Monday, November 16, 2009

"Obama, Bush, and Latin American Coups"


By Immanuel Wallerstein
Znet

"Something strange is happening in Latin America. The Latin American right forces are poised to do better during the U.S. presidency of Barack Obama than they did during the eight years of George W. Bush. Bush led a far right regime that was totally out of sympathy with popular forces in Latin America. Obama, on the other hand, is leading a centrist regime that is trying to replicate the "good neighbor policy" which Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed as a way of signaling the end of direct U.S. military intervention in Latin America.....

Since Obama became president, there has been one successful coup, in Honduras. Despite Obama's condemnation of the coup, U.S. policy has been ambiguous, and the coup leaders are winning their bet of staying in power until the coming elections of a new president. In Paraguay, the left Catholic president, Fernando Lugo, has just averted a military coup. But his right-wing vice-president, Federico Franco, is maneuvering to obtain from a Lugo-hostile national parliament a coup in the form of an impeachment. And military teeth are sharpening in an array of other countries.

To understand this apparent anomaly, we must look at U.S. internal politics, and how it affects U.S. foreign policy.....

What the Latin American right is doing is taking advantage of Obama's internal political difficulties to force his hand. They see that he doesn't have the political energy available to thwart them. In addition, the world economic situation tends to redound against incumbent regimes. And in Latin America today, it is left-of-center parties that are the incumbents......"

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