Obama's Honduras Problem

For the better part of June, Honduras was near the bottom of the list of concerns when the United States looked south. But then, on June 28, the country's military forcibly removed José Manuel Zelaya, a democratically elected president. To be sure, Zelaya had attempted an unconstitutional power grab, but whatever questions may surround his rule, Zelaya's ouster by the armed forces bore the features of a coup, an all-too-familiar scene in Latin American history.  

No one could have predicted that Honduras, the third-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, would test the Obama administration's posture toward Latin America, its commitment to multilateralism, and its overarching policy on democracy.  
 
So far, the United States has steered a cautious middle course that seeks to combine taking a principled stand with relying on more pragmatic negotiation. It is a characteristic Obama approach -- but in this case it risks conveying weakness and ambivalence to all sides. The question, then, is whether the Obama administration could have reduced the risk by being more actively engaged. Perhaps. A less punitive stance toward the de facto government at the outset of the crisis may have better prepared a path for restoring democratic rule. 

The international reaction to the coup was swift and harsh, with unanimous condemnation followed by calls from the United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS) to return Zelaya to power. It was an instructive lesson to the Obama administration about the evolution of the region's political dynamic, as it revealed the delicate balance between military and political interests throughout the region -- not to mention the forceful role of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. 
 
The Honduras crisis touched a nerve throughout much of Latin America, but not because, as some analysts have contended, Zelaya's ouster was the region's first coup in several decades. (The removal of Ecuadorian President Jamil Mahuad in 2000 met the definition, although it elicited virtually no regional response.) Rather, the image of 200 military officials taking an elected president out of the country in the middle of the night set off political alarms for leaders in other Latin American states. 

South American countries such as Brazil and Chile have long battled military rule, and their presidents were in no mood to consider any ambiguity in this case. They feared that any mixed signal could embolden the region's militaries, which had thankfully returned to the barracks after years in political power. José Miguel Insulza, the Chilean secretary general of the OAS had himself been forced into exile by the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in the 1970s. In the weeks following the coup, Insulza said that the situation in Honduras reminded him of Guatemala's 1954 coup, the backdrop of perhaps the most tragic episode in recent Latin American history. 

And then there is Chávez. Since his election three years ago, Zelaya had led his country into the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), a coalition of nine Latin American and Caribbean countries directed by Chávez (and financed by Venezuela's oil resources) with the goal of curtailing U.S. influence in Latin America. Zelaya's removal was a significant political loss for Chávez and a sharp blow to his plan of extending regional influence. In addition, the coup conformed with Chávez's ideology, in which the Latin American right wing -- or what he calls the "squalid oligarchy" of traditional economic and political elites -- would not tolerate leftist governments. Lastly, in an ironic twist, it enabled Chávez, who, in 1992, attempted a military coup against an elected Venezuelan government, to claim the moral high ground by criticizing the Honduran military's actions.  
 
From the outset, the Obama administration showed a desire to condemn such a flagrant unconstitutional act. President Barack Obama called Zelaya's ouster "not legal" and said that it set a "terrible precedent." Such statements were intended to repair the damage to U.S. credibility in Latin America, which was hurt most especially by the Bush administration's undisguised delight when Chávez was temporarily ousted by a coup in 2002 (and then, to Washington's apparent dismay, returned to power). The coup in Honduras offered the United States the opportunity to reform its former posture, a gesture that was welcomed throughout the region. 

Although all members of the OAS supported the group's ultimatum -- either reinstate Zelaya or face expulsion from the organization -- it was the Chávez-led ALBA countries that had the clearest agenda and seemed to drive the region's politics. In an especially theatrical moment, a Chávez-supplied airplane carrying Zelaya was denied approval to land in Honduras in the days after the coup.