Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Tom... Always a big fan of your books ( just began reading Great Powers )... am a retired Army LTC who has spent over third of my career working Latin America (8 of 20-yrs), assigned/lived in Honduras five-plus of those years ( 92-94, 98-99 at Soto Cano AB, and 02-04 at the US EMbassy )... am married to a Honduran ( albeit she is now a US citizen, she and kids are there visiting as I write this )... most of my work was engineering related, but always important that those things are closely tied to strategic objectives... so I've followed the countries progress for much of the last 18-years.

Interested in your thoughts on this... I am somewhat miffed at our Governments reaction, but at the same time, hope we are being non-comittal and somewhat quiet to avoid giving others more ammunition to claim this is as another of ecxample of the "Evil Yaknee Empire" meddling in LatAm.

Granted, this so called "Coup" was not entirely done under the processes afforded in the Honduran Constitution, and am sure there are some ulterior motives involved... but I do think it was done in defense of their Constitution... and to preclude some nasty reactions should President Zelaya have been allowed to go forward with his "referendum" in complete defiance of the other two branches of government (a Legislative body led by his own party and a Supreme Court).

I'd like to say that we should let Honduras solve a Honduran problem, without isolating them and causing more harm than good... suspect isolation will do far more harm to democracy in Honduras than help it... just as it has everywhere else we have tried that method... "isolation" tends to create hardships and other conditions that lend themselves to a government taking away freedoms in an attempt to prevent chaos.

Your thoughts?