January 8, 2007

Colombia’s Conflict and the Lack of a Regional Response: Why the United States is Part of the Problem

by Henry Mance

What is often called the Colombian civil war is in reality a regional conflict, heavily implicating at least Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru too. Yet despite this, there has been little in the way of a coordinated regional response. The reasons for this are complex, but much of the responsibility lies with the United States. Its approach to the region is hindering cross-border cooperation, thereby undermining economic and security prospects.

Why should we think of the conflict in regional terms? Colombia’s borders stretch twice the length of the US-Mexico frontier, and are permeated by a variety of actors. Drug traffickers export cocaine to the United States and European markets via Ecuador, Venezuela and Brazil, fueling economies in arms and money laundering in those neighboring countries. Paramilitaries escape from engagements with Colombian armed forces and develop sophisticated support networks by crossing into western Venezuela. The FARC guerrillas do likewise in northern Ecuador, and have even crossed into northern Peru to recruit young people. The Colombian air force, for its part, has pursued the FARC into Ecuadorian air space. Additionally, the UNHCR estimates that half a million civilians have crossed into Ecuador and Venezuela to avoid the violence.

Given these challenges, what is needed is cross-border cooperation over issues such as rural development, the arms trade, aerial fumigation, the treatment of refugees, the rules of military engagement, and the deportation of suspected guerrillas and paramilitaries.

Multilateral institutions are the best way for countries to develop such cooperation. They provide forums for members to resolve their urgent differences, and realize the benefits of long-term collaboration—perhaps, as happened with the European Union, initially with economic issues and then extending to security matters. However, by pushing through Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with Peru and Colombia, the US has done its bit to derail the region’s primary multilateral institution, the Andean Community of Nations.

Bilateral treaties have been the Bush Administration’s response to the stalling of the Free Trade Area of the Americas. The advantages for the United States are clear: bilateral agreements are quicker to negotiate, and also offer better terms for the United States, which can in effect divide and conquer. But the big loser is regional unity: Peru and Colombia’s willingness to negotiate individually—rather than as a regional bloc—violated key parts of the Andean Community. For example, members of the Andean Community are committed to extending all benefits of their negotiations with third parties to each other, but the FTAs explicitly prevent this.

In protest of the bilateral FTAs, Venezuela has now left the Andean Community, and instead allied itself with the other main South American grouping, Mercosur, which includes Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. The countries most involved in Colombia’s conflict are therefore split between the Andean Community and Mercosur. This hardly provides a basis for coherent regional policy, but there are opportunities for reinvigorated regional integration. For example, Brazil has proposed a South American Community to link the two groupings. However, US intentions are clear: to extend its own influence over Latin America through agreements with Mexico, Central America, and the Andean region, with the aim of isolating Mercosur.

So, effective regional institutions are a distant prospect, but effective regional policies needn’t be. Unfortunately, US policy is distorted towards its favorite in the Andean region, Colombia. Its primary mechanism for military and economic support to the region—Plan Colombia—has concentrated overwhelmingly on that country. As the US Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said in November 2006, “A growing partnership with Colombia is our best investment towards our shared vision of a stable Latin America and a strong hemisphere.”

The problem is that, by focusing so heavily on Colombia, the United States cannot deal with transnational problems. For example, Plan Colombia neglects the issue of Colombian refugees, leading the Ecuadorian government to echo popular concerns about the economic burden of hosting these people. The former president Lucio Gutiérrez even called for a “Plan Ecuador” to redress the balance.

Governments of both Ecuador and Venezuela have called Colombia’s conflict an “internal matter”, and asserted their right not to intervene. What partly explains this stance is that neither country is prepared to support Colombia and the United States without being assured that they will receive strong financial and technical assistance.

However, the Ecuadorian and Venezuelan governments do not simply want resources: they also want their views to be incorporated into policy. Ecuador has complained about the violation of its sovereignty by the Colombian military and the effects of fumigation in border regions. The country’s newly elected president Rafael Correa has taken a strong stance against Plan Colombia, and the US military presence in the region. Venezuela, under famously anti-American Hugo Chávez, has shown ideological sympathy with the FARC.

The tendency on behalf of the United States has been simply to criticize such stances, without understanding the political reality that lies behind them. In contrast, Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe has labored to restore a working relationship with Chávez, but the continued rhetorical skirmishes between the Venezuelan President and Washington may make this untenable in the long term.

If the United States is to develop a regional approach to the conflict, it will have to make compromises. In practice, this would mean a less militarized approach, with a greater role for alternative development strategies and negotiation. So far, the United States has shown no inclination for such a change. A similar scenario arose at the international level with Plan Colombia when, faced with European skepticism towards the Plan, the United States took a unilateral path rather than adjusting its strategy. What the United States should realize—as the Council of Foreign Relations recommended in Andes 2020—is that a truly international and regional response is essential if the security situation in the Andean Region is to improve.

The US failure in dealing with the Andean integration has been two-fold. On one hand, it has placed advantageous bilateral trade deals before regional cooperation. On the other hand, its efforts to improve the security situation have revolved around its relationship with one key ally, Colombia. Faced with different perspectives in the region and the international community, the US response has been to criticise, not to engage. One country cannot bear the full responsibility for the lack of regional approach. Yet that does not excuse the fact that, both because of and in spite of its overwhelming economic and military power, the United States is currently a force for division, not cooperation in the Andes.

Henry Mance gained an M.Phil. in Development Studies from Oxford University, including a thesis on environmental politics in Colombia, which was graded distinction.

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