US attempt to legitimise interventionism fails. posted by Richard Seymour

They came, they tried, they flopped :

A proposal sponsored by the United States to establish a mechanism to monitor "threats" to democracy in the Americas, was rejected by the majority of the member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS), as the group's General Assembly meeting came to an end on Tuesday.

The US proposal to impose an early-warning mechanism that would allow the OAS to intervene in a particular country was seen as a violation of the principles of sovereignty and self-determination.

“Madam Secretary, democracy cannot be imposed,” said Brazilian Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim, to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the meeting on Tuesday.

The final declaration asks OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza -the first non US backed candidate to win that seat- to "propose recommendations and specific measures to provide assistance to member countries that request it."

The statement also says that any proposal by the OAS Secretary General must abide by the OAS charter which defends the principle of nonintervention and the right to self determination.

This is an interesting twist. It has long been known that US neoconservatives would like to see the UN's authority in matters of international law substantially curtailed (what Perle hopes will be "the end of anarchy"). I have argued before that this did not mean they were rejecting international law as such. What they appear to have attempted here is to create a legal framework outside the UN which would justify its imperial subventions in the old back yard. Naturally, the target of this trojan horse was Venezuela , although it looks as if Ecuador and Bolivia are likely targets as well.

The OAS did say that it was ready to "provide all cooperation" to Bolivia's government, and it has also agree to monitor the democratic standards and practices of member states which could either be a source of useless or obvious information, or a propaganda device. Anyway, watch that particular space, as I would strongly expect the US to try the same thing in a different way.