No Washington analyst predicted that Honduras would pose a defining challenge to President Obama's Latin America policy, but perhaps that it has is not so surprising.
After all, something similar happened in 1963, when the administration of John F. Kennedy abandoned its announced policy of withholding diplomatic recognition from regimes that took power by force, convinced by the military coup in Honduras that the United States could not effectively require electoral democracy.
In the 1980s too, Honduras became the principal base for efforts funded and directed by the U.S. to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and to thwart the guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador. Clandestine and ultimately illegal U.S. assistance to the Contra force of anti-Sandinista insurgents became the main issue in Washington's partisan debates in the 1980s about how to relate to Latin America.
A Democratic-controlled Congress made every effort to tie the hands of the Reagan administration, which in turn was internally divided between political appointees with a transformational ideology and career officials who preferred to find multilateral and indirect ways of containing the Sandinista movement.
What brings Honduras, and Central America more generally, back again and again to center stage in Washington debates on Latin America is not the strategic, security or economic importance of the region to the United States. On the contrary, it is precisely the minimal tangible significance of Central America to the United States in economic, political and military terms that allows U.S. policymakers of conflicting tendencies to indulge in grandstanding in framing policies toward that nearby and vulnerable region.
In today's circumstances, as in the 1980s, both liberal and conservative interventionists in Washington press their viewpoint with little detailed knowledge, understanding of or apparent interest in the nuances of Honduran politics. Liberal activists inside and outside the Obama administration jumped at the opportunity to align the U.S. government against the forcible overthrow and deportation of President Manuel Zelaya. Many did so without knowing or caring much about Zelaya's erratic qualities, his interest in trying to prolong his term despite the Honduran constitutional ban on reelection or the considerable sentiment against him in the Honduran legislative and judicial branches.
