers north of New York, after
New York police turned down his request to erect it in Central Park.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is
Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a
snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does
Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
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