[Peace-discuss] Why Washington Cares About Countries Like Haiti and Honduras

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Why Washington Cares About Countries Like Haiti and Honduras
	By Mark Weisbrot
	The Guardian Unlimited on January 29, 2010

When I write about U.S. foreign policy in places like Haiti or Honduras, I often 
get responses from people who find it difficult to believe that the U.S. 
government would care enough about these countries to try and control or topple 
their governments. These are small, poor countries with little in the way of 
resources or markets. Why should Washington policy-makers care who runs them?

Unfortunately they do care. A lot. They care enough about Haiti to have 
overthrown the elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide not once, but twice. The 
first time, in 1991, it was done covertly. We only found out after the fact that 
the people who led the coup were paid by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. 
And then Emmanuel Constant, the leader of the most notorious death squad there - 
which killed thousands of Aristide's supporters after the coup - told CBS News 
that he too, was funded by the CIA.

In 2004, the U.S. involvement in the coup was much more open. Washington led a 
cut-off of almost all international aid for four years, making the government's 
collapse inevitable. As the New York Times reported, while the U.S. State 
Department was telling Aristide that he had to reach an agreement with the 
political opposition (funded with millions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars), the 
International Republican Institute was telling the opposition not to settle.

In Honduras this past summer and fall, the U.S. government did everything it 
could to prevent the rest of the hemisphere from mounting an effective political 
opposition to the coup government in Honduras. For example, they blocked the 
Organization of American States from taking the position that it would not 
recognize elections that took place under the dictatorship. At the same time, 
the Obama administration publicly pretended that it was against the coup.

This was only partly successful, from a public relations point of view. Most of 
the U.S. public thinks that the Obama administration was against the Honduran 
coup, although by November of last year there were numerous press reports and 
even editorial criticisms that Obama had caved to Republican pressure and not 
done enough. But this was a misreading of what actually happened: The Republican 
pressure in support of the Honduran coup changed the Administration's public 
relations strategy, but not its political strategy. Those who followed events 
closely from the beginning could see that the political strategy was to blunt 
and delay any efforts to restore the elected president, while pretending that a 
return to democracy was actually the goal.

Among those who understood this were the governments of Latin America, including 
such heavyweights as Brazil. This is important because it shows that the State 
Department was willing to pay a significant political cost in order to help the 
Right in Honduras. It convinced the vast majority of Latin American governments 
that it was no different than the Bush administration in its goals for the 
hemisphere, which is not a pleasant outcome from a diplomatic point of view.

Why do they care so much about who runs these poor countries? As any good chess 
player knows, pawns matter. The loss of a couple of pawns at the beginning of 
the came can often make a difference between a win or a loss. They are looking 
at these countries mostly in straight power terms. Governments that are in 
agreement with maximizing U.S. power in the world, they like. Those who have 
other goals - not necessarily antagonistic to the United States -- they don't like.

Not surprisingly, the Obama administration's closest allies in the hemisphere 
are right-wing governments such as Colombia or Panama, even though President 
Obama himself is not a right-wing politician. This highlights the continuity of 
the politics of control. The victory of the Right in Chile last week, the first 
time that it has won an election in half a century, was a significant victory 
for the U.S. government.  If Lula de Silva's Workers' Party were to lose the 
presidential election in Brazil this fall, that would really be a huge win for 
the State Department. While U.S. officials under both Bush and Obama have 
maintained a friendly posture toward Brazil, it is obvious that they deeply 
resent the changes in Brazilian foreign policy that have allied it with other 
social democratic governments in the hemisphere, and its independent foreign 
policy stances with regard to the Middle East, Iran, and elsewhere.

The United States actually intervened in Brazilian politics as recently as 2005, 
organizing a conference to promote a legal change that would make it more 
difficult for legislators to switch parties. This would have strengthened the 
opposition to Lula's Workers' Party (PT) government, since the PT has party 
discipline but many opposition politicians do not. This intervention by the US 
government was only discovered last year through a Freedom of Information Act 
request filed in Washington. There are many other interventions taking place 
throughout the hemisphere that we do not know about. The United States has been 
heavily involved in Chilean politics since the 1960s, long before they even 
organized the overthrow of Chilean democracy in 1973.

In October of 1970, President Richard Nixon was cursing in the Oval Office about 
the Social Democratic President of Chile, Salvador Allende. "That son of a 
bitch!" said Richard Nixon on October 15, 1970. "That son of a bitch Allende - 
we're going to smash him."  A few weeks later he explained why:

"The main concern in Chile is that [Allende] can consolidate himself, and the 
picture projected to the world will be his success...if we let the potential 
leaders in South America think they can move like Chile and have it both ways, 
we will be in trouble..."

That is another reason that pawns matter, and Nixon's nightmare did in fact come 
true a quarter-century later, as one country after another elected independent 
left governments that Washington did not want. The United States ended up 
"losing" most of the region. But they are trying to get it back, one country at 
a time.

The smaller, poorer countries that are closer to the United States are the most 
at risk. Honduras and Haiti will have democratic elections some day, but only 
when Washington's influence over their politics is further reduced.

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