Colombian peace deal could mark rare victory for U.S. diplomacy
In an era of frustrating, if not failed, U.S. policy interventions abroad, the Colombian peace deal announced last week offers the possibility of a rare victory for American diplomacy.
It would be a validation of Plan Colombia, the U.S. counternarcotics and security-aid package that has sent roughly $10 billion to Bogota since 2000, tipping the government’s fight against the Marxist FARC insurgents. The accord finalized Wednesday would convert the rebels from one of the world’s most powerful drug-trafficking groups to a legal political party with a sworn commitment to ending both the 52-year war and its narcotics trade.
More broadly, the deal would be a bookend to the long, bloody history of armed insurgency in Latin America, affirming democracy as the only viable political system in the region. The agreement was forged in Cuba, of all places, the site of Fidel Castro’s leftist revolution, which was imitated by so many others.
“This is a transformational moment for our hemisphere,” Bernard Aronson, the U.S. envoy to the peace talks, said in an interview. “It is a final repudiation of political violence as a means of changing governments.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/colombian-peace-deal-marks-rare-victory-for-us-diplomacy/2016/08/27/0d0ac8aa-6ad7-11e6-91cb-ecb5418830e9_story.html
