Colombian Agency and the Making of US Foreign Policy: Intervention by Invitation

244 Pages·2017·2.28 MB·English

by  Álvaro Méndez

Colombian Agency and the Making of
US Foreign Policy
This book is a study of a significant event in the foreign relations of the US with
Latin America, which sheds light on the role of dependent states and their
agency in the international process by which local concerns become entangled
with the dominant state’s geopolitics. Plan Colombia was a large- scale foreign
aid programme under which the US intervened, by invitation, in the internal
affairs of Colombia. It has proved to be one of the major successes of US foreign
policy, and has been credited with stemming a potentially catastrophic security
failure of the Colombian state.
Discussed are the stratagems and practices deployed by the Colombian gov-
ernment to influence US foreign policy decision making at the bureaucratic,
legislative and executive levels. It is a distinctive contribution to our understand-
ing of the dynamics of small state agency, giving a clearer than usual insight into
the decision- making processes in both the US and Colombia. The monograph
founds its argument on solid empirical analysis assembled from interviews of
the major players in the events narrated, including: Andrés Pastrana, President of
Colombia; Thomas Pickering, third ranking officer at the US State Department;
Arturo Valenzuela, Senior Director for Inter- American Affairs at the NSA and
former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs; General
Barry McCaffrey, the US ‘Drug Czar’; and Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the US
House of Representatives.
Approaching the case from a bottom- up theoretical perspective that emphas-
ises the facts, this book will be of great interest to academics, students and policy
makers in the field of foreign policy analysis, US foreign policy studies, and
Latin American studies.
Álvaro Méndez is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of International
Relations at the London School of Economics. He is also Senior Lecturer in
International Relations at Regent’s University London, and a former editor of
Millennium – Journal of International Studies.
Routledge Studies in Foreign Policy Analysis
Series Editors:
Christopher Alden
London School of Economics, UK
and
Amnon Aran
City University of London, UK
www.routledge.com/series/RSIHR
The Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) series covers a broad intellectual canvass,
which brings together scholars of International Relations, Area Studies, Politics,
and other related fields such as Political Psychology and Administrative Studies.
It also engages with a wide range of empirical issues: from the study of the
foreign policy of individual countries, to specific aspects of foreign policy such
as economic diplomacy or bureaucratic politics, through germane theoretical
issues such as rationality and foreign policy. The Series aims to specialize in
FPA as well as appeal to the wider community of scholars within International
Relations, related fields, and amongst practitioners. As such the range of topics
covered by the Series includes, but is not be limited to, foreign policy decision-
making; the foreign policy of individual states and non- state actors. In addition it
will include analytical aspects of foreign policy, for instance, the role of
domestic factors; political parties; elites. Theoretical issue- areas that advance the
study of foreign policy analysis, for example, FPA and Gender, Critical FPA,
FPA in a new media landscape, Ethics and FPA, are also be welcomed.
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Álvaro Méndez
Forthcoming:
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Scott Brown
Colombian Agency and the
Making of US Foreign Policy
Intervention by Invitation
Álvaro Méndez
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Álvaro Méndez
The right of Álvaro Méndez to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Mendez, Alvaro, author.
Title: Colombian agency and the making of US foreign policy :
intervention by invitation / âAlvaro Mendez.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. |
Series: Routledge studies in foreign policy analysis | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017004343| ISBN 9781138659711 (hardback) | ISBN
9781315620039 (ebook)Subjects: LCSH: United States–Foreign relations–
Colombia. | Colombia–Foreign relations–United States. | Colombia–
Politics and government. | Economic assistance, American–Colombia. |
Military assistance, American–Colomiba.
Classification: LCC E183.8.C7 M46 2017 | DDC 327.730861–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017004343
ISBN: 978-1-138-65971-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-31562-003-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
I dedicate this book to my mother Leonor Suárez and my
father Álvaro Méndez Peñaranda

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
List of tables x
List of abbreviations xi
1 Intervention by invitation: Colombian agency and the
making of US foreign policy 1
Introduction 1
The state of the art 4
Methodology 18
2 Colombian political history from shaky Founding to near
state failure (1810–1998) 34
The determinants of Colombian state weakness 35
The aftershocks of the Founding (1830–1903) 42
The long peace – an anomaly in Colombian history 50
The contemporary recrudescence of violence (1946–98) 53
The Nadir (1994–98) 65
3 Plan Colombia: The narrative mainline 83
The prospect of state failure – the seed of Plan Colombia 84
National Development Plan: matrix of plan Colombia 90
Pastrana gambles on peace: the FARC and the DMZ 95
Pastrana proposes, the FARC dispose 103
The US accepts intervention, as scaled-down 111
4 Success through entrepreneurial agency 132
The structure of Colombian agency 132
Bargaining on the third level 135
Colombian agency tips the balance 142
Legislative history of plan Colombia 149
viii Contents
5 Findings and conclusions 176
Discussion of findings 176
General observations 188
Appendix NDP (1998–2002) table of contents in relevant detail 195
Bibliography 199
Index 224
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to Tatiana for her love and support through-
out the long road to the completion of this project. Special thanks are also due to
Chris Alden, Jerry Wittmeier Bains, Fiona Ferrer, Claudio Galan, Libardo Ger-
ardino, Cristian Mendez, Liliana Méndez, Juliana Méndez, Sebastian Nieto,
Andrés Rugeles, Yves Raymond and Marco Schönborn for their incredible con-
tributions to the endless task of finishing the text of this monograph. On the
Colombian side of political actors featured in this book, I would like to acknow-
ledge my good friend Guillermo Fernandez de Soto for providing inspiration and
opening so many doors. On the US side, I would like to acknowledge my good
friends Stuart Lippe, Gabriel Marcella and Arturo Valenzuela for giving me
access to so many people who otherwise would have been out of reach.