Non-State Actors in Colombia: Threats to the State and to the Hemisphere

Abstract

This study seeks to explain the Colombian crisis in terms of non-state threats to the state and to the region. The problem in Colombia is that that country, and its potential, is deteriorating because of three ongoing, simultaneous, and interrelated wars involving the illegal drug industry, various insurgent organizations (primarily the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC), and ‘vigilante’ paramilitary groups (the United Self- Defense Groups of Colombia, AUC). This unholy trinity of non-state actors is perpetrating a level of corruption, criminality, human horror, and internal (and external) instability that, if left unchecked at the strategic level, can ultimately threaten Colombia's survival as an organized democratic state, and undermine the political stability and sovereignty of its neighbors. In that connection, there is now explicit recognition that Colombia's current situation has reached crisis proportions. The critical point of this argument is that the substance, or essence, of the Colombian crisis centers on the general organization, activities, and threats of the major violent stateless actors at work in that country today. Each of the three armed nonstate players in Colombia generates formidable problems, challenges, and threats to the state and the region in its own right. What, then, of an alliance of the willing – even if that alliance represents a complicated mosaic of mutual and conflicting interests?