U.S.-Colombian Relations at a Crossroads
Eliot Brockner | 29 Dec 2008
World Politics Review
Most of the early analysis of President George W. Bush's Latin American legacy concentrates on his failure to engage the region despite early promises to "look south." But the emphasis on the outgoing administration's general neglect of Latin America has diverted attention from the strong alliance that has developed between the United States and Colombia.
That alliance is based largely on Plan Colombia, an initiative signed in the late 1990s by former Presidents Bill Clinton and Andrés Pastrana to combat drug production and trafficking and the criminal organizations that control supply, as well as to stem the flow of illegal narcotics entering the United States. Since its inception, most of the more than $5 billion dollars the U.S. has donated to Colombia has been under Plan Colombia's auspices.
Most of that aid has been spent on improvements in security, including burgeoning military and police forces, investments in intelligence, and increased communications between Colombian and U.S. anti-narcotics forces operating in the region. The program's impact is palpable throughout the country. Kidnappings and murders are down, and it is once again safe to travel to many previously dangerous areas.
Plan Colombia's success has admittedly been uneven. While it has improved security in Colombia, it has failed to achieve its primary objective of curtailing drug production, which has not decreased under Colombia's current president, Álvaro Uribe. But the U.S. aid to Colombia has led to an important partnership between the two countries. Today, Colombia is one of the few allied nations in a region that is increasingly hostile towards Washington.
As a sign of this goodwill, George Bush has been trying to push a Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, signed in 2006, through Congress before his presidency ends in January 2009. However, the recent surfacing of human rights violations in Colombia have made Democrats wary of approving an agreement that makes little to no reference to labor and human rights abuses, claiming it would effectively reward Colombian officials for the atrocities committed under the current administration's watch. These include the murders of union leaders, and the killing of poor rural men by the Colombian army, which then falsely identified them as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in an effort to pad statistics.
Thus the election of Barack Obama, while met with enthusiasm in many parts of the world (including Latin America), was met with skepticism and caution by Colombian leaders hopeful for a FTA. Obama opposes the deal as it currently stands, and wants to include more statutes that protect workers' rights. The failure to pass the FTA could cost Colombia billions in export revenue to their largest market. Bilateral trade has increased by close to $10 billion dollars per year since Plan Colombia's inception. Today, U.S. markets account for 35 percent of Colombian exports. For some industries, such as flower producers, that number is as high as 80 percent.
An initial cooling of relations between Washington and Bogotá, as a reinforced Democratic Congressional majority looks to revise or block Bush's FTA, is possible. However, the two nations have become too interdependent to allow this to gravely affect their alliance. Colombia not only relies upon U.S. markets, but also financial assistance and shared intelligence as it reconstructs itself in the 21st century. The United States counts Colombia as its most important ally in Latin America, a region crucial to the security of the United States and increasingly open to the sway of larger threats such as Russia (military) and China (economic).
The two nations also cooperate outside of the Americas. As Luis Alberto Moreno, the Colombian-born president of the Inter-American Development Bank, pointed out in a Dec. 7 interview in Colombia's El Tiempo, President-elect Obama will find the security and intelligence expertise Colombia has acquired in fighting a homegrown insurgency and illegal drug trade useful as the U.S. shifts its focus to Afghanistan. According to Moreno, Colombian authorities are already serving as consultants to U.S. and Afghan forces on anti-narcotics fighting, as illustrated by the Afghan defense minister's subsequent meeting with Colombian officials in Bogotá during the week of Dec. 8, with representatives from the U.S. Department of Defense in attendance.
Colombia's domestic political turmoil, caused by the scandals affecting Uribe's administration, will weaken its negotiating position on the FTA with the incoming U.S. president. Nevertheless, Colombia can leverage its strategic importance to U.S. regional interests to press for demands such as the maintenance of the status quo, which allows 90 percent of Colombian exports to enter the United States tax-free. Should that fail, Bogotá may increasingly look to Europe, which recently extended preferential trade privileges to Colombia until 2011, to reduce its dependence on American markets.
However, Colombia and the United States would both be worse off should they allow relations to sour. That gives both governments reason to search for compromise solutions that keep initial disagreements over the FTA from hardening into long-term resentments.
Eliot Brockner is a New York based media analyst and writer. He is a regular contributor to LatAmThought.
Photo: Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, by Center for American Progress (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 license).
Aquí algo sobre la colaboración entre Usa-Colombia-Afganistán y las perspectivas del plan Colombia que tanto tienen que ver con nuestras fuerzas armadas.
