Colombia and the Total Peace: From Promise to Frustration
Published: September 23, 2025 The Economist recently published a troubling article: “Is Colombia on the Doorstep of Hell?” Released on September 21, 2025, the piece’s main argument is that Colombia is now trapped between political polarization, institutional fragility, and escalating violence, which in just five years has multiplied the scope of the conflict.
The situation is dire: armed combatants have risen 45% ,the numbers placing them at 22,000, and more than 230,000 displaced people. Recent violence includes the assassination of a presidential candidate, a helicopter shot down in Amalfi (Antioquia), and a car bomb in Cali that killed twenty and injured over seventy.
Although the publication acknowledges economic progress—growth above the regional average, unemployment at historic lows, and a booming stock market—it warns that Colombia’s true Achilles’ heel remains security and governance. In this context, the Total Peace policy, the flagship initiative of President Gustavo Petro, appears not as a solution but as one of the central causes of the crisis. What began as a project to close all cycles of violence simultaneously has, according to the United Nations and multiple analysts, ended up strengthening armed groups and deepening public mistrust.
This is where we must pause: to understand how and why the Total Peace, conceived as a transformative endeavor, became a factor in the state’s delegitimization and the worsening of the conflict.
A weak policy from the outset
The Total Peace was born more as a political discourse than as a comprehensive strategy. It overestimated the willingness of Organized Armed Groups (OAGs) and multi-crime networks to lay down their weapons, while underestimating the strength of the illegal economies that sustain the conflict.
The policy lacked a clear roadmap, realistic timelines, and—above all—a legal framework distinguishing political negotiations (with insurgent groups) from judicial submission (for criminal structures). This ambiguity led to fragmented negotiation tables, ceasefires without verification, and truces that, rather than pacifying, allowed groups to regroup and expand their operations.
The contradiction was evident: while the rhetoric spoke of peace, violence and criminal finances continued to grow in the territories, while communities waited for an effective state presence.
Structural and political factors behind the failure
The current conflict is more complex than in previous decades. While the FARC once represented a centralized adversary, today violence is dispersed among multiple groups: the ELN, FARC dissident groups, the Clan del Golfo, and dozens of high-impact criminal gangs. This fragmentation makes it far more difficult to reach a comprehensive agreement.
Compounding the challenge is the expansion of illicit economies—drug trafficking, illegal mining, smuggling, and migrant trafficking—that provide armed groups with steady resources. The weakness of the state in peripheral areas, where its presence is often limited to security forces, reinforces community dependence on illegal structures that substitute for basic governance.
On the political front, the Total Peace carried unrealistic expectations. It was presented as the definitive solution to decades of conflict, without clear prioritization or sufficient institutional capacity. The government utilized the narrative as an electoral tool, but it lacked national consensus and legislative backing to sustain it. The result was a project without a solid political foundation, easily eroded by polarization.
Weakened institutions and lost trust
Institutional crisis is another critical factor. The security forces face demoralization, budget deficits, limited international technical cooperation, and ambiguous orders that foster passivity. Intelligence capabilities have been weakened, and security initiatives such as Plan Ayacucho were left unfunded.
Interagency coordination is minimal: the High Commissioner for Peace, the Ministry of Defense, the Prosecutor General’s Office, and local authorities operate in a fragmented manner. This disorder leads to resource losses and turns dialogue tables into political showcases rather than effective mechanisms for addressing issues.
For citizens, the impact is devastating. Many communities believe that dialogue has strengthened armed groups; victims remain re-victimized and without guarantees. Public opinion perceives a double discourse: peace in official announcements, violence in daily reality. This gap erodes credibility and undermines trust in the state.
En la percepción ciudadana, el efecto es devastador. Muchas comunidades creen que el diálogo fortaleció a los grupos armados; las víctimas siguen revictimizadas y sin garantías. La opinión pública percibe un doble discurso: paz en los anuncios, violencia en la práctica. Esta brecha erosiona la credibilidad y mina la confianza en el Estado.
The international dimension
The Total Peace cannot be understood in isolation from its external context. Illicit markets for cocaine and illegal gold are booming, financing groups with transnational reach. Porous borders with Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama facilitate the movement of combatants and illegal goods.
This is further compounded by international pressure to deliver results. The United States’ decertification of Colombia in counter-narcotics policy reflects the erosion of international cooperation and jeopardizes the country’s legitimacy in multilateral forums.
Consequences and outlook
The partial failure of Total Peace has produced at least four central consequences:
- Escalation of violence: greater armed presence in previously pacified regions, clashes between OAGs, and the assassination of social leaders and peace signatories.
- Delegitimization of peace policy: increasingly perceived not as a state project but as an electoral tool.
- Heightened risks for communities and businesses: caught between state absence and pressure from armed groups, often instrumentalized in confrontations with the security forces.
- Loss of international support: reducing cooperation and undermining Colombia’s credibility as a reference point in conflict resolution.
The real danger is not only that the Total Peace fails, but that society grows accustomed to living with violence. If the state does not regain territorial control and redefine its strategy, it will be armed groups that continue to dictate the rules in vast regions of the country.
Conclusion: less rhetoric, more results
Colombia must understand that peace is not declared; it is built through state capacity, social and economic development, territorial security, citizen trust, and international support. The partial failure of the Total Peace should not be seen as an inevitable outcome, but as an urgent warning.
The country needs to rethink its strategy, guided by strong political and military leadership, by integrating security operations with socioeconomic programs and strengthening institutional coordination in areas where illicit crops remain the primary engine of criminality.
As currently conceived, the Total Peace has proven to be a distorted mirror of reality: it promised tranquility but delivered greater violence. The challenge now is to correct course before violence ceases to be a problem to resolve and becomes a normalized feature of national life.
For now, the primary beneficiaries are OAGs and other national and transnational criminal groups embedded in illicit financial activities. The main losers are vulnerable communities, territorial sovereignty, weakened armed forces, investors facing uncertainty, and the country’s international image.
Medium - term forecast
The outlook for the next 12 to 24 months is not encouraging. Four trends stand out clearly:
- Further deterioration of territorial security, with the expansion of illicit economies and the consolidation of criminal structures in rural and border areas.
- Rising political polarization, with Total Peace becoming an electoral flashpoint, further reduces the chances of reaching even a minimal consensus on national security.
- Growing institutional fragility, particularly within the security forces, which face underfunding, low morale, and limits on international cooperation.
- International pressure and economic risks, as U.S. decertification and the absence of tangible results erode the country’s credibility, restrict external cooperation, and raise the perception of risk for investment in strategic sectors.
In sum, unless Colombia recalibrates its course with decisive action and broad consensus, it risks not only the failure of its peace policy but also the far greater danger of accepting violence as the new national norm.
Very interesting analysis of the current and short-term future situation in Colombia. It would be interesting to incorporate specific and real solutions. How to prioritize subsidies for products that replace coca cultivation, etc.