Colombian Agency and the Making of US Foreign Policy ─ Intervention by Invitation

This book studies a significant event in US relations with Latin America, shedding light on the role of dependent states and their foreign policy agency in the process by which local concerns become intertwined with the dominant state’s foreign policy. Plan Colombia was a large-scale foreign aid programme through which the US intervened in the internal affairs of Colombia, by invitation. It proved to be one of the major successes of US foreign policy, and has been credited with stemming a potentially catastrophic security failure of the Colombian state in face of insurgency and narco-trafficking. It is argued that US intervention would not have occurred but for the proactive political entrepreneurship of the Colombian elite, and that they succeeded both in precipitating the US intervention, and setting some of the major terms of the intervention and of its implementation.

This book discusses the strategies and practices deployed by the Colombian government to influence US foreign policy decision making at the bureaucratic, legislative and executive levels, and is a distinctive contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of small power agency. It gives a clearer insight into the decision making processes in both the US and Colombia. In a field dominated by abstract speculation, this book founds its argument on solid empirical analysis, assembled from interviews of the major players in the events – including: Andres Pastrana, the President of Colombia; Thomas Pickering, the third-ranking officer in the US State Department; Arturo Valenzuela, Special Assistant to US President Clinton and Senior Director for Inter-American Affairs at the NSA; General Barry McCaffrey, the US ‘Drug Czar’; and Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives.

Approaching the events in question from a bottom-up theoretical perspective that puts the emphasis on the facts of the case, this book is tainted by neither anti- nor pro-American ideologies. It will be of great interest to academics, students and policy makers in the field of foreign policy analysis, US foreign policy studies, and Latin American studies.

Alvaro Mendez is a Research Fellow in the Department of International Relations at the LSE, London.??He is also Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Regent's University London and a Research Associate at the University of Bristol.? His interests lie in China in Latin America; Latin American Politics; Pacific Alliance; US Foreign Policy; foreign policy analysis; global south politics; political economy of development.
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