COLOMBIA FACING THE CRIMINAL SYSTEM: Diagnosis, Strategic Pressure, and a Historic Opportunity
Drug Trafficking, “Total Peace,” and the Mutation of the Conflict
Recent developments—including the lawful use of force by the Colombian Armed Forces in the bombing of an ELN camp on February 4, 2026—confirm that the country has reached an inflection point. This conjunctural moment opens a strategic window that Colombia cannot afford to squander. To understand its scope, it is essential to examine the Strategic Analysis Document (Documento de Análisis Estratégico, DAE) prepared by the Council of Retired Generals of the National Army (CGREN), one of the most solid and rigorous diagnoses produced in recent years on drug trafficking and Organized Armed Groups (OAG).
The value of the DAE does not lie in an ideological reading or a reactive response to current events, but in its structural approach. The document demonstrates that drug trafficking and illegal armed organizations operate as a Complex Adaptive System (CAS): a network capable of learning, reconfiguring itself, and strengthening each time the State reduces simultaneous pressure on its different components. This understanding marks a substantial departure from the fragmented approaches that have predominated over the past decade.
From Comprehensive Strategy to Criminal Strengthening
The DAE begins with an empirical finding that is difficult to refute. Between 2000 and 2013, Colombia implemented a comprehensive strategy that combined territorial control, eradication, interdiction, sustained military pressure, and international cooperation. The result was an approximately 70 percent reduction in illicit crops and a parallel weakening of illegal armed structures. Beginning in 2014, that approach began to fragment. The suspension of aerial spraying, the prioritization of voluntary eradication without effective territorial control, and negotiations undertaken without prior degradation of the adversary produced the opposite effect: exponential growth in coca cultivation and the symmetrical expansion of OAG.
The document is categorical: these are not independent phenomena. When the State applies pressure to only one axis—either crops or armed structures—the criminal system adapts, redistributes functions, reinvests rents, and ultimately emerges stronger. This logic explains why drug trafficking ceased to be a marginal economy and became instead a mechanism of territorial control and criminal governance, particularly in border areas and strategic corridors. In these spaces, OAG not only produces and traffics drugs but also administers informal justice, regulates local economies, and openly challenges State authority.
State Weakening and the Erosion of Deterrence
The DAE warns that this criminal strengthening cannot be understood without recognizing a relative weakening of the State and the Public Force in recent years. This process is reflected in cumulative operational and budgetary strain, the reduction of key force capabilities, and a political and judicial environment that has persistently questioned the legitimacy of the use of force, affecting morale and strategic initiative. The outcome has been a progressive narrowing of the power gap between institutions and criminal organizations, particularly evident in rural areas, critical urban corridors, and border regions, where OAG has succeeded in disputing—and, in some cases, imposing—territorial and social control.
International Impact: External Pressure as a Strategic Signal
These internal weaknesses were directly reflected in relations with the United States. Record increases in illicit crops and an anti-drug strategy perceived as ineffective led to Colombia’s decertification in 2025 under the “failed demonstrably” criterion, the reduction and conditionality of assistance, financial and personal sanctions under Executive Order 14059, and a sustained hardening of rhetoric from the Trump administration. However, what at first glance appears to be punitive pressure can become a strategic advantage if its logic is properly understood.
These decisions do not stem from ideological differences, but from a demand for results and systemic pressure consistent with the National Defense Strategy 2026 (NDS 26). When read correctly, they open the possibility of re-anchoring the bilateral relationship on more pragmatic foundations, oriented toward effective cooperation and verifiable objectives.
The United States and NDS 26: Strategic Convergence, Not Ideology
The DAE’s diagnosis aligns with Washington’s perspective, as reflected in NDS 26. This strategy identifies transnational organized crime and drug trafficking as threats integrated into national security, comparable in impact to hostile state actors. Three core concepts structure this vision: simultaneous systemic pressure, results-based functional alliances, and the confrontation of hybrid threats that combine crime, politics, and territorial control.
From this standpoint, the deterioration of the bilateral relationship is not the product of rhetorical friction but of concrete strategic concerns: record levels of cocaine production, loss of territorial control, and a State response perceived as ambiguous. For the United States, Colombia is not a peripheral issue, but a central node in a criminal network that directly affects its internal security. In this context, the possibility of a Plan Colombia 2.0 is more viable today than under any previous administration—provided Bogotá offers a clear strategic redefinition.
The Three New Wars in Latin America: The Regional Framework
This scenario is better understood in light of José Miguel “Mike” Pizarro’s analysis in The Three New Wars in Latin America. The work describes a structural shift in regional conflict: Latin America no longer faces conventional ideological wars, but rather three simultaneous and converging conflicts. First, the war against drug trafficking and transnational organized crime; second, the war for territorial and social control; and third, a hybrid war in which criminal organizations, corrupt political networks, and—in some cases—functionally eroded states are intertwined.
The central axis of Pizarro’s argument—fully consistent with the DAE—is that drug trafficking has ceased to be a public-order problem and has become a strategic military threat. Cartels operate as private armies, with firepower, territorial control, and coercive capacity that in many cases surpass those of state forces. In this context, the fight against drugs ceases to be a technical or judicial matter and is redefined as a first-order political and strategic decision.
Within this framework, Colombia emerges as a historical bifurcation. Unlike other countries in the region, it possesses experienced Armed Forces, deep knowledge of the terrain, and decades of learning in irregular warfare. The decisive variable is no longer military capacity—which exists—but political will.
Epilogue: The Conjunctural Moment and the Strategic Opportunity
The DAE outlines three possible paths for Colombia for 2026-2030. The first, high-risk path maintains the current course and leads to the consolidation of an increasingly costly and difficult-to-reverse hybrid narco-conflict. The second introduces partial adjustments that avert immediate collapse but leave the problem’s structural drivers intact. The third—the most demanding and at the same time the most promising—proposes a comprehensive strategic reorientation based on simultaneous pressure on illicit crops, armed structures, illicit finances, and territorial control, supported by robust international cooperation. It is this Scenario C that turns the present into a decisive juncture for the country.
Colombia faces a rare opportunity in its history. There is a clear convergence between its national interest and that of the United States: to substantially reduce illicit crops and dismantle OAG’s capabilities, not to manage or coexist with them. The NDS 26 provides the strategic framework, the DAE offers the diagnosis, and Colombia’s own experience supplies the operational capacity.
The dilemma is straightforward. If Colombia opts for comprehensive and simultaneous pressure on the criminal system, supported by close cooperation with the United States in intelligence, interdiction, and financial dismantling, it can recover territorial control, institutional legitimacy, and international strategic leverage. If it does not, others will act according to their own interests, at far greater cost to national sovereignty.
The CGREN’s DAE is not a text for momentary controversy. It is a strategic warning. Ignoring it would mean repeating known errors. Embracing it could mark the beginning of a new stage: that of a State that chooses to confront the criminal system with realism, coherence, and allies who share the same strategic objective.
