If you can’t get Iran or North Korea to talk to you, if Russia has not exactly pushed the reset button you sent them, if China is not a country you can antagonize (if you want to continue to sell Treasury bonds), the next best thing may be to land on Honduras.
The State Department announced today it has formally determined that what happened on June 28 in Honduras was a “coup d’etat” requiring the termination under U.S. law of a broad range of assistance to the poverty-stricken country. The announcement cites “the continued resistance to the adoption of the San Jose Accord by the de facto regime and continuing failure to restore democratic, constitutional rule to Honduras.”
The San Jose Accord would require Honduras to ignore multiple rulings by its Supreme Court that the removal of former President Zelaya was constitutional (and done pursuant to its order, not by military action taken without prior legal authorization). It would require Honduras to act contrary to the consensus of all organs of the Honduran government, including its Congress and representatives of the church and civil society—a consensus communicated to the foreign ministers of the Organization of American States when they visited Honduras on August 24-25 and heard from them all.
It is a strange definition of coup d’etat that includes action authorized by the Honduran Supreme Court, ratified by its Congress, and supported by a consensus of its political parties and civil society. As for the “continuing failure to restore democratic, constitutional rule,” there is an election scheduled for November. A vote of the people is not generally considered characteristic of a coup d’etat, and returning Zelaya to serve a few more months (since even he now concedes he cannot hold a “referendum” to allow him to serve longer) would not seem necessary to “restore democratic, constitutional rule.”
If everyone in Honduras is to be believed, the Supreme Court order and subsequent rulings were in fact an example of the preservation of constitutional rule—against the type of threat that played out in Venezuela—that the U.S. should support, not subvert. But the State Department announcement concludes with a direct threat against Honduran democracy:
At this moment, we would not be able to support the outcome of the scheduled elections. A positive conclusion of the Arias [San Jose Accord] process would provide a sound basis for legitimate elections to proceed. We strongly urge all parties to the San Jose talks to move expeditiously to agreement.
Message to Honduras: If you want your elections, you better do what we say. Perhaps that is the way they do things in Chicago democracy.
