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US-HONDURAS:
Dictatorships and Double Standards Revisited
Analysis by Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON (IPS) - When the Honduran military
deposed President Manuel Zelaya on Sunday, in an
incident that stirred memories of Cold War military
coups in Latin America, it also seems to have caused
at least some foreign policy commentators here to
revert to positions reminiscent of the Cold War.
While the Organisation of American States (OAS), the
U.N. General Assembly, and the U.S. government all
condemned Zelaya’s detention and forced exile, the
coup makers found supporters among neo-conservatives
and other right-wing U.S. hawks, who defended the
military’s action as a justified reaction what they
claimed was an unconstitutional power grab by Zelaya.
The hawks’ support for the coup, which came as media
reports from Honduras described a violent police
crackdown against demonstrators and a
government-imposed media blackout throughout the
country, may have been surprising to many observers.
After all, only days before many of the same
commentators were fiercely decrying similar scenes
coming out of Tehran, and calling for U.S. President
Barack Obama to stand up for democracy in Iran
against what was frequently described as a coup by
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad.
But to those with longer memories, this apparent
discrepancy was anything but surprising.
For although neo-conservatism has in recent years
become identified with former President George W.
Bush’s "Freedom Agenda", and aggressive U.S. support
for democracy promotion in the Middle East and
beyond, the ideology has a very different history in
Latin America.
During the Cold War, neo-conservatives were known as
staunch defenders of right-wing authoritarians as
counterweights to leftist movements in the region.
These included Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Jose
Efrain Rios Montt in Guatemala, and the military
junta in Argentina – not to mention the former
Honduran Chief of Staff, Gen. Gustavo Alvarez
Martinez, who was so brutal and imperious that his
fellow officers threw him out of the country in
1984.
Support for right-wing authoritarianism, both in
Latin America and in Iran, and blistering criticism
of Jimmy Carter’s human rights policy comprised the
core of the movement’s early manifesto, Jeanne
Kirkpatrick’s famous 1979 essay in Commentary
magazine, "Dictatorships and Double Standards".
Ronald Reagan was so impressed with the article that
he made Kirkpatrick his ambassador to the United
Nations.
The current debate over Honduras serves as a
reminder that the simple polarities of recent
foreign policy discussions, in which a
"neo-conservatism" identified with democracy
promotion is contrasted with a "realism" identified
with acceptance of authoritarian governments,
disguise a more complex history.
After all, even as neo-conservatives championed
democratic "transformation" in the Middle East
during the Bush administration, they applauded the
attempted coup against Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez in 2002 and were deeply disappointed by its
failure.
Two years later, they welcomed the forcible exile of
Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide aboard a
U.S. Air Force jet in the face of an uprising by
former military officers and their paramilitary
allies.
At the time, they argued that the two presidents
were dangerous, power-hungry – albeit democratically
elected – demagogues who, if left unchecked, would
wreck the constitutional order and threaten U.S.
interests.
They have made similar claims against Zelaya who had
clearly managed to antagonise other branches of
government, including the Supreme Court. The Court
ruled that his effort to hold a non-binding
referendum on the possibility of amending the
constitution was unconstitutional, precipitating a
series of events that culminated in his ouster.
"Yes, Zelaya was elected, but Hitler was as well,
and Chavez also was," said influential Washington
Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. "A coup isn’t a
nice thing, but it’s preferable to having Zelaya
dismantle the democracy."
Similarly, the right-wing National Review
editorialised that "[t]he Honduran soldiers who
escorted Pres. Manuel Zelaya from his home on Sunday
were acting to protect their country’s democracy,
not to trample it".
But the actual means by which he was ousted –
specifically the decision by the military to
intervene in what was essentially a political
dispute by arresting him and dispatching him to
Costa Rica – bore all the hallmarks of a
conventional coup d'etat, even if it was ratified by
the Congress immediately afterward.
The OAS has already resolved "to condemn vehemently
the coup d’etat" against Zelaya, called for his
"immediate, safe, and unconditional return" to
office by a deadline of Friday, and vowed that "no
government arising from this unconstitutional
eruption will be recognised." After some hesitation,
Obama Monday also condemned the military’s actions
as "not legal" and called for his restoration. In
addition to arguing that Zelaya had himself acted in
an unconstitutional manner, neo-conservatives also
stressed his ties to Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez and other Latin American leftist leaders –
and the alleged threat they pose to democracy in the
region - as a justification for deposing him,
whether by legal or illegal means.
"Look, a rule of thumb here is whenever you find
yourself on the side of Hugo Chavez, [Nicaraguan
president] Daniel Ortega, and the Castro twins [Raul
and Fidel Castro of Cuba], you ought to reexamine
your assumptions," Krauthammer noted.
Others depicted Zelaya as one more pawn in Chavez’s
efforts to expand his influence, in much the same
way that Kirkpatrick described Ortega and the
Sandinistas as puppets of Moscow and Havana 30 years
ago.
Kirkpatrick criticised Carter for allegedly taking a
harder line against right-wing but pro-U.S.-backed
dictators than against their left-wing,
Soviet-backed counterparts. As brutal as they may
be, she argued, "traditional authoritarian
governments are less repressive than revolutionary
autocracies" and, generally, "more compatible with
U.S. interests".
In an echo of the late ambassador’s criticism of
Carter’s human rights policy, former Bush
speechwriter Peter Wehner complained about Obama’s
alleged double standard in, on the one hand,
denouncing the coup in Honduras while, on the other,
allegedly failing to criticise election fraud in
Iran strongly enough.
"[T]here doesn’t seem to be any consistency on when
Obama decides to meddle, beyond his tendency to take
actions that make life easier for those who do not
wish America well," Wehner, who now heads the
neo-conservative Ethics and Public Policy Centre,
wrote on the website of Commentary.
"As a general matter, I’m not in favor of military
coups," he added, in another echo of decades-old
rhetoric. "On the other hand, I’m not in favor of
Zelaya doing to Honduras what Chavez has done in
Venezuela."
Although the Reagan administration was fiercely
criticised by human rights advocates for its support
of military dictators against leftist movements that
frequently enjoyed widespread popular support,
neo-conservatives argued that the larger threat to
freedom posed by Soviet influence outweighed any
injustice involved in suppressing opposition to
"friendly authoritarians", as they were sometimes
called.
If this argument seems jarring, it is likely because
the popular image of neo-conservative doctrine has
undergone a marked change in recent years. This was
in large part because of their own efforts to depict
themselves as "idealists" dedicated to universal
democratisation, as laid out in Bush’s 2005 second
inaugural address and his so-called "freedom
agenda".
On closer examination, however, their zeal for
democratisation appears to depend significantly on
whether the target is considered friendly or hostile
to U.S. interests. In that respect, not much has
changed.
*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read
at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/. |
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