Colombia

Sustainability of Colombian Military/Strategic Support for "Democratic Security" - Dr. Thomas Marks. US Army Strategic Studies Institute monograph, July 2005.  For the first time in 40 years, cautious optimism pervades discussions of Bogota's seemingly intractable situation. Drugs, terrorism, and insurgency continue in their explosive mix, but the current government of President Alvaro Uribe has fashioned a counterinsurgency approach that holds the strategic initiative and has a chance of negating a long-standing security threat to the state. Colombia has become synonymous in the popular mind with an intractable war waged against narco-terrorists. Not as understood is the strategic setting, wherein the illegal drug trade is not just linked to terrorism but rather is an integral part of a left-wing insurgency that continues to talk the language of the Cold War. This insurgency is the greatest threat to Bogota and to Washington's interests in the region. Thus it is of particular moment to see an indigenously generated response succeed in turning the tide. What has been particularly remarkable has been a military reform movement engineered by Colombian officers committed to strengthening military professionalism and accountability to civilian authority.

U.S. Drug Control Policy's Second and Third Order Effects on Colombia: Destabilizing Democracy and Fostering Narco-Terrorism - Captain Jeffrey McClean, US Navy. US Army War College Strategy Research Project, 2005. United States drug control policy has historically focused its efforts on reducing domestic drug use and interdicting the illegal drug trade. Control of illegal drugs has remained an important national interest due to the large negative impact drugs have had on the American economy and due to the destabilizing effect drugs create within our society. Of all illegal drugs, cocaine poses the greatest threat to U.S. national security. Colombia produces or exports approximately ninety percent of all cocaine that enters the United States. Accordingly, this SRP will review the origins and genesis of U.S. national drug control policy and the impact our National Drug Control Strategy has had on Colombian cocaine trafficking. Furthermore, this SRP will examine the second and third order effects of U.S. drug control policy and the policy's potential to destabilize democracy and foster narco-terrorism in Colombia. Finding that U.S. drug control policy has been only marginally successful in achieving national objectives, the SRP will propose possible reasons for its ineffectiveness and recommend alternatives to improve policy.

The United States and Colombia: Untying the Gordian Knot - David Passage. US Army War College conference monograph, March 2000. Twenty-five years after the end of the Vietnam War, the ghost of that war still haunts decision-makers when it comes to making long-term commitments to situations that remotely resemble anything like our Indochina experience. That is the case with Colombia, which is embroiled in an internecine struggle with two guerrilla movements, bent on overthrowing the government, as well as with narcotraffickers and paramilitary forces. In this, SSI’s fourth Letort Paper since the series began nearly 3 years ago, Ambassador David Passage details the complicated but increasingly clear nexus between the political and social insurgencies and the drug traffickers. This, he maintains, has obliged a highly reluctant United States to reexamine whether its counternarcotics strategy can succeed if it is not accompanied by a willingness to assist the Colombian government improve its ability to defeat guerrillas and regain control of its national territory.

Tightening the Screws: Restoring Security in Colombia - Lieutenant Colonel Michael Stough, USAF. National Defense University paper, 2002. In today’s international environment, with Palestine, Iraq, and North Korea dominating the headlines, does Colombia really matter? According to the recently published National Security Strategy of the United States of America, the Bush Administration certainly thinks so - "In Colombia, we recognize the link between the terrorist and extremist groups that challenge the security of the state and drug trafficking activities that help finance the operations of such groups. We are working to help Colombia defend its democratic institutions and defeat illegal armed groups of both the left and right by extending effective sovereignty over the entire national territory and providing basic security to the Colombian people." With these words, the Bush Administration reaffirms Colombia’s importance in its Latin American policy, and highlights the country’s central position in the “wars” on drugs and terrorism. As the source for 80 percent of the cocaine imported into the U.S., and a nation in conflict with American-designated terrorist groups, Colombia represents a convergence of major American interests. Equally important, Colombia is a democracy—albeit weak—effecting orderly transitions of power throughout most of its history.

Colombia's Paramilitaries: Criminals or Political Force? - David Spencer. US Army Strategic Studies Institute conference monograph, December 2001. This monograph supplements a special series stemming from a major conference entitled “Implementing Plan Colombia: Strategic and Operational Imperative.” The conference was cosponsored by the Dante B. Fascell North-South Center of the University of Miami and the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. The intent was to explore the multiple dimensions of Colombia’s ongoing crisis and inform the public debate regarding the challenges faced by the statesmen, intellectuals, military strategists, and others who take on the responsibility to deal with that crisis.Some of the monographs in the series have generated passions. This is another one that is likely to do that. Hopefully, it will also generate serious reflection about the tough choices Colombian, U.S., and other global leaders face. The author, David Spencer, points out, first, that the Colombian paramilitary “self-defense” forces represent some important sectors of society, and enjoy more popular support from Colombian society than the insurgents. Second, the paramilitaries have developed into a powerful irregular force that is proving itself capable of challenging Colombian guerrillas. Third, while they commit horrendous atrocities, they have been successful where the state has not. Therefore, the paramilitaries are seen by many as a viable solution to the conflict. Finally, he argues that until the segments of the society represented by the paramilitaries are—somehow—incorporated into the solution to the Colombian crisis, there will be no solution.

Nonstate Actors in Colombia: Threat and Response - Max Manwaring. US Army Strategic Institute monograph, May 2002. Colombia's deeply rooted and ambiguous warfare has reached crisis proportions in that Colombia's "Hobbesian Trinity" of illegal drug traffickers, insurgents, and paramilitary organizations are creating a situation in which life is indeed "nasty, brutish, and short." The first step in developing a macro-level vision, policy, and strategy to deal with the Colombian crisis in a global context is to be clear on what the Colombian crisis is, and what the fundamental threats implicit (and explicit) in it are. Political and military leaders can start thinking about the gravity of the terrorist strategy employed by Colombia's stateless adversaries from this point. It is also the point from which leaders can begin developing responses designed to secure Colombian, Hemispheric, and global stability. The author seeks to explain the Colombian crisis in terms of nonstate threats to the state and to the region--and appropriate strategic-level responses.

The United States and Colombia: The Journey from Ambiguity to Strategic Clarity - Gabriel Marcella. US Army Strategic Studies Institute monograph, May 2003. This monograph is an important contribution to the special series, “Shaping the Regional Security Environment in Latin America,” published jointly by the North-South Center of the University of Miami and the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. The report comes at a critical juncture, a time of promise for greater economic integration between the United States and Latin America, but also a time of profound concern about the deteriorating security situation in a number of countries in the region. Moreover, the events of September 11, 2001, have radically changed the strategic imperative for the United States. Within this larger context, American strategy towards Colombia shifted from a counternarcotics focus to more comprehensive support for that nation’s security. The shift recognizes that Colombia’s problems are deeply rooted and go beyond illegal narcotics. In the last year the Bush administration committed the United States to help Colombia defend democracy and to defeat the illegal armed groups of the left and right, doing so by promising to help that nation extend effective sovereignty over national territory and provide basic security to the people.

Colombia's Conflicts: The Spillover Effects of a Wider War - Richard Millett. US Army Strategic Studies Institute monograph, October 2002. This is the first in a new Special Series of monographs that stems from the February 2001 and the March 2002 conferences—co-sponsored by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College and The Dante B. Fascell North-South Center of the University of Miami—that dealt with the “Implementation of Plan Colombia.” This similar but different series begins a transition of focus from Colombia’s specific crises to broader regional and global security concerns, and the upcoming conference in March 2003 entitled “Shaping the Regional Security Environment in Latin America.” Colombia’s Conflicts: The Spillover Effects of a Wider War, written by Dr. Richard L. Millett, is the lead monograph for the new series. This timely monograph provides a careful examination of the problems generated by Colombia’s three simultaneous wars against illegal drug traffickers, insurgents, and self-appointed paramilitary groups. All seek, in one way or another, violently to change or depose the state. All use the uncontrolled “gray areas” in Colombia and its neighboring states to sustain, conduct, and replenish their nefarious operations without risk of significant interference. And, all these violent illegal entities constitute threats to stability and security that extend beyond Colombia and Latin America to Europe and the United States. Colombia is therefore a paradigm of the failing state that has enormous implications for U.S. foreign policy and military asset management for now and into the future.

Colombian Army Adaptation to FARC Insurgency - Thomas Marks. US Army Strategic Studies Institute monograph, January 2002. This monograph supplements a special series stemming from the conference entitled Implementing Plan Colombia: Strategic and Operational Imperatives. The conference was cosponsored by the Dante B. Fascell North-South Center of the University of Miami and the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. This report comes at a time when the United States is seriously considering broadening its policy toward Colombia and addressing that country's ambiguous war in a global and regional context. The author, Dr. Thomas Marks, points out that Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) insurgents actively are pursuing a strategy to mobilize the disaffected and disposed people of Colombia, and to control the entire national territory. At the same time, he argues that no one in the national political establishment has taken the initiative to conduct an appropriate effort to deny FARC its objective. As a result, the Colombian Army has been left alone to direct the fight, without a coordinated and integrated national campaign plan or other resources that would allow for success. Dr. Marks concludes that the Army has bought time, and there is still an opportunity for the United States to help Colombia deal with its insurgent threat in new ways. This monograph provides a point of departure from which policymakers in the United States and Colombia can review where we are and where we need to go.

Crime and Politics in Colombia: Considerations for US Involvement - Michael Roskin. Parameters article, Winter 2001-2002. Very early, the state gave birth to twins--politics, the means of influencing the state, and crime, the means of avoiding the state. The three have always been related. Those with great influence on the state may not need much crime; they get their way chiefly by politics. Those with no influence are naturally drawn to state-avoidance options. For what Latin Americans call los marginados (the marginals), crime may be a rational economic choice. When it suits them, groups may combine politics and crime, using some of one and some of the other. The combination of all three, the interface of the state with politics and crime, is called corruption. Politics and crime grow from the same impulse, namely, the drive to quickly obtain money and power. Neither are wedded to violence--it's inefficient and costly--but when pushed or threatened, both quickly turn violent. Politics and crime know and understand each other quite well, forming an almost symbiotic relationship. Politics needs money to win elections and influence and pays little attention to the sources of this money (e.g., Japanese Liberal Democratic politicians and yakuza gangsters). And crime needs the protection of politics to continue its enterprises (e.g., the inability of Russian security police to solve a single assassination). At times, politics and crime semipublicly fuse into a single corrupt state, as in Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia. There the fatal shooting of Arkan, a state-protected bank robber (in Sweden) and mass murderer (in Bosnia), removed one of the props of Milosevic's rule and paved the way to his electoral defeat.

Crisis? What Crisis? Security Issues in Colombia - Edited and Translated by James Zackrison. National Defense University book, 1999. The project that started this book consisted of four phases: A briefing to the Director of the Joint Staff; a study of possible scenarios for Colombia’s future; a workshop directed at recommending specific solutions to Colombia’s security problems to both the U.S. and Colombian military leaders; and this book. Fortunately, this project coincided with the rise of a new optimism in Colombia that a peace process through negotiations was the best route to a solution, giving the participants ample material for analysis and thought. Also, this increased interest in a peace process provided a more optimistic scenario, because none of the other scenarios resulted in a peaceful transition to stability for Colombia. But before reviewing the scenarios, it is necessary to look at where Colombia stands, to define the problems, and to assess the strengths and weaknesses of all the actors involved.

Mapping Colombia: The Correlation Between Land Data and Strategy - Geoffrey Demarest. US Army Strategic Studies Institute monograph, March 2003. In this monograph, Dr. Geoffrey Demarest addresses what—at first glance—seems to be an esoteric and inconsequential issue. The mapping of Colombian national territory, however, is fundamental to the problem of control of national territory. As a threshold matter, policy, strategy, and military asset management in contemporary conflict in virtually any unstable part of the world must deal with the problem of governance in “lawless areas.” Unless a central government such as that in Colombia can exert legitimate control and governance in the 60+ percent of the municipalities not under its control, there can be no effective judicial system and rule of law; no effective legal crop substitution programs; no effective democratic processes; and, only very little military or police action to bring law and order into unknown and difficult terrain. Indeed, control of the national territory is a strategic paradigm for 21st century conflict. The state is under assault by a powerful combination of state weaknesses, “lawless areas,” and insurgent and criminal terrorism. All these contributors to instability and violence have a powerful effect on local, regional, national, and international security. As a consequence, this monograph is extremely salient. Colombia and other states experiencing conflicts that range from criminal anarchy to virtual civil war must understand that putting treasure and blood into a conflict situation without first establishing the strategic foundations of success only result in ad hoc, piece-meal, disjointed, and ineffective reactions to truly inconsequential problems.

Colombia's Civil War: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) - Background article sourced from Online News Hour, 2003. The FARC, with some 17,500 members, is active throughout Colombia and headquartered in the south of the country, where it largely governed a region about the size of Switzerland for over 40 years. Its primary mission is to overthrow the state and establish a communist-agrarian state.

Colombia's Insurgency - Background page on Global Security.

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC) - Background page on Global Security.

Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC's webpage.