In the late 1980s and early 1990s political liberalisation, including the reduction of the military's institutional prerogatives, occurred in Colombia despite the increasing strength of an internal insurgency. Why would Colombia's national political elite weaken the institutional role of the armed forces in the context of an escalating internal war? What was the role of paramilitary groups, which were responsible for the vast majority of massacres and political violence against suspected unarmed civilians, during the 1990s? This paper argues that the elite civilian politicians who dominated the Colombian state promoted formal institutional changes, but tolerated paramilitary repression in order to counteract a strengthening guerrilla insurgency. These civilian leaders represented a modernising elite focused upon co-opting political opposition and establishing neoliberal economic reforms, thus constructing a Low-Intensity Democracy.
Since the early 1990s, North Americans have participated in a large
political-economic experiment in a regional trade bloc called the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). With NAFTA now over 10 years old,
the non-NAFTA countries have been debating the merits and shortcomings of
creating an expanded version of the trade agreement that would encompass
virtually every state in the Americas. The Free Trade Area of the Americas
(FTAA) would encompass 34 western hemisphere countries, over 800 million
consumers, and a total economy of over $12 trillion. The debate over the
FTAA raises a long list of important practical questions for each of the
potential member states and their citizens. The debate also raises a host
of pedagogical questions for students of the entire region and beyond.
This paper describes a student-based simulation that taps into those
practical and pedagogical questions. As in other simulations, such as the
Model United Nations, students role-play while vicariously experiencing
the opportunities and constraints facing each country as they negotiate
for policy preferences.
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.
Resumen En Colombia el derecho disciplinario militar (DDM) cumple una función impor-tante en la promoción y protección de los Derechos Humanos, por lo cual es perti-nente verificar los antecedentes históricos, la situación actual del DDM y cómo este coadyuva a la mejora continua de los DD. HH. en las fuerzas militares, en especial, en el fortalecimiento de tales derechos al interior del Ejército Nacional. Palabras clave: derecho disciplinario militar (DDM), justicia penal militar (JPM), transversalización, poder preferente.
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