editorial at/@
tortillaconsal punto/dot com
By Atilio Boron
Translated from Spanish by Karla Jacobs, September 22nd 2009
Zelaya is in Tegucigalpa and his return to Honduras, which made a mockery of the “security measures” installed along the length and breadth of the Honduran borders, should mark the beginning of the end of the coup regime. The reasons that underlie this desired outcome are succinctly outlined below.
Firstly, the Honduran gorillas and their instigators and protectors in the US (principally the Southern Command and the State Department) underestimated the scale, intensity and perseverance of the popular resistance which, day after day, tirelessly, manifested its opposition to the coup.
In truth, going by contemporary Honduran history, the scale of the popular rejection to the coup was not in anybody’s calculations. But the new course mapped out for the nation took during Zelaya’s presidency – his positive response to popular demands ignored for decades by previous governments together with the reorientation of the country’s international relations as a result of Honduras’ incorporation into the framework of ALBA – had an impressive pedagogic effect and is what has provoked such an unexpected popular reaction to the usurper regime.
Secondly, the coup regime demonstrated its incapacity to overcome a situation of double isolation. On the domestic front, with every day that passed it became clearer that the social base that sustained the regime was reduced to the Honduran oligarchy and a few groups subordinated by its hegemony, including media outlets dominated solely by the power of capital wealth. What is more, as time went on, far from being weakened, popular resistance to the coup increased dramatically.
On the international front, Micheletti’s regime is almost completely isolated. Save very few exceptions, all Latin American and Caribbean countries withdrew their ambassadors, as did many of the most influential European countries. The Organization of American States (OAS) adopted a hard-line regarding the de facto government.
Soon after it was installed, the only external support the regime could rely on was from the US. But even US support declined considerably as time went on. At first US visas for diplomatic personnel accredited in Washington were revoked. More recently measures that came to weaken the positions of Micheletti and his collaborators were introduced.
Thirdly, the ambiguous policies of the US government – a result of the internal dispute within the Obama administration – which facilitated the perpetration of the coup, gradually turned into less amiable policies towards the usurper regime.
While it is true that the initial rejection of the coup expressed by Obama had the edge taken off it by his former (and current?) rival, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a number of factors gradually inclined the balance against the position adopted by the Secretary of State and created an atmosphere of increasingly antagonistic relations with the coup leaders. Among those factors are the undeniably retrograde nature of Micheletti and his government, the unending succession of insults directed at Obama each time the White House expressed any criticism of the coup regime and the de facto government’s manifest failure to build a social base.
Fourthly and finally, the regime installed on June 28th represents a headache for Obama not least because its success to maintain itself in power emphatically discredits Obama’s promise to establish new relations between the US and the rest of the Americas.
The initial support of the coup (made evident by Washington’s obstinate refusal to define it as a “coup d’etat”), the US government’s lukewarm diplomatic response and US indifference in the face of very grave human rights violations committed by Micheletti’s government, have seriously damaged the image Obama wanted to establish of himself and his government in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The continuity of the coup regime would make Obama look like an irresponsible and demagogic politician. Or, even worse, it would make him look like a president incapable of controlling what his subordinates in the Pentagon, the Southern Command and the State Department do and say.
And this brings us to a second, very important matter which supersedes the framework of hemispheric politics: the Obama administration’s credibility on the international arena. By demonstrating inability to control what happens in his own “backyard,” the leaders of other countries (especially China, Russia and India) have reason to suspect that Obama would be incapable of controlling the most aggressive, reactionary sectors within the US (sectors to whom Obama’s promise to encourage multilateralism is equivalent to an unconditional capitulation before their most hated enemies) under circumstances relevant to their national interests.
This is particularly grave at a time when Obama is negotiating with Russia a new agreement to reduce both countries’ nuclear capacity (something that Washington needs as much as, if not more than, Moscow given the financial haemorrhage produced by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the uncontainable US fiscal deficit).
The failure of this agreement would invoke an enormous financial cost to the public budget at a time when liquid funds are required to reduce the risk further deepening the current economic crisis.
In order to persuade the Russians that his plan to reduce nuclear capacity is viable, Obama must first demonstrate that he is in control of the situation and that the hawks in the Pentagon are not capable of twisting his arm.
Each day Micheletti remains in power is equivalent to another month of difficult talks with Medvedev and Putin, with Obama trying to persuade his Russian counterparts that his promises will be translated into deeds. Because, if Obama cannot control his own in Honduras, would he really be able to control their reactions to vital and strategic US national security matters?