06/30/09 – Jim Lobe – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
It's my pleasure to welcome back to the show, Jim Lowe.
He is the Washington Bureau Chief of Interpress Services, IPS.org.
And we keep almost all of his stuff at original.antiwar.com slash lobe.
And you can also find him all the time at the blog at antiwar.com slash blog.
He's got a new article in the top headlines today.
Obama declares Honduras coup not legal.
Amid uncertainty.
Welcome back to the show, Jim.
How are you?
Okay.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Thanks for joining us this morning on short notice like this.
Okay.
Uh, so, um, Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, is that how you say it?
Zelaya?
Zelaya, uh, has been ousted from power by the military there.
Uh, can you give us any more information than that?
Uh, I guess they say that the Congress asked him to do it or something.
Uh, I think it's fairly complicated in a constitutional sense, but to my, he wanted to hold a constitutional referendum, a non-binding, sorry, not even a constitutional one, because it's a non-binding referendum on, um, on the question of whether the constitution might be amended so that, uh, the, a strict one term limit, um, for the president, uh, might be lifted or eased in some way that would permit him to, uh, run for a second term next year.
And the Supreme court of Honduras, um, said that the holding of a referendum, despite its being of a non-binding nature was, um, unconstitutional.
And, uh, so when he ordered the ballots to be distributed by the army, the army chief of staff refused to do so, was fired.
And then the army moved in and, uh, arrested him and put him on a plane for Costa Rica.
Well, now there's a long history of American invasions and occupations really, uh, and also of course, uh, military coup d'etats and, uh, right wing junta's backed by the United States, uh, going back for a couple of hundred years about, uh, is there any indication that the U S is behind this or are they as surprised as they claim to be up there in the white house?
You think?
No, I think they, they tried to prevent it.
I mean, tensions were clearly building in Honduras before it took place.
And I have no reason to think that the United States, uh, in any way backed those who were, who, uh, wanted to oust Zelaya in, in fact, uh, as far as I understand, uh, um, efforts by U S officials, both military and civilian to reach the army in the hours immediately before the coup or in the, actually in the days before the coup, uh, went unanswered.
So I don't think the United States played any role in this.
I think there's probably a lot of discussion within the government about, um, whether to demand Zelaya's reinstatement, uh, or whether, um, not to be so demanding in that respect, in terms of official U S policy in order to, um, gain some leverage over the terms under which he may indeed be reinstated.
Um, now that's interesting.
You said in the article, cause he is considered to be one of these new Latin American leftists like, um, Chavez and Morales and that group, right?
Well, he's not really because I mean, uh, Zelaya in terms of personal background comes from the, the elite, the oligarchy of Honduras.
He, he, he doesn't have any kind of serious populist background, but, uh, he was tending more and more, shall we say populist and somewhat to the left, uh, over the last couple of years in particular and accepted as aid from, uh, from Chavez and so on and so forth.
But he himself is definitely from the elite in Honduras.
I see.
Um, but so then what kind of leverage might the United States want to get over him?
I mean, has he been acting contrary to U S policy at all?
Um, I think, you know, I think they were worried, uh, or some within the administration or within, and the bureaucracy were concerned about this pattern that, that also applies to Chavez and Morales, uh, and other, uh, Correa in Ecuador, where they take the presidency and then they seek to change the constitution by popular referendum so that they can serve longer than one or two terms.
I think they're concerned about the precedents that I'm sure they're concerned, not so much about the populist direction in which the lie was going, but they would probably fearful that if he came under increasingly under Chavez's influence, um, uh, they might be an effort to reduce the U S military presence in Honduras, which is not very big, but it's been significant for about 30 years there at any one time, there are about 500 U S military personnel in Honduras operating out of Soto Cano airbase, um, from which they also conduct surveillance flights.
They conduct training in the region at the base and so on.
And I, I'm sure the Pentagon doesn't want to lose access to, uh, you know, when they're in financial trouble and that kind of thing, if they go to Chavez instead of to the United States, then, uh, that makes them less dependent and therefore, uh, less malleable when it comes to issues like military basing and so forth.
Right.
And to the, I mean, to the extent that Obama is uncomfortable about Chavez's influence in the region and so forth, uh, then, um, the fact that Zelaya has been friendly toward, uh, toward Chavez, um, you know, would be something to strike against him, something that would cause nervousness, especially in the Pentagon, because the Pentagon just lost a very important access to a very important base in Ecuador.
They're seeking for alternative bases.
Um, uh, and while Honduras can't really act in the same capacity because that, that base, the Manta base in Ecuador was never used for surveillance against, for in the, uh, counter drug efforts.
Honduras is kind of too far away to perform that function.
Um, it's still an, it's still an important base right in the middle of Central America, which is an important route for, um, drug trafficking.
Um, and, and of course people here are, you know, increasingly worried about the influence of drug traffickers throughout the corridor from Columbia all the way through Mexico and now into the United States.
They don't want to lose, um, access to, uh, to a facility like that.
And now what do you make exactly of the mixed signals coming out of the administration?
Cause I guess Hillary Clinton said, well, we're going to wait and see.
And then Obama came out and said, no, we're against this.
It's illegal, which is kind of funny.
He's talking as though this has been a coup that happened in Arkansas or something, and it's his business whatsoever.
We're talking about a foreign nation here, but anyway.
Well, I think it reflects probably the internal debate, um, uh, within more within the bureaucracy than within the political, uh, on the political side of things.
I mean, there are reports today, for example, that when, um, Clinton first met Salaya, she didn't particularly like him.
Um, he was very protocol conscious, conscious and so on.
But I, you know, I, I wouldn't describe it.
There's always going to be difference of opinion within the administration.
It was interesting that, uh, um, she was considerably more cautious on the question of whether this was a coup and whether the United States would demand the reinstatement of Salaya, um, which will be debated this, this afternoon at the organization of American States here.
Uh, and, and then, um, Obama was much clearer regarding both the legality and Washington's position that Salaya must be reinstated.
I mean, it was, it was interesting that there was a divergence, but I think it reflects this question of, do you want to use the fact that Salaya is now out of the country and has to find a way back as leverage over him and over Honduras in a sense to, to ensure that what Washington cares about with respect to Honduras, its military presence, its ability to use the base for a variety of purposes, so on, to, to use that as leverage to ensure that we can continue doing what we've been doing well, who says we're an empire?
All right, everybody.
Well, well, Jim, I did more than a hundred years ago in, in the case of Central America and the Caribbean.
Yeah.
Well, only for 150 years or so.
Right.
Uh, well, from the 1890s.
Yeah.
At the very least.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Thanks, sir.
Uh, thanks very much for your time on the show today.
Sure, Scott.
Bye bye.
All right, everybody.
That's Jim Love.
He's a Washington Bureau chief for interpress service.
You can find what he writes at, uh, IPS.org and you can also find him at original.antiwar.com slash lobe, as well as on our blog there at antiwar.com slash blog.
We'll be right back after this.