Cuba-Honduras-United States

Cuban Vice President Esteban Lazo, speaking in Nicaragua today, demanded that the United States “stop providing military support” to the interim Honduran government, “cease its intervention” in Honduran affairs, and “remove its staff from Honduras.”

Fidel Castro similarly accused the United States of backing peace talks in Costa Rica as a stalling tactic to exhaust Zelaya supporters into eventually accepting the Micheletti government.

Of course, Washington has repeatedly condemned Zelaya’s overthrow and announced the suspension of military aid to Honduras. And despite the long U.S. history of intervention and of supporting coups and military governments in Latin America (a history of which many Latin American leaders, including the Castros, are quick to remind the world), the Obama administration has refused to impose a solution in the Honduran case. Even when Zelaya himself flew to Washington to seek leadership from the United States, the administration deferred to Central American leaders.

As we previously predicted, it was unlikely that Cuba and the United States would find themselves on the same side of this issue for long. Both opposed the ouster, but now Cuba is in direct opposition to the U.S. role in the still-unfolding events. From the peanut gallery, it seems like an unfortunate lose-lose(-lose) situation for the United States: be more involved on Zelaya’s side and endure criticism for typical U.S. interventionism; be more involved on the opposite side and come under fire for supporting what was for all intents and purposes a military overthrow; try stepping out altogether and be told by hemispheric leaders like Chavez, Morales, and Castro to take a hard and serious stand…

Fidel has also warned that if Zelaya is not returned to power, the hemisphere risks a wave of subsequent coups for which the United States would bear partial blame. Right-wing military leaders trained by the United States could be encouraged to take up arms against their governments, he wrote on Friday, depending on how the Honduras crisis turned out.

It is not likely that the United States has any such objective in mind, nor that any other countries would follow in Honduras’ footsteps. The other nations of the hemisphere are not experiencing the kind of unrest and constitutional conflicts that characterized the scene in Honduras leading up to the ouster (although Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua just announced a referendum to write re-election into his own country’s constitution—an ominous move while the Honduran crisis over the same issue remains unsettled). More likely: the Obama administration is using the Honduran case as a test of how its policy of multilateral cooperation in Latin America will work out and be received in practice. And judging by reactions from most of the hemisphere, it seems to be going rather well.