A boy with a Colombian flag painted on his
face: It seems that
the
U.S.-Colombia special relationship may be 'anachronistic.'
El Espectador, Colombia
Colombia Should
Ditch U.S. 'Special Relationship'
"It
makes no sense to continue insisting on a “special relationship” that was a
consequence of the country’s weakness … This is an anachronism. … It is a
necessity to diminish the anti-drug instrument with which the United States has
exercised such profound influence on Colombia for the last 20 years."
Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos: His administration appears to have determined that relations with Colombia's neighbors should take precedent over relations with the U.S.
All the attention of late has
been devoted to the change in Colombia's relations with Venezuela, without
recognizing the importance of the other half of our new foreign policy
strategy: the reformulation of relations with the United States.
There will be no profound
change, since it's clearly in the interests of the Santos government to maintain good
relations with the United States. But there will indeed be a qualitative change, due in sum to the exhaustion of the anti-drug phase that marked
relations between the two countries since the 1990s. It was a 20 year period
that deepened U.S. influence over Colombia's domestic affairs. It will be a
realignment akin to that which occurred after two decades of intense relations
initiated during the Cold War, as argued by Rodrigo Pardo and Gabriel Tokatlian
in a book entitled Colombia 1910-2010, edited by Maria Teresa Calderon
and Isabela Restrepo.
Each of those periods had its
milestones: in the first period, there was the duo of Presidents Alberto Lleras [1958-62]
and John F. Kennedy as part of the Alliance for Progress,
and the merger of the international and domestic anti-communist struggle during
the administration of President Guillermo Leon
Valencia [1962-1966]. In the second period, there were the independent efforts
of President Lopez
Michelsen [1968-70] to help Panama recover the Panama Canal and President Belisario Betancur [1982-86]
with Colombian membership in the Contadora Group. In the
third period, there was the Sixth Summit of the Americas [the Cartagena
Summit] which helped define the joint anti-drug struggle and put pressure
on the Ernesto Samper
government [1994-98]. This resulted in Washington's Plan Colombia, which
heavily influenced Colombian policy for
the last twelve years and resulted in Alvaro Uribe's alignment of domestic and
foreign policy with the concept of George W. Bush’s anti-terror campaign.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
What President Santos calls “speaking in equal terms” with the United States is not overconfidence on
his part, but his reading that there has been a change in the conditions that determined
the anti-narcotics phase of bilateral ties: a gradual reduction of U.S. economic
aid, a lack of success of the "war on drugs" strategy, improved security
conditions in Colombian and the reduction of U.S. hegemonic power.
Santos and Foreign Minister
Holguin should be clear that it makes no sense to continue insisting on a “special
relationship” that was a consequence of the country’s weakness during the administration
of Andrés
Pastrana [1998-2002] and the need to legitimize Alvaro Uribe [2002-2010].
This is an anachronism in an unaligned world in which the United States is
seeking to build a more horizontal international system with the purpose of
disguising the erosion of its power. It is a necessity to diminish the anti-drug
instrument with which the United States has exercised such profound influence
on Colombia for the last 20 years. Furthermore, it is necessary to improve
relations with the countries in the region to promote what is emerging as the central
strategy of Latin American foreign policy: to provide leadership in the context
of Latin America that will free President Lula da Silva or any other president
in the region who seems capable of exercising it.
