Another Tenet of the «Obama Doctrine» – Constitutional «Soft» Coups
The scenario on June 22 in Asuncion, Paraguay was like a case of déjà vu. President Fernando Lugo, a leftist president, was deposed by an impeachment and removal from office engineered by his political opponents in the Paraguayan legislature. In June 2009, another leftist Latin American leader, Manuel Zelaya, was removed by the U.S.-trained and supervised Honduran military at gunpoint under the claimed authority of the Honduran Supreme Court acting on orders from the Honduran Congress. In both cases the United States acquiesced to the new political realities brought about by constitutional «soft»coups and it quickly recognized the accession to power in Paraguay by Lugo’s opponent, Vice President Federico Franco just as it had the Honduran junta led by Roberto Micheletti.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, who is married to arch-neoconservative and Israel supporter Robert Kagan, one of the chief architects of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, refused to call the Paraguayan Congress’s rapid impeachment and the Senate’s conviction and removal of Lugo a coup. The right-wing governments of Canada, Spain, and Germany quickly recognized the Franco government even as Latin American nations moved to isolate it diplomatically and economically.
The Obama administration has put a «civilian» imprimatur on America’s coups in Latin America, opting to involve governmental branches, such as legislatures and courts, to carry out its covert operations in the Western Hemisphere. Just as drone attacks and targeted assassinations have become a hallmark of the Obama doctrine, for Latin America the internally-launched «autogolpe,» or self coup by government insiders, is preferable to ordering tanks on to the streets, dissolving parliament and the Supreme Court, and turning over power to a military junta of generals and colonels.
Latin American nations now recognize the core of the Obama doctrine for putting one of its loyalists in power and ousting a leader not favorable to Washington’s policies – if the legislative and judicial branches of a government can be used to «constitutionally» eject an executive from power, the United States will recognize the change as constitutional and in keeping with the «democratic process.»
Honduras, and, now, Paraguay serve as stark examples of the Obama doctrine in practice.