Media: CSIS Colombia 2020

The Centre for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) recently put together a fascinating conference -- 'Colombia - 2020'.

Check out the morning keynote from the Hon Gabriel Silva (Amb of Colombia to the US). 



CSIS have also uploaded a couple of audio files from the event which make for great listening; hear for yourselves -- http://csis.org/event/colombia-2020

Opinion: Kicking Cocaine out of Colombia

Inform someone of your Colombian heritage and the customary response will consist either of acknowledgment of Carlos ‘El Pibe’ Valderrama – the eccentric and effortlessly talented Colombian football icon; worldwide music sensation, Shakira; or cocaine.  Whisper it, but the latter association may be on its way into the dustbin of history.

While acknowledging that Colombia remains the world’s largest cocaine producer, the UN’s International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) has dropped Colombia from its list of countries requiring special observation since production has decreased by 58% between 2000 and 2009.  This is high praise indeed for a state that spent the lion’s share of the 80s and 90s as hostage to rival drug cartels that held levels of geostrategic power previously unseen in non-state actors.

Where did it all go so right?  Well, without getting too carried away (Colombia still has a number of socio-political problems that it needs to address as well as the ongoing drug problem itself), much of the acclaim belongs with the preceding Uribe administration.  Much maligned by left-of-centre commentators (even more so further-left-still, principally in Chávez’s Palacio de Miraflores), human rights activists, and indigenous demographics for his military-orientated approach to the war-on-drugs, the ex-president has often been dismissed as a “gringo puppet”.  But it seems his kinetic-military approach combined with mass eradication projects appear to be paying off - for the new Santos administration and Colombia at least.

The drug problem in Colombia is complex.  Its roots hover between left-wing guerrilla groups, principally the FARC, right-wing paramilitary organisations, notably the AUC, and abhorrently violent criminal entrepreneurs.  Solving the problem is therefore equally complex.  If the desired end is simple enough to settle on (eradication of drug exportation), the means are less so.  Uribe’s approach viewed the crisis through a military paradigm; all out war.  But at the other end of the scale there is the development approach which includes providing alternatives to coca cultivation for Colombia’s indigenous populations, tackling poverty and acute inequality, and addressing the grievances of the FARC.  In short, there is a lack of consensus on what needs to be done.

Amid this lack of consensus, a glaring problem arises despite Colombia’s improvements: the drugs may be disappearing from Colombia, but they’re not disappearing.  The Central American isthmus, especially Mexico, and sub-equatorial South America, significantly Peru, have experienced an explosion of drug production in the time that Colombia’s has decreased.  It seems, therefore, that Uribe’s approach has, to an extent, simply pushed the problem away from Colombia’s borders and into its local neighbourhood.   

Thus, while the military approach has served Colombia well, now is the time to foster development in an integrated multi-pronged assault.  While left-wing guerrilla’s and violent entrepreneurs are on the defensive, Bogotá is in a strong position to negotiate their demise.  In turn, decreasing the power of the FARC will delegitimise the raison d’être of the AUC.  Act now, achieve lasting success, and Colombia may well provide the template for future success stories to come.

Originally posted in March 2011, by the Henry Jackson Society

Opinion: Where's Walid?

If Obama wishes to avoid playing the Wally, he needs to face up to the implications of Walid Makled Garcia's extradition to Venezuela, while, fortituously, new links between Chávez and the FARC may give Obama the second chance needed to check Bogota’s drift toward Caracas...   

Last month, in the Washington Post, Jackson Diehl asked a very valid question: why isn't Obama fighting Colombia's dirty deal with Venezuela?  The dirty deal was of course the extradition of drug lord, Walid Makled Garcia, to his native Venezuela, completed this Monday.  As Garcia flew back to be imprisoned in Venezuela, his alleged evidence of Caracas' compliance with the international drug trade shared a similar fate.  To come to the point, Washington missed a trick while Chávez wiped his brow and silenced the troublesome Garcia once and for all.

Colombia's Santos claimed that the decision was made on a first-come-first-serve basis; that Caracas had simply beaten Washington to the post with its paperwork.  Whether Bogotá genuinely assigns such importance to punctuality is doubtful, but what is clear is that the move is the latest in a line of developments that, on Obama’s watch, have seen Bogotá drift toward Caracas.

That said, a recent publication by the IISS shows that there is still at least one big thorn in the side of this relationship: the FARC.  Unsurprisingly, given that the FARC issue is a real deal breaker for diplomatic peace between Colombia and Venezuela, Venezuela’s UK embassy was quick to voice its objection to this report which has brought Chávez’s links with the left-wing rebels back into focus.  From Washington's point of view, however, these fresh revelations may mark the false-start in the Santos-Chávez lovefest that one would hope it has been looking for.

In being generally slow out of the blocks in tackling this particular geostrategic concern, Obama should be thankful for the false-start and use it as an opportunity to re-focus his own performance in the race to reinforce Washington’s alliance with Bogotá.  The struggle with Islamic extremism may currently dominate the White House's agenda, but crossing the finish line in this race may be significant if Obama wishes to maintain the US' influence in her own backyard and prevail in the less widely reported war of ideas she faces with 21st century socialism.

Opinion: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Following my rambling thoughts yesterday, I put together a more coherent blog for The Henry Jackson Society which I'll share here...

What do the notorious drug trafficker, Walid Makled Garcia, Barak Obama, and Hugo Chávez all have in common?  They are all, either directly or indirectly, contributing toward the loss of the key US ally in Latin America.

Barak Obama has kept Colombia at arms length throughout his time in the White House.  While the free trade agreement between Bogotá and Washington seems to have enough left in the tank to crawl over the finish line, Obama’s recent tour of Latin America made no time for a trip to El país del Sagrado Corazón.  The days of Uribe and his close relationship with the Bush administration are gone.  In their place, a cooler climate has emerged in which Juan Manuel Santos has understandably allowed realism to creep in. 

Santos’ stand-out foreign policy agenda has been the warming of the relationship between Bogotá and Caracas; from foes to friends in roundabout a year.  The showpiece of this renaissance is the decision to extradite Walid Makled Garcia, the drug trafficker who has shot to fame by claiming collaboration with some of Chávez’s most senior staff, to Venezuela, and not the US as originally scheduled.   In return for this cover-up opportunity, Chávez has offered payment of circa $1 billion Venezuela owes to Colombian exporters and to end the foreign policy crisis between the two countries once and for all.

The rationale behind Santos’ shift is clear: he is seeking to reintegrate Colombia back into the Latin American neighbourhood since playing the right-hand-man to the US under the Obama administration is proving a gamble. 

Obama has been weak on the Chávez issue, disappointing once again on his recent Latin American tour, this time in failing to even mention the crackpot authoritarian.  And his weak leadership is costing the US.  As the security situation in Colombia clears drastically (an achievement in which the US can claim a great deal of credit), could it be Chávez who takes advantage of the opportunity to invest?  After years of heavy hand-outs, don’t blow it now Obama.

Opinion: "No FARC in Venezuela" - Santos

I just read over a news piece on the BBC website; it seems Juan Manuel Santos has reinforced the formative bridge between Colombia and Venezuela by congratulating Chávez and the state for upholding their promise in the fight against the left-wing guerrillas.

A few thoughts:

Are the FARC really waning?  It seems as though the offensive initiated by Uribe may actually be improving Colombia's internal security situation.  As someone who is a staunch believer in population-centric counterinsurgency (COIN), this is in some ways surprising, but also very interesting.  Colombia's struggle with the FARC is, of course, different from COIN as we conceive of it in, say, Afghanistan, or even Iraq.  But I am still intrigued by the relative success of a conventional military approach in Colombia.  Can this set a precedent for future COIN efforts?  Will hawks in Washington be able to sit back and throw piles of cash (without sending in ground troops) at irregular conflicts across the globe, provided the target country's necessary institutions are in a relatively healthy state (government, security forces, development agencies, judicial system etc)?  It's interesting to say the least, particularly in a post-heroic era where the general public seems reluctant to support far-away wars and tolerance for casualties is thin.

Is Chávez really cooperating?  Can the perceived absence of FARC camps in Venezuela's borders be taken as hard evidence that Chávez is on board, fighting left-wing guerrillas?  Seems surprising.  I wouldn't suggest that Chávez is so clouded by his ideological underpinnings that he would be willing to break relations with Colombia once more by overtly support the FARC.  But a full partner in the fight against it?  Perhaps the answer to the question above - that is, whether the FARC is actually on the decline - helps to draw some light here.  Perhaps the FARC really is on its last legs; perhaps this explains its current absence.

With Colombia and Venezuela getting cosy, what does this mean for the US?  We've moved on from the days of Bush, Uribe and Chávez.  Unfortunately (if you are inclined toward the 'right' at least), Chávez is the only survivor from this contingent.  Bush has been replaced by Obama who, despite his recent tour of Latin America, seems less interested in engaging with Colombia (or at least views it differently from Bush who had his security lenses firmly in place post 9/11).  Uribe has been replaced by Santos who continues to melt away the layers of ice that had built up across the border with Chávez by reintegrating Colombia in the neighbourhood, somewhat at the expense of its close alliance with the US.  And so, with kidnappings and violence sharply down in Colombia after many years of US support, is the opportunity for investment now set to swing out of Washington's favour?  Will the cosying of the relationship between Colombia and Venezuela draw Bogotá into Venezuela's sphere of influence, say, toward the anti-market energy cartels proposed by Chávez?  It seems inevitable that bilateral trade between Colombia and Venezuela will once again become a focal point of their respective foreign policies (and that is a good thing since both countries rely heavily upon it), but would wider initiatives in the mould of Petrocaribe or Petrosur mean that the US is losing Colombia?

Of course, this is, as they say, conjecture.  But it certainly makes for some interesting thoughts...