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ABSTRACT
Literature on security partnerships and alliance formation suggests that such partnerships are based on shared interests and performance rather than ideology. However, in Central America, Nicaragua has made greater contributions to the U.S. security agenda than its ostensible partner Honduras. Nicaragua is often portrayed as an antagonist toward the United States in both the rhetoric of its leaders and that of many elites in the United States, while Honduras self-identifies as a key partner and is portrayed as an important regional supporter of U.S. security priorities. Honduras also receives a much greater share of U.S. regional security funding. However, while Honduras provides some symbolic support for the U.S. in areas such as voting in IGOs, Nicaragua has more reliably advanced U.S. security interests, including action against narcotics trafficking, combating human trafficking, and supporting open economies. U.S. policies that prioritize support for Honduras and treat Nicaragua as an antagonist are based on ideology rather than practice and risk undermining the U.S. domestic security agenda.
Notes
1. Karl Bermann, Under the Big Stick (Boston: South End, 1986).
2. Quoted in Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan, “In Central America, Reagan Remains a Polarizing Figure” Washington Post June 10, 2004.
3. See David Close and Salvador Martí i Puig, “The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979,” in David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley A. McConnell, eds. The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979 (Boulder, Lynne Rienner, 2012), 1-20.
4. Mary Anastasia O'Grady “The U.S. vs. Honduran Democracy,” Wall Street Journal, March 29, 2010.
5. Peter J. Meyer and Clare Seelke, “Central America Regional Security Initiative: Background and Policy Issues for Congress” December 17, 2015, available at fas. org/sgp/crs/row/R41731.pdf.
6. This point is particularly relevant for domestic security because this economic policy is expected to reduce migrant flows by its advocates. More broadly on the relevance of economic considerations for domestic security, see Bijan Karimi, “Applying the Economic, Homeland and National Security Analysis Framework,” Homeland Security Affairs, vol. 12, no. 4 (May 2016), available at https://www.hsaj.org/articles/10597.
7. See Jason Davidson, America's Allies and War: Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq (New York: Palgrave, 2011), 15–18.
8. Alfred Van Staden, “Small State Strategies in Alliances: The Case of the Netherlands,” Cooperation and Conflict, vol. 30 (March 1995): 31–51.
9. Stephen Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 37–40.
10. Author interview with senior Georgian official, June 2016.
11. See, for example, from the alliance behavior literature Thomas J. Christensen and Jack Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting. Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,” International Organization, vol. 44, no. 2 (Spring 1990): 137–168; Wallace Thies, Friendly Rivals: Bargaining and Burden-Shifting in NATO (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2003); Daniel F Baltrusaitis, Coalition Politics and the Iraq War (Boulder: FirstForum Press, 2010).
12. “Democracy Held Hostage in Nicaragua,” House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, December 1, 2011, available at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-112hhrg71401/html/CHRG-112hhrg71401.htm.
13. Marco Rubio, “Senator Rubio Secures Administration Commitment to Punish Ortega's Assault On Democracy In Nicaragua,” press release, June 22, 2012, available at www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=2377fddf-1460-4440-bd47-afccbf57b6f8; Elizabeth Llorente, “Senate's 2 Latinos, Far Apart on Most Issues, Come Together over Nicaragua” December 1, 2011, available at latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2011/12/01/senators-introduce-bipartisan-resolution-assailing-nicaraguan-election/. Comments by U.S. leaders are often front-page news in Central America, and the intervention of a senator in Central American politics, while attracting little notice in the United States, can play a headline role in Central America.
14. Patrick Worsnip, “Nicaragua Leader Slams U.S. in 1980s Throwback,” Reuters, September 25, 2007, available at uk.reuters.com/article/2007/09/25/uk-un-assembly-nicaragua-idUKN2539497020070925.
15. “Nicaragua's Ortega Accuses Washington of Scheming,” Reuters, July 22, 2007, available at www.reuters.com/article/2007/07/22/us-nicaragua-ortega-idUSN2230257520070722; “Nicaragua's Ortega Says ‘Unexpected Interests’ Behind U.S. DEA,” AP/International Herald Tribune, August 14, 2007. See also “Russia and Nicaragua: Working Together to Foil International Drug Trafficking,” available at www.coha.org/22213/.
16. Tim Rogers, “US foes Unite: Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega Cozies up to Iran's Ahmadinejad,” Christian Science Monitor, January 9, 2012; Douglas Farah, “The Advance of a Radical Populist Doctrine in Latin America” PRISM, vol. 5 (2015): 90–105.
17. “World Should Recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia—Nicaraguan President” Ria Novosti (English), July 20, 2010, available at en.ria.ru/world/20100720/159878055.htmlhttp://en.ria.ru/world/20100720/159878055.html.
18. Terri Rupar, “Here Are the 11 U.N. Members That Voted Against a Resolution on Ukraine's Unity” Washington Post, March 27, 2014, available at www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/03/27/here-are-the-11-u-n-members-that-voted-against-a-resolution-on-ukraines-unity/.
19. Farah, “The Advance,” 92.
20. Josh Rogin, “Honduran President: America Is Our No. 1 Ally” Foreign Policy, October 5, 2011, available at thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/10/05/honduran_president_america_is_our_no_1_ally; “Obama Praises ‘Profound’ US-Honduras relations,” AP/Seattle Times, October 5, 2011, available at seattletimes.com/html/ politics/2016416171_apusobamahonduras.html.
21. “Gobierno de Lobo amplió a 121 países las relaciones diplomáticas de Honduras” La Tribuna, December 31, 2013, available at www.latribuna.hn/2013/12/31/gobierno-de-lobo-amplio-a-121-paises-las-relaciones-diplomaticas-de-honduras/.
22. Rogin, “Honduran President.”
23. Comments and voting results are available at http://www.un.org/press/en/2012/ga11207.doc.htm;http://www.un.org /ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/68/446; and http://unispal.un.org/unISPAl.nSF/22f431edb91c6f548525678a00 51be1d/8694fda966b0dcb485257c3f0068963b?OpenDocument.
24. James Ker-Lindsay, The Foreign Policy of Counter Secession (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 177–179; Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), “Latin America and State Recognition: Palestine, the Caucasus, Kosovo, and Taiwan,” December 13, 2010, available at www.coha.org/latin-america-and-state-recognition-palestine-the-caucasus-kosovo-and-taiwan/.
25. The treaty entered force in Honduras and Nicaragua on the same date of April 1, 2006. Its neoliberal aims have been acidly criticized by scholars and activists in both countries. For a particularly trenchant academic criticism of its aims, see Oscar-René Vargas, Que es el CAFTA: Un tratado entre desiguales (Managua: Universidad Politécnica de Nicaragua, 2003).
26. Frank O. Mora and Brian Fonseca, “United States Policy in the Hemisphere Influencing the State and Beyond” PRISM, vol. 5 (2015): 69.
27. A contentious proposition to be sure; see, for example, the work of Cambridge development economist Ha-Joon Chang and Latin American scholar Cristóbal Kay: Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: Rich Nations, Poor Policies and the Threat to the Developing World (New York: Random House, 2007) and Robert Gwynne and Cristóbal Kay, “The Alternatives to Neoliberalism,” in Gwynne and Kay, eds., Latin America Transformed: Globalization and Modernity, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2014), 251–267.
28. National Security Strategy, February 2015, 2. These objectives are also a foundation for the 2014 Homeland Security Review. See Department of Homeland Security, Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (Washington, DC: author 2014), 14, available at https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/2014-qhsr-final-508.pdf. Open economies have long been articulated as a U.S. strategic priority. See Bijan Karimi, “Security and Prosperity: Reexamining the Connection between Economic, Homeland, and National Security, master's thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, September 2015, 57, available at https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=788383.
29. See https://www.dhs.gov/topic/human-trafficking;https://www.dhs.gov/project-stamp-smuggler-and-trafficker-assets-monies-and-proceeds.
30. SOUTHCOM, “Countering Transnational Organized Crime,” available at www.southcom.mil/ourmissions/Pages/Countering%20Transnational%20Organized%20Crime.aspx.
31. Quoted in “SOUTHCOM Chief: Central America Drug War a Dire Threat to U.S. National Security,” Army Times, July 8, 2014, available at archive.armytimes.com/article/20140708/NEWS01/307080064/SOUTHCOM-chief-Central-America-drug-war-dire-threat-U-S-national-security.
32. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President to the Clinton Global Initiative” September 25, 2012, available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/25/remarks-president-clinton-global-initiative.
33. For example, Saudi Arabia has regularly received the worst possible ranking despite the importance of the U.S.-Saudi strategic relations.
34. “Daniel Ortega promete enterrar el ‘capitalismo salvaje,’” Aporrea, October 24, 2006, available at www.aporrea.org/actualidad/n85549.html. See also Johannes Wilm, Nicaragua, Back from the Dead? An Anthropological View of the Sandinista Movement in the Early 21st Century (Oslo: New Left Notes, 2011), xvii.
35. Tim Rogers, “Nicaragua's Marxist Government Gets Religion on Free Trade Zones,” Global Post, May 4, 2012, available at www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/120503/nicaragua-s-marxist-government-gets-religion-free-trade-zones; Samuel R. Greene, “Learning the Wrong Lessons about Nicaraguan Democracy: A Response to Anderson and Dodd” Journal of Democracy (online), available at www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles-files/letters/Greene.Comments.pdf, 1–4; and José Luis Rocha, “The Contradictory Legacy of the Sandinista Agrarian Reform” Envío, vol. 348 (July 2010), http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4212
36. Tim Rogers, “Nicaragua's Newest Tycoon? ‘Socialist’ President Daniel Ortega,” Christian Science Monitor, October 14, 2009.
37. Mary Anastasia O'Grady, “Honduras's Experiment with Free-Market Cities” Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2011; Maya Kroth, “Under New Management,” Foreign Policy, September 1, 2014, available at www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/01/under_new_management_amapala_honduras_charter_citiesArsenault 2011; CNFZ, “Nicaragua esta mejor que Honduras,” interview with Mohammad Yusuf Amdani, available at www.cnzf.gob.ni/?q=es/noticias/“nicaragua-está-mejor-que-honduras.
38. Witness for Peace, “Fact Sheet: The ‘Winners and Losers’ of DR-CAFTA in Nicaragua's Free Trade Zones,” available at www.witnessforpeace.org/downloads/The%20Winners%20and%20Losers%20of%20DR-CAFTA%20in%20Nicaragua's%20Free%20Trade%20Zones.pdf.
39. Salvador Marti i Puig “Nicaragua: la consolidación de un régimen híbrido,” Revista de Ciencia Política, vol. 33 (2013): 272.
40. Carlos Fonseca Terán, “¿Es neoliberal el gobierno del FSLN? Si los perros ladran es que cabalgamos,” Revista Libre Pensamiento, May 5, 2010, available at librepenicmoncjose.blogspot.com/2010/05/es-neoliberal-el-gobierno-del-fsln-si.html.
41. Margaret Legum, “Should We Aspire to a High Score for ‘Economic Freedom’?” Post-Autistic Economics Review, vol. 42 (May 2007): 50–52.
42. See Klaus Schwab, ed., The Global Competitiveness Report 2013–2014 (Geneva: SRO-Kundig, 2013), 208, 298.
43. Consider, for example, cooperation with Colombia's right-wing government on maritime patrols on their shared border. See Miriam Wells, “Ortega Suggests Colombia–Nicaragua Joint Drug Patrols in Caribbean,” Insight Crime, December 6, 2012, available at www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/colombia-nicaragua-joint-drug-patrols-caribbean.
44. Elyssa Pachico, “Nicaragua's Navy, Little-Known Partner in US Drug War” Insight Crime, May 18, 2011, available at www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/nicaraguan-navy-little-known-partner-in-us-drug-war.
45. Quoted in “Democracy Held Hostage in Nicaragua,” House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, December 1, 2011, available at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-112hhrg71401/html/CHRG-112hhrg71401.htm.
46. UNODC, Cocaine from South America to the United States, 35, available at https://www.unodc.org/docum ents/toc/Reports/TOCTASouthAmerica/English/TOCTA_CACaribb_cocaine_SAmerica_US.pdf.
47. Cocaine Smuggling in 2010 (Washington, DC: Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2012), 2–3; UNODC, Cocaine, 37–38.
48. Damien Cave, “U.S. Suspends Its Antidrug Radar-Sharing with Honduras,” New York Times September 7, 2012, available at www.nytimes.com/2012/09/08/world/americas/us-suspends-antidrug-radar-sharing-with-honduras-after-planes-are-downed.html?_r=2&.
49. Dan Lamothe, “Shady Honduran Military Won't Get Help from U.S. to Shoot Down Drug Planes” Foreign Policy, April 1, 2014, available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/01/shady-honduran-military-wont-get-help-from-u-s-to-shoot-down-drug-planes/.
50. “Vicepresidente del Congreso: 40 por ciento de la Policía está infiltrada por el crimen” El Proceso, July 19, 2011, available at www.proceso.hn/component/k2/item/49717.html.
51. “Cúpula policial planificó y asesinó al zar antidrogas,” El Heraldo, April 5, 2016, available at www.elheraldo.hn/pais/946201-466/cupula-policial-planifico-y-asesino-al-zar-antidrogas; “Policías también mataron a Alfredo Landaverde,” El Heraldo, April 5, 2016, available at www.elheraldo.hn/pais/946639-466/policías-también-mataron-a-alfredo-landaverde.
52. See Ismael Moreno, “Berta Cáceres: una indomable con talante de estadista,” Envío, vol. 409 (April 2016), http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/5165
53. Thelma Mejía, “Pressed by the U.S., Lobo Amends Extradition Laws,” IPS, January 20, 2012, available at www.ipsnews.net/2012/01/honduras-pressed-by-the-us-lobo-amends-extradition-laws/.
54. “El ‘Negro’ Lobo ya está en EE UU,” La Tribuna May 9, 2014, available at www.latribuna.hn/2014/05/09/el-negro-lobo-ya-esta-en-ee-uu/.
55. Interview with Porfirio Lobo, November 8, 2012 (Spanish), available at actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/view/58029-version-completa-entrevista-exclusiva-rt-porfirio-lobo-presidente-honduras; Nikolas Kozloff, “The Coup and the U.S. Airbase in Honduras,” Counterpunch, July 22, 2009, available at www.counterpunch.org/2009/07/22/the-coup-and-the-u-s-airbase-in-honduras/.
56. Available at http://www.coha.org/washington-looks-to-cement-its-military-presence-in-central-america-by-emp hasizing-its-ties-to-honduras/.
57. Author interview with retired senior U.S. official in Washington, DC, January 2016.
58. Alejandro Sanchez, “Washington Looks to Cement Its Military Presence in Central America by EmphasizingIits Ties to Honduras,” November 15, 2006, available at www.coha.org/washington-looks-to-cement-its-military-presence-in-central-america-by-emphasizing-its-ties-to-honduras/.
59. President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership, Building Partnerships to Eradicate Modern-Day Slavery (Washington, DC, April 2013), 3.
60. In the 2014 report, which addressed most of 2013, the only lower-middle income countries with a tier-one ranking were Nicaragua and Armenia.
61. Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report (Washington, DC, 2014), 293–295.
62. See, for example, the allegations of political motivations in the upgrading and downgrading of assessments of the UAE in Pardis Mahdavi, Gridlock: Labor, Migration, and Human Trafficking in Dubai (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 19.
63. Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report, 197–198.
64. “Honduras: Redes del narcotráfico penetraron a altos oficiales,” El Heraldo, April 25, 2014.
65. See Walt, The Origins, 37–40.
66. Greene, “Learning the Wrong Lessons,” 1–4. See also Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos et al., “Vote Buying and Social Desirability Bias: Experimental Evidence from Nicaragua,” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 56 (January 2012): 202–217.
67. “Elections 2011: Nicaragua Lost Again,” Envío, 364 (November 2011), http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4448
68. “Ortega juega con las cartas marcadas y la oposición presenta sus primeras cartas,” Envío, vol. 411 (June 2016); “Obispos lamentan despojo del PLI a Montealegre” La Prensa, June 10, 2016, http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/5192
69. Author discussion with pro-FSLN likely voters in Masaya Department, May 2016.
70. Greene, “Learning the Wrong Lessons,” 7.
71. See Carlos F. Chamorro and Carlos Salinas Maldonado, “Las cuentas secretas de Albanisa,” Confidencial, March 3, 2011.
72. Greene, “Learning the Wrong Lessons,” 7–8; Elena Martínez-Barahona, “Nicaragua's Politicized Judiciary,” in Close et al., eds., The Sandinistas, 91–120.
73. See Nick Miroff, “Honduras Election Sparks Competing Claims of Victory, Fraud,” Washington Post, November 26, 2013, available at www.washingtonpost.com/world/honduras-election-sparks-protests-competing-claims-of-victory-fraud/2013/11/25/4d15915e-55e1-11e3-bdbf-097ab2a3dc2b_story.html.
74. Peter J. Meyer, “Honduran Political Crisis, June 2009–January 2010,” CRS Report, February 1, 2010, 7–9, available at https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41064.pdf.
75. See, for example, Tasha Moro, “National Lawyers Guild Observers Question Validity of Honduran Elections,” November 26, 2013, available at www.nlg.org/news/releases/honduras-delegation-preliminary-results.
76. Centro de Documentación de Honduras, Honduras Elecciones 2013: Compra de Votos y Democracia (Tegucigalpa, Lithopress Industrial, 2014), 7–9.
77. “Entra en vigencia fallo que permite reelección presidencial en Honduras,” El Heraldo, April 24, 2015, available at www.elheraldo.hn/inicio/834267-331/entra-en-vigencia; Leticia Salomón, “The Protagonists of a Coup Foretold,” Envío, vol. 36 (June 2009), http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4032
78. Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2013 (Berlin: Transparency International, 2013).
79. James Bosworth, “Honduran Lawmakers Fire Four Supreme Court Judges,” Christian Science Monitor, December 12, 2012, available at www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor/2012/1212/Honduran-lawmakers-fire-four-Supreme-Court-judges; Carlos Giron, “La madrugada del golpe a la Corte Suprema de Honduras,” La Prensa (Honduras). December 13, 2012.
80. See the discussion of earlier corruption in Nicaragua in David Close and Kalowatie Deonandan, eds., Undoing Democracy: The Politics of Electoral Caudillismo (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004).
81. Dana Frank, “Honduras Gone Wrong” Foreign Affairs, October 16, 2012, available at https://www. foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2012-10-16/honduras-gone-wrong.
82. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships & Double Standards,” Commentary, November 1, 1979, available at https://www. commentarymagazine.com/articles/dictatorships-double-standards/.
83. Otto Reich, “Honduras Is an Opportunity,” Foreign Policy, October 27, 2009, available at foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/27/honduras-is-an-opportunity/.
84. Otto Reich, “The Crisis in Honduras,” July 10, 2009, available at ottoreich.com/Testimony_3.html.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Samuel R. Greene
Samuel R. Greene ([email protected]) is associate professor of strategic studies and political economy at the National Defense College (UAE) and the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies. He holds a doctorate from the Catholic University of America and a master's degree from the University of Cambridge.
Landon Hankins
Landon Hankins ([email protected]) is a 2017 JD candidate at Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of Law. He is currently an articles editor of the SMU Law Review Association and a student attorney at the SMU Civil Clinic. He graduated summa cum laude from Howard Payne University.