Institutionalizing global wars: state transformations in Colombia, 1978-2002: Colombian policy directed at its wars, paradoxically, narrows the government's margin of maneuver even as it tries to expand it.

AuthorGutierrez, Francisco
PositionStrong and weak states: cases of governance

Colombia has been waging two interrelated but distinct wars since the late 1970s: its civil conflict and the war on drugs. On both accounts it is difficult to tell internal from external factors, but the distinction is important. (1) In Colombia, where democracy has coexisted with war for at least two decades, it is crucial to know if global variables have been instrumental in the persistence of democracy, or if, on the contrary, they have drained democratic resources. And then, in one case or another, how have they done it?

This set of what and how questions has three possible answers. First, the torch of contemporary democracy may be in the hands of cosmopolitan communities that oppose reactionary nationalist forces. So politically, globalization is synonymous with democracy. This is part of Kaldor's "new wars" thesis, which in turn has its antecedents in previous waves of globalization. (2) Constant, for one, believed that commerce and the universalization of rights and tolerance would begin an era of peace that only primitive nationalists would reject. (3) Second, global actors may hinder development, or promote self-serving policies that destroy, or severely undermine, democracy. Several works have strongly made this case regarding economic globalization or the war on drugs. (4) They argue that it is not strictly the objectives that may be wrong, but the unintended consequences might be so large and so negative that they call into question the entire enterprise. Third, global actors may promote democracy only to have national actors appropriate it in unexpected ways. Robert Friman has argued that when national policy makers confront great external pressure and have only a narrow margin in which to maneuver, they may resort to deception, appearing to agree to international demands while in fact serving national--or their own--interests. (5) However, by doing so they might engage in a process in which they progress from opposition to simulation, then to imitation and finally to internalization. The canonical example of this is "human rights diplomacy," and certainly part of the Colombian government's reaction to the international human rights community fits into this model.

These perspectives can co-exist, since each of them might simply be highlighting particular aspects of the very complex relationship between internal conflict and external factors affecting it. However, in each case we are essentially examining only whether global forces are promoting or undermining democracy. It is possible to take another stance altogether. Instead of wondering about the sign and quantum of democracy contributed by global forces--positive or negative, large or small--we can ask about the changes in the nature and structure of the state and the political regime when it faces war and must incorporate new stakeholders while possibly losing old ones. It is this set of chemical changes in the nature of the state and the regime that will be the focus of this paper.

I will confine myself to the role of the United States government in setting policies and fostering institutional innovations related to both Colombian wars, the one on drugs and the one against guerrillas. The U.S. role has two aspects. On one hand, it defends democracy. Were it not for U.S. pressure, it is doubtful that the Colombian military would have tried to combat the paramilitary groups that, in collusion with the army, were committing atrocities against civilians. Figures show that it was only after pressure became intolerable, in the midst of a serious Colombia-U.S. conflict, that the paramilitary started to be harassed. (6) In the war on drugs, the U.S. has combated the penetration of organized crime into politics, a noxious phenomenon for any democracy. (7) On the other hand, it has severely distorted some basic democratic mechanisms, abducting them from public deliberation and creating reserved domains that are not only undemocratic, but also allow the growth of authoritarian tendencies within the state, as in the aerial fumigation of illicit crops. So here we have a case of defense and deformation, leading to a rather simple hypothesis. While trying to defend simultaneously its war agendas and basic democratic institutions and procedures in Colombia, U.S. government activity was a catalyst for two fundamental changes in the Colombian polity: a radical increase in the thickness, the opacity and the inconsistency of the state; and the substitution of party pluralism for agency pluralism. By thickness and opacity, I mean the proliferation of agencies with juxtaposed and possibly contradictory mandates that lack both mechanisms for accountability and a clear line of command. Agency pluralism refers to the competition between different state agencies with at least partially contradictory objectives over issues abducted from public deliberation. How has this happened? Through a "paradoxical loop": Both U.S. and Colombian policy makers make decisions to address specific challenges related to global wars, sometimes preventing catastrophic outcomes. The solutions, however, do not completely solve the original problem, but create new ones. Each run of the loop produces a more complicated landscape, higher levels of intervention and the juxtaposition of old and new problems--making the situation more complex while simultaneously limiting the power of the state to act.

THE STATE AND THE TRAJECTORY OF TWO WARS

The Colombian Wars

Colombia experienced a bloody civil war from 1948 until the mid 1950s. A subsequent pact, the National Front, which lasted from 1958 to 1974, calmed political passions at the cost of political stagnation, but it was relatively successful in maintaining basic democratic institutions and peace. Colombia has had revolutionary guerrillas since at least 1964: the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN), the Ejercito Popular de Liberacion (EPL) and other minor groups. However, they waged what Broderick called an "imaginary war." (8) The official story of forty years of uninterrupted armed conflict, supported by both governments and guerrillas, is difficult to accept in the face of evidence. Fighting was scarce and there was a very small number of guerrillas--in 1978, today's main organization, the FARC, had at most 500 soldiers--and they prowled the most isolated areas of the country. By quantitative criteria, Colombia's war officially began by 1983 or 1984, though guerrillas posed a political threat to the government by the late 1970s, when a group known as the M-19 passed to the center stage of public debate. Popular dissatisfaction was growing, and the country was evidently--speaking with retrospective wisdom--in a process of heating up. By then, drug trafficking had become a key problem for Colombian society. Two booms, first marijuana, then cocaine and poppy, gave rise to huge fortunes that soon penetrated the realms of war and politics. Colombian traffickers were at first only processors and middlemen; but by the late 1980s Colombia became an important producer. Today, it is the world's largest coca grower, though aerial fumigation may change that.

The narcotics economy and the growth of conflict became tangled early on. By 1978, the FARC had already assumed control over illegal crops, (9) and its giddy growth--at present it numbers 20,000 members--cannot be separated from its ability to extract rent from illegal markets. However, at the same time narcotics and the conflict are distinct, and there are many differences between guerrillas and traffickers. Some guerrilla leaders were sympathetic to traffickers and their nationalist leanings, but often there have been ferocious confrontation between them. The structures, operations, objectives and timing of organized crime are different from those of political subversion. In the first case they are fundamentally urban, small, segmental and networked, keen on short-term results and economically driven. In the second case they are rural, large and highly bureaucratic, focused on protracted warfare and ideologically driven. Guerrilla expansion has been constant, while organized crime appears to have peaked more or less between 1984 and 1996. While not a main player, it was a very significant force. For example, to finance their war, guerrillas extract revenue from trafficking, taxing crops and sales, but have no explicit or apparently implicit collusion with organized crime in their opposition to the state. This can be tested empirically. Since sectors of trafficking have, at times, declared war on the state, it is easy to check if their armed efforts or peace negotiations have coincided with those of the guerrillas. The answer is no. (10) Using the famous and flawed dichotomy of "greed and grievance," Colombia's subversive war is both greedy and angry; the guerrillas are deeply involved in criminal economies, but simultaneously try to advance their own political objectives. They combine "small motivations and big opportunities," the latter being illegal global markets, and the former stemming from the decay of peasant economies. (11)

Government Responses

The administration of Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala (1978-1982) reacted to the challenges of trafficking and subversion in a varied manner. While his answer to the guerrillas was heavy-handed, his anti-drug and anti-corruption record was moot. His defensive reply to international human rights critics received strong U.S. support, but probably under discreet U.S. pressure (12) he adopted several anti-drug policies, among them an extradition treaty in 1979 that would become a key weapon against traffickers. The intensity of the wars, however, grew ceaselessly, and in 1982 a dovish president, Belisario Betancur, was elected. Betancur sought a peace agreement with the guerrillas, and due to his mildly nationalist stance was rather resistant to using the extradition treaty that his...

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