Wanted for the Gap: tough-but-fair leaders with vision

ARTICLE: The perils of “parapolitics”, The Economist, Mar 22nd 2007

Very interesting piece. Reads almost like an internal intervention led by a tough-but-fair leader (Uribe) with lots of mil aid from outside (US). In this push, you see all the same dynamics and challenges of any post-conflict nation-building (bolstering internal security forces, rehabbing baddies, extending networks of police that trigger the return of just enough social trust, and all of these things leading to the sine qua non of recovery: rising FDI.

Long way to go, yes, but very encouraging and proving the utility of the great leader with vision.

I get a lot of readers and audience members trying to get me to upgrade Latin America from sort of bad to truly ugly, in effect asking, what will it take to get us down there militarily?

I always have a hard time doing that, because I think the process will simply be slow and steady and largely economic, since I have a hard time coming up with serious military interventions down there, even with Chavez (despite reports to the contrary, I have never declared Chavez's overthrow to be necessary, much less imminent; actually you need the counter-example to prove your point on markets, as Chavez will do nicely soon enough).

I would love to see Colombia escape any downstream international intervention of the sort I sketched at the end of BFA. But there's a lot of ground to be successfully covered between Uribe's current achievements and a Colombian government that actually controls all its territory.

But it's good to remain optimistic, which is why I only rarely write about Latin America in a security sense.

Thanks to Steve Pampinella for sending this.

Comments

[Al Alborn]

An interesting article in yesterday's Washington Post. "For Clinton and Obama, a Common Ideological Touchstone" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/24/AR2007032401152.htmlThe point of the article is that both candidates are students of Saul Alinsky's "bottom up" approach which focuses on really listening to your constituency and working outside the system. I think some of Alinsky's ideas might scale to address international issues. You will note in this article that Obama opted to act on Alinsky's views as a grass roots organizer while Clinton opted to study his views as the subject of her thesis.

Its also interesting to note that today’s crop of terrorists also draw upon some of Alinsky’s ideas such as organizing the disenfranchised and working outside the system for change. For those familiar with the Islamic Fundamentalist model and the services they provide to their constituents, Bin Laden and his contemporaries are grass roots organizers and alternative Governments. Are they alternative Sys Adms? Perhaps what constitutes the core depends on which side of the seam you reside.

[Mike Frager]

Uribe is in a tough spot. It is important to note that US military intervention has been going on for a while in Columbia (Plan Columbia). However, let me repeat something I've mentioned to Tom before when he discussed using network-centric warfare for counter-narcotics:

Imagine in a particularly effective round of net-centric operations you were able to destroy 50% of the nodes of the opposing network. If you were fighting terrorists this would be a decisive victory, but with narcotics you've just made the remain supplies twice as valuable. If you eliminate the reasons (with economic development) for people to join terrorist groups you can strategically defeat them. But, while there is still high demand for narcotics you can be certain the network will quickly regenerate (it always has). Also, narcotics provides cashflow that pays for weapons and counter-surveillance in ways that terrorism doesn't.

I agree with Tom when he says that there are hardcore terrorists who must simply be killed. But, there is no military or criminal prohibitory scheme that will work against narcotics in reality. If there was it would have worked by now, but after 30+ years of "war", narcotics are highly available and inexpensive.

[Tom Barnett]

Mike,

A very interesting point.

[kurt graves]

Tom - yours is one of the best and most measured postings I have seen on Colombia and Latin America. There is much to be done, but during Uribe's tenure, the progress is real. I travel to Colombia regularly for work and have a good sense of people's sense of well-being, both internal and external. It is much improved over the last 5 years. Having carved out a measure of success and achieved a much better sense of security, they must work hard to improve economic improvements for the majority of Colombians, who are poor. The US would do well to get the FTA done with Colombia, but they need to use that agreement to the benefit of all Colombians, in order to continue progress. BTW, Colombia is now the number 2 foreign investment target in SA, behind only Chile, according to Investors Business Daily.