AFPC Roundtable Focuses on Colombia Peace Process

On December 5, 2013 as part of its emerging focus on Latin America, AFPC hosted a small policy roundtable dealing with Colombian politics. The featured speaker was Christine Balling, Founder and President of Fundacion Ecco, a Colombian non-profit which promotes democracy, and youth leadership ,and supports neighborhood improvement projects in areas of conflict. Attendees at the event included Rebecca Ulrich from the Office of Congressman Jeff Duncan, Joseph Humire, executive director of the Center for Secure Free Society, and Americas Forum executive director Ray Walser, among others.

In her remarks, Christine focused on the peace process now underway between the Colombian government of president Juan Manuel Santos and the radical FARC movement, its implications for regional security, and America’s shifting strategic posture toward the region. Colombia’s government, Christine noted, has become invested in a speculative enterprise that hinges upon the idea that the FARC—once Colombia’s most powerful anti-government force—was both weakened and ready for compromise. However, she cautioned, the empirical data suggest something quite different: that the FARC, which has waged an insurgency against the Colombian state for nearly five decades, remains capable, and is simply pursuing its ideological struggle by other means.

Christine’s presentation dovetailed with the release of the December 2013 edition of AFPC’s Defense Dossier e-journal, which focused on the changing political and strategic environment in South and Central America. (A PDF copy of the issue can be downloaded, free of charge, at the AFPC website, www.afpc.org).