A human rights tragedy: strategic localization of US foreign policy in Colombia
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| Author | Salvador Santino Fulo Regilme |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117818777830 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117818777830
International Relations
2018, Vol. 32(3) 343 –365
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117818777830
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A human rights tragedy:
strategic localization of US
foreign policy in Colombia
Salvador Santino Fulo Regilme Jr
Leiden University
Abstract
How and to what extent do ideas and political discourses shape bilateral cooperation between
a powerful state and its weaker ally? Why do weaker states act in ways that diverge from the
expectations and preferences of the powerful state despite the contractual agreement borne
out of bilateral cooperation? Drawing perspectives from constructivism and principal–agent
framework, this article provides a conceptual-interpretative analysis of post-9/11 counterterror
cooperation of the US government with Colombia – America’s long-standing ally in the region.
The case study shows that the provision of security is not only conceived in the domestic levels
but also produced in the transnational sphere; that security provision is not only a materially
oriented political activity but also an ideational-discursive exchange where political actors
legitimize and facilitate interstate cooperation; and, finally, that the power of dominant states is
not only produced from within them but strategically reconstituted by weaker powerful states.
Keywords
Colombia, counterterrorism, human rights, Latin America, political violence, state repression,
US foreign policy, war on drugs, war on terror
Introduction
How and to what extent do ideas and political discourses shape bilateral interstate coop-
eration between a powerful state and weaker ally? Why do weaker states act in ways that
diverge from the expectations and preferences of the powerful state despite their contrac-
tual agreement? Such questions comprise an important concern in the scholarly literature
Corresponding author:
Salvador Santino Fulo Regilme Jr, Institute for History, Leiden University, Doelensteeg 16, Leiden 2311VL,
The Netherlands.
Email: s.s.regilme@hum.leidenuniv.nl
777830IRE0010.1177/0047117818777830International RelationsRegilme
research-article2018
Article
344 International Relations 32(3)
in International Relations (IR), most especially on the origins and dynamics of interstate
cooperation and the hegemon’s provision of transnational public goods.
First, the dominant IR literature on hegemony and interstate cooperation heavily
emphasizes material and systemic factors that affect the maintenance of the post-1945
world order. With two contending insights, the hegemonic stability theory has long been
considered as the most influential perspective in understanding the dynamics of the post-
1945 liberal world order.1 The first perspective pertains to neorealism, which highlights
the hegemon’s material power in coercing and compelling secondary states to abide by
the rules that promote the hegemon-led international order. The second perspective, on
the other hand, refers to the neoliberal paradigm based on the work of Robert Keohane,2
who highlights ‘cooperation and regime(s) formation without hegemony’, whereby a
world order without a hegemon can persist ‘through intensive interaction among a few
players [which] helps to substitute for, or supplement, the actions of a hegemon’. Both
perspectives, unfortunately, downplay the role of ideational factors in sustaining the cur-
rent world order. Although critical perspectives such as the neo-Gramscian literature
focus on the role of historically bounded ideas and non-state structures in perpetrating
hegemony,3 further empirical research is needed in regard to state elites’ instrumentaliza-
tion of policy discourses4 in an attempt to justify the perceived relative gains of bilateral
interstate cooperation.
Second, the literature on the hegemon’s provision of public goods has primarily
focused on issues pertaining to the political economy of global trade,5 but it has yet to
provide an empirical account of how interstate cooperation (or dominant state vis-à-vis
secondary states) occurs during a period of an international military security crisis, as it
was in the immediate post-9/11 years. Third, the dominant economics and social science
scholarship on transnational cooperation has often focused on the strategic-motivational
interests of cooperating agents.6 Fourth, by looking at the role of powerful states such as
the United States, the emphasis in mainstream International Relations literature has
always been on its provision of material goods (e.g. military security), but this article
focuses on how powerful states fundamentally shape the discourses in its partner country
to the extent that they can facilitate (primarily through legitimization) significant domes-
tic political changes such as increased state repression.
In redress of that neglect, this article provides a conceptual-interpretative analysis of
the US government’s post-9/11 counterterror cooperation with Colombia, America’s
long-standing ally in the Latin American region. As I discuss in the next section, my
main argument states that post-9/11 US counterterror cooperation with other allies, as it
is often framed in rationalist-materialist terms, was an outcome generated by the strate-
gic reframing of terror-oriented discourses that sought to legitimize increased state
repression and US influence in the domestic politics of its partner countries. My analysis
integrates insights from principal–agent (PA) theory, constructivism in IR (securitization
theory) and political violence in order to understand the emergence of terror-oriented
cooperation between the United States and its allies and its consequences. That being
said, the analysis here highlights instead how the process of strategic reframing and
interpretation – or what I call as strategic localization – of the hegemon’s discourses
fundamentally shaped the ways and substantive targets of US counterterror assistance in
partner countries’ domestic politics.
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