Keeping Obama and Chavez on the same side

Honduras Agonistes: The best way of restoring democracy to the Honduran people is to do everything humanly possible to keep the Obama Administration on side with the left-wing governments of Central and South America. So long as Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez stand together, the Honduran Right's plans for establishing a dictatorship cannot succeed.

THE MILITARY COUP D’ETAT in Honduras has brought about the "pinch-me-I’m-dreaming" sight of revolutionary Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez, ranged alongside reformist US President, Barack Obama.

That is a pairing worth preserving.

Not only because the cementing-in of US opposition to the Honduran elites’ attack on democracy is clearly the most effective means of restoring that country’s ousted President, Manuel "Mel" Zelaya, to power, but also because it would represent a massive advance towards the Holy Grail of left-wing Latin American diplomacy – a United States Government willing to stand behind the right of the region’s peoples to determine their own futures without the overt or covert interference of American capitalists.

Unfortunately, the first response of the New Zealand Left has been to more-or-less ignore Obama’s (and Hilary Clinton’s) condemnation of the Coup, and insist, instead, that the Honduran military are simply carrying out the wishes of their American advisers. It is inconceivable, they say, that such a controversial political intervention by the armed forces of a Latin American state (the first since 1993) could have been initiated without first receiving the green light from Washington.

Accordingly, a number of New Zealand leftists are planning to picket the US Consulate in Auckland. Their demands will include the closing of the notorious School of the Americas – training-ground for every military dictator and death-squad commander since the early 1950s, along with the withdrawal of all US intelligence agents from Central and South America.

Both strategically and tactically, I believe this is precisely the wrong course of action to follow.

Of course US intelligence officers and military personnel would have been aware that the Honduran Right was planning to head-off a Venezuelan-style revision of the country’s constitution, and many – perhaps most – of these individuals would have been strong supporters of such a plan. But the facts – as far as we know them to date – all point to the Obama Administration refusing to back the proposed coup.

To ignore this fact is to, objectively, play into the hands of the most right-wing elements within the US Government, Intelligence Community and Armed Forces. They don’t care if Obama is castigated by the International Left as an imperialist – in fact they’d rather welcome it. What terrifies them is the prospect of Obama and Clinton, by publicly repudiating the actions of the Honduran military, along with its right-wing civilian backers in the judiciary, congress and the news media, forcing the Americans on the ground in Tegucigalpa to break-off their relationships with the plotters and, by standing back, allow the popular resistance to gather strength.

Keeping the USA aligned with Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua and El Salvador on this issue should, therefore, be the prime progressive objective world-wide. The New Zealand Left – along with their comrades across the world – should be heaping praise upon Obama and Clinton. Instead of angry demonstrations outside the US Consulate, we should be organising expressions of support for the Obama Administration’s stance.

Only if Washington abandons Honduran democracy - thereby signalling a return to business-as-usual in Latin America - should the anti-imperialist slogans be dusted off, and Old Glory resume its time-honoured relationship with paraffin and matches.