The Geopolitics of Plan Colombia

Monthly Review, May, 2001 by James Petras

Plan Colombia draws $3.5 billion dollars from the Colombian treasury-at a time when the government is imposing austerity measures and cuts in social expenditures that adversely affect wage and salaried groups. By increasing Colombia's military spending, Plan Colombia increases the public's opposition to the state, which in turn increases the demand by the military and U.S. policymakers to increase the repressive apparatus. Neoliberal policies and the militarization of the conflict require a bigger centralized state and a shrinking and constricted civil society--at least among the popular classes of civil society. The reinforcement of the state and its commitment to fight a two front war--a war in the countryside with arms, and with neo-liberal austerity policies in the cities -- not only deepens the polarization between the regime and the civilian populace, but it increasingly isolates the regime and makes it more dependent on Washington and the burgeoning military and paramilitary organizations in the cities as well as in the countryside. Plan Colombia has many unintended consequences that, far from containing the conflict and building up support for the state, extend and deepen the conflict and isolate the regime. Essentially this is because Washington and its Colombian clients, blinded by the single-minded pursuit of imperial power, have a false reading of the revolutionary challenge.

Washington's Diagnosis: Foibles and Facts

Essentially Washington's Plan Colombia operates from three mistaken assumptions: 1) a false analogy extrapolated from its victories in Central America; 2) a series of false equations about the nature of the Colombian guerrillas and their source of strength; and 3) a misplaced emphasis or exaggerated focus on the drug basis of guerrilla political power.

The FARC/ELN challenge to power cannot be compared to the Central American guerrilla struggles in the 1980s. First of all, there is the time factor, the Colombian guerrillas have a longer trajectory, accumulating a vast storehouse of practical experience, particularly about the pitfalls of peace accords that fail to transform the state and make structural reform the center of a settlement. Secondly, the guerrilla leadership of the FARC is made up mostly of peasant leaders or individuals who have developed deep ties to the countryside, unlike the Central American commanders who were mostly middle class professionals eager to return to city life and an electoral political career. Thirdly, the geography is different. Not only is Colombia far larger, the topography favors guerrilla warfare. Moreover the guerrilla political-terrain relationship in Colombia is more favorable. The guerrillas by social origin and experience are much more familiar with the terrain of warfare. Fourthly, the FARC leadership has put socioeconomic reforms in the center of their political negotiations-unlike the Central Americans who prioritized the reinsertion of the ex-commanders into the electoral process. Fifthly, the Colombian guerrillas are totally self-financing and are not subject to the pressures and deals of outside supporters-as was the case in Central America. Sixthly, the FARC has passed through a peace accord--between 1984 and 1990 in which thousands of its supporters and sympathizers were assassinated and no progress was made in reforming the socio-economic system. Finally, the guerrillas have observed the results of the Central American accords and are not impressed by the results; the ascendancy of neo-liberalism, the impunity of the military's human rights violators, and the enrichment of many of the ex guerrilla commanders, some of whom have joined the chorus sup porting U.S. intervention in Colombia.