Honduran Crisis Resolved?

Last week there was a major breakthrough on the Honduran crisis- the New York Times reports that a US-sent team helped create a compromise where Zelaya would return to power but not run in the upcoming elections. The deal still must be approved by the Honduran Congress, but it has the potential to do a great deal of good for the situation.

Of course, this leads to several questions:

1. Why wasn’t this done in the first place? The presumptuous decision by the administration to not send a team, or do any real investigative work in looking closely at this strict following of the Honduran constitution, until so recently makes them seem like they don’t know what they are doing on foreign policy.

2. Will Senator Kerry (D-MA), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, apologize to the Library of Congress for asking them to take back their report? The report is at odds with the administration’s and many Democrats’ stances on the Honduran crisis.

3. Why is the United States pressing for this as the final resolution? Zelaya broke the law, and the rule of law is, you know, the law. The same Congress that will have to vote on this agreement is the one that voted Zelaya out of power. So now we respect that Congress’ decisions?

4. What happened to non-interventionist policies?

Overall, this is a better-than-most situation; the people of Honduras will get the international support they lacked during the crisis, Zelaya gets to feel powerful for about five weeks, and the United States gets a tiny bit of credit for doing SOMETHING partially right on foreign policy for about the first time this year. Let’s just hope Zelaya doesn’t try anything else- both for Honduras and for this country’s foreign policy credentials.