Washington Strikes out on Honduras

• Pathetic precedent: U.S failed policy of using a heavy hand to return Honduras to the OAS
• President Obama’s Latin American policy scarcely differs from President Bush’s and his regional team has had few successes in rehabilitating Washington’s flawed image throughout the hemisphere

The United States in the OAS: First among Unequals

When President Obama took office in January 2009, his administration espoused a new style of broad, multilateral and direct diplomacy. Within the context of the Western hemisphere, a primary channel for inter-American diplomacy is the Organization of American States (OAS), which was founded in its present form in 1948 to “promote and consolidate representative democracy.” Although the United States has nominally endorsed principles of multilateralism and non-intervention, which have been somewhat institutionalized by the OAS, the organization has traditionally been used by Washington to advance a specific agenda under the guise of hemispheric solidarity. After the end of the Cold War, the OAS made some efforts to develop a legal paradigm for collective, rather than unilateral democracy promotion. The bottom line is that the United States has never given up trying to use the OAS to promote its own policy priorities with the expectation that fellow member states will deferentially toe the line.

Rare Case of Consensus

Recently, the inter-American community did take unified and decisive action against a breach in constitutional order when Honduras’ President Zelaya was ousted by the military in June 2009. The OAS voted unanimously to suspend the nation from the organization. This instance marked the first time that the OAS collectively acted to its full legal capacity in order to protect democratic order. However, the United States has squandered this opportunity for genuinely multilateral defense of democratic standards. Secretary of State Clinton and her Assistant Secretary for Western Hemispheric Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, in an abrupt shift of U.S. stance, prematurely urged fellow OAS members to begin the process of readmitting Honduras at the recent OAS General Assembly in Lima, despite the country’s continued violations of OAS conditions for participation. Addressing the OAS, Clinton continued the fiction that democracy had returned to Honduras by calling for “the hemisphere as a whole to move forward and welcome Honduras back into the inter-American community.” Given how fragile and toothless the OAS is, and how little influence it has traditionally had on the internal affairs of its member nations, when an opportunity for unified action occurs, the U.S. must not abandon its commitments halfway through a collective initiative. “Forgive and forget” is not an acceptable policy.

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This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Isabelle Van Hook