Just as the United States has learned in Vietnam and Afghanistan, insurgencies are very difficult to completely stamp out. Certainly, an armed victory over the FARC, or even a negotiated settlement, will not be the end of armed criminal groups in Colombia. The geographic limitations, severe inequality and cocaine trade all create the conditions in which Colombia will continue to struggle to control its territory. The new importance of the military in the fight against the insurgencies makes it clear that the government was never able to establish effective control over the outer areas of the country. Without this control, the regions where the conflict rages cannot begin to solve the underlying problems of inequality and lack of development.
Yet this doesn't mean that fighting these enemies is futile. Grinding down an enemy so it is not a threat to the state and a threat to citizens mostly being able to live their lives is no small thing.
Colombia's experience shows that governments can carry on a fight for decades without American combat brigades in the fight. From the beginning of the insurgencies and terrorist campaigns in Iraq and continuing through Afghanistan today, I've argued that our role is getting our allies to the point where they can fight insurgents and terrorists without our direct help. Iraq is doing that. We hope to get Afghanistan to that point. And Colombia shows that an allied government can carry on that fight against domestic insurgents for decades, if necessary, because they have no place to go if they get tired of fighting.
Yet it also shows that we have to have reasonable expectations of our roles in defeating insurgents. If the fights that we are helping Iraqis and Afghans wage go on for decades, it doesn't mean we failed. Some here seem to believe that our allies have to be having earnest debates over funding bike paths for our fights to have been worth it. But insurgencies are difficult to completely stamp out. Yet insurgencies can be deadly or weak. And if that is all we can affect, that is a victory, too--for us and for the people in the countries fighting insurgents.
