US policy toward Columbia has been driven to a large extent by counter-narcotics, but the evolving situation in that South American country confronts the US with as much of a national security as a drug policy problem. This work examines the sources of instability in the country.

Drug trafficking and political disintegration in Colombia could confront the United States, if present trends continue, with the most serious foreign and security policy crisis in the Western Hemisphere since the Central American wars of the 1980s. The first question is why Colombia matters. U.S. policy toward Colombia has been driven to a large extent by counter-narcotics considerations, but the situation in that South American country is a national security as much as a drug policy problem. Colombia is a strategically important country. It is South America's fourth largest country in area and the second largest in population. It is the only South American country with coastlines on both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and it is contiguous to the Caribbean basin, Central America, Venezuela and its oil fields, and Panama and the Canal. Colombia also has some of the largest untapped petroleum reserves in the Western Hemisphere. Colombia's trajectory will also influence the direction of broader trends in the unstable Andean region and beyond.

AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN eBOOK! General Simon Bolivar, “the Liberator” of five South American countries, takes a last melancholy journey down the Magdalena River, revisiting cities along its shores, and reliving the triumphs, passions, and betrayals of his life. Infinitely charming, prodigiously successful in love, war and politics, he still dances with such enthusiasm and skill that his witnesses cannot believe he is ill. Aflame with memories of the power that he commanded and the dream of continental unity that eluded him, he is a moving exemplar of how much can be won—and lost—in a life.

This book studies a significant event in US relations with Latin America, shedding light on the role of dependent states and their foreign policy agency in the process by which local concerns become intertwined with the dominant state’s foreign policy. Plan Colombia was a large-scale foreign aid programme through which the US intervened in the internal affairs of Colombia, by invitation. It proved to be one of the major successes of US foreign policy, and has been credited with stemming a potentially catastrophic security failure of the Colombian state. This book discusses the strategies and practices deployed by the Colombian government to influence US foreign policy decision making at the bureaucratic, legislative and executive levels, and is a distinctive contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of small power agency. Giving a clearer insight into the decision making processes in both the US and Colombia, this book founds its argument on solid empirical analysis assembled from interviews of the major players in the events including: Andres Pastrana, President of Colombia; Thomas Pickering, US State Department; Arturo Valenzuela, Senior Director for Inter-American Affairs at the NSA; General Barry McCaffrey, the US ‘Drug Czar’; and Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Approaching the events in question from a bottom-up theoretical perspective that puts the emphasis on the facts of the case, this book will be of great interest to academics, students and policy makers in the field of foreign policy analysis, US foreign policy studies, and Latin American studies.

The Lockwood Analytical Method for Prediction (LAMP) is a systematic technique for predicting short-term, unique behaviors. Using primarily qualitative empirical data, LAMP allows the analyst to predict the most likely outcomes for specific research questions across a wide range of intelligence problems, such as cyber threats in the U.S., the possibility of an Al Qaeda attack, the likelihood of Iran providing nuclear capability to terrorist groups, or the future actions of the Mexican drug cartel. LAMP offers an innovative and powerful method for organizing all available information based on the perceptions of the national actors, using it to make relevant predictions as to which alternate future is most likely to occur at a given moment in time. Its transparent structure enables anyone to see how an analyst gets from point A to point B to produce an intelligence estimate. LAMP differs from other analytical techniques in that it is based on determining the relative probability of a range of alternate futures, rather than attempting to determine the quantitative probability of their occurrence. After explaining its theoretical framework, the text leads the reader through the process of predictive analysis before providing practical case studies showing how LAMP is applied against real world problems, such as the possible responses of Israel, the U.S., and Lebanon to the behavior of Hezbollah or the competing visions of the future of Afghanistan. Evaluation of the method is provided with the case studies to show the effectiveness of the LAMP predictions over time. The book is complemented by a website with downloadable software for use by students of intelligence in conducting their own predictive analysis. It will be an essential tool for the analyst and the student, not only for national security issues but also for competitive intelligence.