Laivos da Operação Condor?
Autor: Grupo de estudos Comunica | Publicado: 2016-04-23T08:06:00-03:00


  
Washington’s Dog-Whistle Diplomacy Supports Attempted Coup in Brazil

   22/04/2016 &nbsp;

O cafezinho

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Image: Victor T.


By Mark Weisbrot, on Huffington Post



The day after the impeachment vote in the lower house of Brazil’s 
congress, one of the leaders of the effort, Senator Aloysio Nunes, 
traveled to Washington, D.C. He had scheduled meetings with a number of 
U.S. officials, including Thomas Shannon at the State Department.



Shannon has a relatively low profile in the media, but he is the 
number three official in the U.S. State Department. Even more 
significantly in this case, he is the most influential person in the 
State Department on U.S. policy in Latin America. He will be the one 
recommending to Secretary of State John Kerry what the U.S. should do as
 the ongoing efforts to remove President Dilma Rousseff proceed.




Shannon’s willingness to meet with Nunes just days after the 
impeachment vote sends a powerful signal that Washington is on board 
with the opposition in this venture. How do we know this? Very simply, 
Shannon did not have to have this meeting. If he wanted to show that 
Washington was neutral in this fierce and deeply polarizing political 
conflict, he would not have a meeting with high-profile protagonists on 
either side, especially at this particular moment.




Shannon’s meeting with Nunes is an example of what could be called 
“dog-whistle diplomacy.” It barely shows up on the radar of the media 
reporting on the conflict, and therefore is unlikely to generate 
backlash. But all the major actors know exactly what it means. That is 
why Nunes’ party, the Social Democracy Party (PSDB), publicized the 
meeting.




To illustrate with another example of dog-whistle diplomacy: On June 
28, 2009, the Honduran military kidnapped the country’s president, Mel 
Zelaya, and flew him out of the country. The White House statement in 
response did not condemn this coup, but rather called on “all political 
and social actors in Honduras” to respect democracy.




This dog-whistle signal worked perfectly; most importantly the coup 
leaders and their supporters in Honduras, as well as every diplomat in 
Washington, knew exactly what this meant, even as statements condemning 
the coup and demanding the restoration of the democratic government came
 pouring in from around the globe. Everyone knew that this was, in 
diplomatic code, a clear statement of support for the coup. The events 
that followed over the next six months, with Washington doing everything
 it could to help consolidate and legitimize the coup government, were 
pretty much predictable from this initial statement. Hillary Clinton 
later admitted in her 2014 book, “Hard Choices,” that she worked 
successfully to prevent the return of the democratically elected 
president.




Tom Shannon has a reputation among Latin American diplomats as an 
amiable fellow, a seasoned career foreign service officer who is willing
 to sit down and talk with governments that are at odds with U.S. policy
 in the region. But he has had a lot of experience with coups. Some of 
Hillary Clinton’s released emails shed additional light on his role in 
helping to consolidate the Honduran coup. He was also a high-level State
 Department official during the April 2002 coup in Venezuela, in which 
there is substantial documentary evidence of U.S. involvement. And when 
the parliamentary coup in Paraguay took place in 2012 — something 
similar to what is happening in Brazil but with a process that impeached
 and removed the president in just 24 hours — Washington also 
contributed to the legitimation of the coup government in the aftermath.
 (By contrast, South American governments suspended the coup government 
in Paraguay from MERCOSUR, the regional trading bloc, and UNASUR [the 
Union of South American Nations).] Shannon was ambassador to Brazil at 
that time, but was still one of the most influential officials in 
hemispheric policy.




The U.S. State Department responded to questions about Nunes’ 
meetings by saying, “This meeting had been planned for months and was 
arranged at the request of the Brazilian embassy.” But this is 
irrelevant. It merely means that Brazilian embassy staff were, as a 
matter of diplomatic protocol, involved in arranging the meetings. This 
does not imply any consent by the Rousseff administration, nor change 
the political message that the meeting with Shannon sends to the 
opposition in Brazil.



All of this is of course consistent with Washington’s strategy in 
response to the left governments that have governed most of the region 
in the 21st century. They have rarely missed an opportunity to undermine
 or get rid of any of them, and their desire to replace the governing 
Workers’ Party in Brazil with a more compliant, right-wing government is
 fairly obvious.




Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy 
Research in Washington, D.C., and the president of Just Foreign Policy. 
He is also the author of the new book “Failed: What the ‘Experts’ Got 
Wrong About the Global Economy“ (2015, Oxford University Press).