Drugs and Insurgents in Colombia: A Regional Conundrum

Abstract

Drug trafficking and political insurgency in Colombia could well confront the United States with the most serious security challenge in the Western Hemisphere since the Central American wars of the 1980s. The second-oldest democracy in Latin America, Colombia is a strategically important country that lies adjacent to Venezuela's oil fields, the Panama Canal, and the Caribbean basin. Colombia's political trajectory will influence the direction of broader trends in the unstable Andean region and beyond. To date, the United States' response to Colombia's crisis has been limited to the provision of military assistance and technical support to the Colombian government's counternarcotics effort. However, Colombia's narcotics and insurgency problems are so intimately intertwined that dealing effectively with one will almost certainly involve dealing with the other. U.S. policymakers and military planners therefore have a compelling need to gain further insight into the intricacies of Colombia's internal crisis.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2001
Accession Number
ADA393704

Entities

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Agreements
  • Air Force
  • Colombia
  • Drug Trafficking
  • Electronic Mail
  • Governments
  • Insurgency
  • Latin America
  • Military Assistance
  • Military Operations
  • National Governments
  • Panama Canal
  • Security
  • Terrorists
  • United States
  • World Wide Web

Fields of Study

  • History
  • Political science

Readers

  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.
  • Systems Analysis and Design