Suchergebnisse

The Andean region has been, and continues to be, at the center of a struggle over embracing economic globalization and market democracies or eschewing such models for various nationalist/socialist strategies of development and politics. The regions militaries have not been outside of this struggle, with factions in Venezuela or Ecuador working to frustrate the establishment and/or maintenance of neoliberal regimes, while militaries in Colombia, Peru, and to an extent in Bolivia, playing crucial roles in weakening or eliminating substantive challenges to capitalist globalization. William Aviles explores this variation in military power, identifying how neoliberal economic and political elites and international actors such as the United States have sought to marginalize "radical populists" while seeking the subordination of militaries to the decision-making of neoliberal elites within Andean states

AbstractColombia and Peru made significant progress in reducing the institutional prerogatives of their respective militaries in the 1990s and 2000s while reforming their economies in a neoliberal direction. They accomplished this despite internal armed threats to state authority and stability. The end of the Cold War, U.S. promotion of "market democracies," and the international centrality of free markets and formal democratic governance coincided with the rise to power in Peru and Colombia of "neoliberal policy coalitions." The internal insurgency mitigated the emergence of antiglobalization or antidemocratic reform factions in the military and civil society. The armed forces unified behind their counterinsurgency mission, and opposition in civil society was weakened, creating greater space for neoliberal elites to reform their economies and reduce military prerogatives.

In July 2000, US President, Bill Clinton, signed into law the aid package popularly known as 'Plan Colombia'. Foreign policy analysts examining the 'US drug war' have generally focused upon the perceived national security interests of the US state and/or the intermestic nature of domestic politics, or the economic interests of an imperial US state in explaining US drug policy. I posit that the development, initiation and implementation of Plan Colombia cannot solely be understood through these various nation‐state paradigms, as this process was aided by, and facilitated through, an incipient transnational state. The emergence and consolidation into power of a neoliberal state within Colombia, the role of transnational lobbying by US and Colombian policy‐makers, as well as the influence of transnational corporations all played instrumental roles in the initiation, development and implementation of Plan Colombia.