The Internationalization of Domestic Conflicts: a Comparative Study of Colombia, El Salvador and Colombia
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
“THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF DOMESTIC CONFLICTS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF COLOMBIA, EL SALVADOR AND GUATEMALA” A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Sandra P. Borda IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Name of Adviser: Kathryn Sikkink May 2009 © Sandra P. Borda, May/2009 i Acknowledgments Throughout my years as a student, I have had the pleasure of meeting many people that have contributed in important ways to my development as a political scientist and scholar of international relations. To begin with, I have to express my gratitude to Juan Tokatlian, Alexander Wendt, Michael Barnett and Kathryn Sikkink. Each has been my advisor at some point in my career, and each one of them introduced me to new and fascinating aspects of the discipline. Furthermore, each has allowed me to better understand the complexities and challenges of the profession. I consider them great examples to follow and can only hope to have the opportunity to keep learning from all of them. I have obtained great feedback at different phases of this project. Kathryn Sikkink, Lisa Hilbink, Michael Barnett and David Samuels commented extensively on previous drafts of my dissertation; Joe Soss gave me very useful comments on various versions of my project; also, the members of my dissertation group at the University of Minnesota read carefully and patiently, chapter by chapter, my whole dissertation. They commented on it and discussed it with great enthusiasm and I am very grateful for their time and dedication. I am also grateful to various institutions: the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia, which first provided me with a generous opportunity and outstanding support to start my M.A. studies at the University of Chicago. Also, the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Minnesota all awarded me scholarships that allowed me to pursue my graduate education in the United States. Without their support I would simply not have been able to pursue an academic career. The ITAM and the Ford Foundation allowed me to advance an important part of my fieldwork in Mexico City, and the Munk Centre at the University of Toronto hosted me as a visiting scholar at the very beginning of the writing process. I appreciated Kenneth Mills’s hospitality in Toronto, and I thank Emmanuel Adler for the conversations about my dissertation project. I also want to thank ITAM faculty members for their help and guidance. The Universidad de Los Andes, the institution where I currently work as an assistant professor, supported me actively and in various ways throughout the last two years of my dissertation work. For this support, I want to especially thank Carl Langebeck, Maria Emma Wills, and Angelika Rettberg. I am also thankful to all my colleagues in the Political Science Department. Carlo Nasi generously gave me access to his own dissertation interviews, which were of great help for my analysis of the Guatemalan case. Felipe Botero, Luis Bernardo Mejía, and Juan Carlos Rodríguez constantly offered support and words of encouragement that I greatly appreciate. I also thank Colciencias for its financial support during the last stage of the writing process. ii There is a long list of friends and fellow graduate students that were always willing to offer feedback, support, and company. Over the years, I have made great friends in the United States and thanks to them I will always think of this country as my second home. I do not have space to name them all but they know, each one of them, that they were a crucial part of this process and I could have never gone through the oftentimes difficult process of earning a PhD without their support. Especially, I want to thank Matt Hindman for his company, his good sense of humor, and his patience during the last stage of this process. He kept me grounded and reminded me not to take myself too seriously. And finally, I want to thank my family, my most solid support group. My dad Guillermo, my brothers Juan Pablo, Juan Sebastian, and Santiago, in spite of the distance, kept me company throughout these years and had many words of encouragement in difficult moments. Consuelo Guzmán and Catalina Bohigas expressed their support during hard times too, and I also want to thank them both. Most importantly, and even though words might not fulfill their role here, I want to give special thanks to my mom Dora. Among the many things she did for me, she traveled with me to do fieldwork and spent a summer with me in Minneapolis, helping me with my work in various ways. She also made sure I had groceries when the graduate student salary fell short; she kept reminding me during my entire professional life how there was no obstacle I could not overcome. When I was full of insecurities, she had a rock-solid faith in me. She is my biggest supporter, my closest friend, and she represents exactly the type of woman I have always aspired to be. To her, I dedicate this work. iii This dissertation is dedicated to my mom, Dora. iv Abstract The internationalization of internal conflicts has been seen either as imposed, as inevitable, or as resulting in further interstate conflict, but it has not been defined as the varied result of actors’ strategies. I argue in this research that this is a serious omission and that in order to overcome it, it is necessary to posit a two-step question: first, if, when and why is internationalization decided? second, in case internationalization is decided, how can we account for the form it adopts? This two-step question partially suggests that in order to comprehensively understand the dynamics of civil conflicts, it is necessary to develop yet another dimension of the concept of internationalization. This new form of internationalization adds a crucial component to existing studies: the analysis of the international strategies domestic actors pursue or avoid. In other words, this new facet of internationalization would allow us to observe how the preferences and actions of domestic parties to the conflict interact with the interests of international actors and their willingness (or reluctance) to participate in domestic conflicts. The main argument of this dissertation is that even though international and internal forces and processes shape and somehow limit the choices parties to the conflict make, and that even though international actors may and can impose their decision to internationalize, there are also other instances and forms of internationalization in which local actors or parties to the conflict may still have the agency, the ability and the space to make the decision of inviting (or not inviting) international agents to participate in their struggle. Parties’ decision to internationalize is then conditioned or shaped by the international and the national contexts, but domestic actors still have a substantial amount of autonomy to decide whether or not international agents should eventually participate in their conflict and under what conditions they would eventually do so. Finally, parties internationalize in order to obtain military support or political legitimacy from international actors. In order to prove these arguments, I compare three cases of civil wars in Latin America: Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala. v Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………p. 1 On the Concept of Internationalization…………………………………………………p. 6 The Existing Literature on Internationalization………………………………………...p. 9 Domestic Factors……………………………………………………………………….p. 9 Interest-based Explanations……………………………………..……….…p. 10 Identity Explanations……………………………………….…………….….p. 13 International Factors……………………………………………….………………..p. 14 Main Argument and Hypotheses…………………………………………….………..p. 20 Main Interests: Military Support and International Legitimacy……………….p. 21 Additional Factors that Facilitate or Hinder Internationalization……………p. 33 Structural Constraints………………………………………………….…..p. 33 Fragmentation………………………………………………………………p. 36 Chapter 2. A Brief History of the Colombian Conflict. Background Notes……p. 38 The Origins of the Colombian Conflict………………………………………………p. 40 The Beginning of the National Front and the Birth of the FARC…………………....p. 43 Colombia as A Low Priority for Washington: the End of the 1960s and the 1970s…p. 45 The 1980s and The Intensification of Counter-Insurgency: Military Internationalization…………………………………………………………………...p. 47 Betancur and the Peace Process: Political De-Internationalization…………………..p. 49 Barco’s Administration and the Implementation of Pragmatic De- internationalization…………………………………………………………………...p. 54 vi Gaviria and Other Peace Processes…………………………………………………..p. 56 Samper and the End of the Special Relationship with Washington………………….p. 58 Chapter 3. Colombia: The Government…………………………………………..p. 61 The Pastrana Administration 1998-2002……………………………………………..p. 62 Political Internationalization I: The U.S………………………………………….p.70 Military Internationalization toward the U.S.: Genesis and Evolution of Plan Colombia……………………………………………………………………………..p. 75 The Arrival of the Bush Administration, 9/11 and the End of the Peace Process in Colombia…………………………………………………………….……………….p. 83 Political Internationalization II: Other Actors…………………………………p. 90 Cuba…………………………………………………………………………………p. 91 Venezuela……………………………………………………………………….….p. 94 The Creation of the International Commission of Facilitators and the Group of Friends……………………………………………….……………………………..p. 95 Europe……………………………………………………………………….….…..p.