Abstract

MONROY HERNANDEZ, María Catalina. Historical Events of US Foreign Policy Towards Colombia, Prior to 1998 Plan Colombia's Enactment. Rev. Cient. Gen. José María Córdova [online]. 2015, vol.13, n.15, pp.19-61. ISSN 1900-6586.

This paper aims to present a detailed interpretation of the historical events that preceded Plan Colombia's formulation from a historical foreign policy analysis method perspective. Even if presenting a piece of work on Plan Colombia may seem reiterative, this article follows two alternative considerations towards explaining the history of this U.S. foreign policy towards Colombia: first, from a foreign policy analysis (FPA) starting point, one must first consider historical inquiry as a method for analysis. This enables the understanding of the events that occurred in the decision making process, critical piece of analysis. Second, beyond a historical description, the objective is to present a timeline that will allow the understanding of the following question when analyzing foreign policy: What issues drives the United States foreign policy actions? The latter was achieved throughout primary and secondary literature review, archives, interviews, speech analysis and press derived from the qualitative method in International Relations. A historical process-tracing method was considered to understand the process of decision-making level after a study-case definition. This article concludes first, the existence of a "strong" versus "weak" nation strategy and second, that Plan Colombia did not originate in Colombia. Neither did it respond to President Pastrana´s initiative in response to the "war on drugs". Plan Colombia was a strategic U.S. foreign policy designed to prevent the collapse of Colombian democracy. Also, it was an initial phase of a state-building strategy recognized as a successful model replicated abroad.

Keywords : foreign policy analysis; history; Plan Colombia; US foreign policy.

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