CINEP charged me with writing a piece in a Colombian publication about “what to expect in an Obama administration,” not “what U.S. policy should look like.” These are _predictions,_ not endorsements. Our policy recommendations have been part of many of our other writings.

You may disagree with tone or word choice (for instance, it would have been clearer but clunkier if I’d written “the Colombian _government_ is one of the few “friends” the U.S. _government_ has left”). But I think it would be dishonest to tell a Colombian audience that dramatic, drastic change in U.S. policy is automatically on its way. It just isn’t, not without a lot of work that U.S. citizens will have to do.

And the one commenter above seems to be glad if Thomas Shannon sticks around, lol!

“Colombia is one of the few “friends” the United States has left in a region where the influence of “Bolivarian” leaders is on the increase.”

What does “friends” mean? This line condenses a multiplicity of assumptions and ideological biases, though it is not uncommon. I would argue that most of the regular people in the world are friends of the regular people in the United States. It is the imperialist policies and funding of violence under the pretext of the “drg war” and elitist first world views that the “Bolivarian” leaders are no friends of.

Colombia drug production and violence expanding enormously with billions of US $. In Bolivia the rate of coca exporting is fractional, and sans US $. Draw your own clear conclusion.
more like friends of the military contractors.

“They are pragmatic experts, much less ideological than the Bush administration’s hard-liners. While they do recognize the importance of human rights and social justice, they are also guided by a conception that the U.S. interest must always come first.”
This “pragmatic” line is all around, like a buffer of critical thought.

or this:
“Instead of fumigation, there will likely be more investment in civil-military programs seeking to strengthen an entire-state presence in territories that currently are barely governed.”
ie, mercenaries, soldiers, more weaponry, displace people

and there is so mch more, but just ine more:

“Colombia will thus probably continue to be the main destination of U.S. aid to Latin America, though Mexico – under the so-called “Mérida Initiative” – could come to occupy this position within a few years. And the truth is that even if McCain had won, reductions in aid to Colombia would have been inevitable.”
Why could it come to occupy this position? Only if the thinktanks and policy wonks signal to Obama et al that plan Colombia and Mérida initiative will be studied and commented and bolstered by the NGO and state apparatus and not vigorously opposed at every step.

Very disappointing, dangerous piece here, but I am glad to get some insight as to how terrible and violent policy continuance is fostered, and how dedicated activists can work to change for real these unimaginative possibilities.

El Común: That was a pretty thoughtful response, which is more than can be said of many others here. Other than appreciating that, I will say that I am glad to see that we can sort of “agree to disagree” on one important point: Ultimately, the whole process of J&P was a political choice. As such, it could be carried well, it could be carried badly, it could have this or that legal accoutrement and so on. But at the end of the day, it was a deliberate political choice that responded to a political valuation of what the conflict was: it accepted to negotiate with the paramilitary without seeking first their total defeat in the battlefield, as opposed to the current stance toward the FARC. That´s what gets the process started. That´s a political choice, among many others that could have been made.

So, does J&P deserve a chance? Well, I rather have J&P being well executed than poorly executed, that´s for sure. I don´t rule out that some good will come out of it. But I think we have to understand that J&P operates within the constraints placed by that initial choice. Those constraints determine what good and what evil will come out of it.

The point is not that J&P is imperfect: everything is. Neither is it that J&P will deliver some good: almost every policy does. The point is to notice that, whenever J&P does some good, it came at a cost, a cost determined by very specific political choices in the past. For political, ideological reasons, I think the costs are too large and those choices were wrong and hope that we change course in the future. You don´t think they were wrong? You don´t share my political and ideological outlook? I can live with that.