{"id":665,"date":"2026-02-11T11:03:36","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T11:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailypremiumbulletin.com\/?p=665"},"modified":"2026-02-11T11:03:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T11:03:36","slug":"the-uss-honduras-sets-sail-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailypremiumbulletin.com\/?p=665","title":{"rendered":"The USS Honduras sets sail again"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/main><\/p>\n

The USS Honduras sets sail again<\/h1>\n

With Nasry Asfura\u2019s election and Trump\u2019s backing, Honduras risks returning to its historical role as a US military, political and economic outpost used to project power across Central America.<\/em><\/p>\n

US President Donald Trump poses with Honduras President Nasry Asfura at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, in Palm Beach, Florida, US, in this handout released on February 7, 2026 [Honduras Presidential Office\/Handout via Reuters]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/a>By <\/span>Bel\u00e9n Fern\u00e1ndez<\/a><\/p>\n

Al Jazeera columnist.<\/p>\n

Published On 11 Feb 2026<\/span>11 Feb 2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Save<\/p>\n

\n

It\u2019s smooth sailing these days for the United States and Honduras, the diminutive Central American nation and original \u201cbanana republic<\/a>\u201d that has just elected a new right-wing president, Nasry Asfura<\/a>, to the delight of US sociopath-in-chief Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

The gringo leader has even taken credit for Asfura\u2019s victory, having threatened to cut off US aid<\/a> to Honduras in the event that the electoral outcome was not to his liking.<\/p>\n

Call it democracy at its finest.<\/p>\n

This past weekend, Trump hosted his \u201cfriend\u201d<\/a> and fellow businessman Asfura at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where the two committed to jointly combatting drug trafficking and irregular migration.<\/p>\n

The pact might have been a tad less hypocritical had Trump not just pardoned<\/a> former right-wing Honduran President and Asfura ally Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving a 45-year prison sentence in the US for \u2013 what else? \u2013 drug trafficking<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then, of course, there is the fact that the US has played an outsize role<\/a> in creating the violent conditions that cause mass migration from Honduras in the first place. But surely it\u2019s nothing that can\u2019t be solved by more business as usual.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it seems the winds are just right for the resurgence of the \u201cUSS Honduras<\/a>\u201d \u2013 the endearing nickname that was bestowed on the country in the 1980s on account of its outstanding service as an imperial military base from which to terrorise neighbouring Nicaragua, which had committed the outrageous offence of telling the gringos to take their capitalist system and shove it.<\/p>\n

Advertisement <\/span><\/p>\n

Some 50,000 Nicaraguans perished in the US-backed Contra war, while CIA mercenaries aided the war effort by raking in profits from the drug trade<\/a>, speaking of the US track record on that front.<\/p>\n

Nor was life on board the USS Honduras anything to write home about. Throughout the 1980s, a CIA-trained death squad by the name of Battalion 316<\/a> made life hell for hundreds of Honduran citizens who were suspected of improper political orientation and were kidnapped, tortured, and killed.<\/p>\n

And the US was calling the shots for just about everything. Writing in The New York Times in 1988, journalist Stephen Kinzer offered<\/a> the lowdown on imperial machinations in Honduras with a straightforwardness uncharacteristic of the US newspaper of record: \u201cBehind the guise of formal democracy [in Honduras], military leaders make all important decisions, and they respond to direction from the United States Embassy.\u201d<\/p>\n

This embassy, Kinzer noted, was \u201cone of the largest State Department outposts in the world\u201d, adding that \u201cAmerican diplomats exercise more control over domestic politics in Honduras than in any other country in the hemisphere.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet there were rough waters ahead for the USS Honduras \u2013 particularly with the 2006 election of ever-so-slightly-left-leaning President Manuel Zelaya, who had the nerve to raise the urban minimum wage to $290 a month<\/a> and otherwise stab international corporations in the back.<\/p>\n

The metaphorical naval vessel having been thus definitively blown off course, there was no choice but for the Honduran military to \u2013 very democratically \u2013 kidnap Zelaya in the wee hours of June 28, 2009, and whisk him off to Costa Rica in his pyjamas, never to be reinstated to his elected post.<\/p>\n

The US-validated coup d\u2019etat ushered in an era of intensified impunity in Honduras, as the domestic forces of law and order responded sadistically to unarmed anti-coup protesters, femicides skyrocketed<\/a>, and the small nation embarked on its path to becoming the murder capital<\/a> of the world.<\/p>\n

In other words, all was dandy from a capitalist point of view, and, once illegitimate elections had been staged by the Honduran coup regime, the Democratic regime of then-US President Barack Obama wasted no time in signing off on the electoral triumph of the right-wing Porfirio Lobo, who quickly declared<\/a> Honduras \u201cOpen for Business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Things then got even better with the reign of the aforementioned narco-President Juan Orlando Hernandez, whose re-election in 2017 amid ubiquitous fraud allegations was swiftly recognised<\/a> by the first Trump administration \u2013 and never mind the ensuing slaughter<\/a>, by US-funded security forces, of Hondurans protesting the election results.<\/p>\n

Advertisement <\/span><\/p>\n

Now that Trump is back at the helm of the USS Honduras with Asfura as first mate, it would have been remiss had Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not turned up on deck, as well.<\/p>\n

During a January visit<\/a> to Jerusalem to kiss Israel\u2019s genocidal<\/a> backside, Asfura made a downright disgusting mockery of his own Palestinian origins, responding with enthusiasm to Netanyahu\u2019s declaration that he looked \u201cforward to working with your government, both in economic fields and agriculture and technology in any of the areas that I think are laid before us\u201d.<\/p>\n

The man with the blood of potentially many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians<\/a> on his hands proceeded to reassure the Palestinian-descended Honduran head of state, \u201cYou should know that as far as Israel is concerned, the sky is the limit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Asfura, Honduras is, no doubt, on course to renew its status as a key node of US power and influence in the hemisphere, giving Trump even greater leeway to wreak havoc in Venezuela<\/a>, Cuba<\/a>, and wherever else he sees fit \u2013 and probably guaranteeing a lot more spectacular violence to come in Honduras itself.<\/p>\n

And as the USS Honduras sets off with vigour on its latest voyage of imperial servitude, you might say the sea is the limit, too.<\/p>\n

The views expressed in this article are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera\u2019s editorial stance.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The USS Honduras sets sail again With Nasry Asfura\u2019s election and Trump\u2019s backing, Honduras risks returning to its historical role as a US military, political and economic outpost used to project power across Central America. US President Donald Trump poses with Honduras President Nasry Asfura at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, in Palm Beach, Florida, US, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailypremiumbulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailypremiumbulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailypremiumbulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailypremiumbulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailypremiumbulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailypremiumbulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailypremiumbulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailypremiumbulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailypremiumbulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailypremiumbulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}