Colombia 2026: Paz Total Has Failed – And Washington Is Not the Answer Either
Colombia spends 3.2 percent of GDP on defense — more than Belgium or Denmark — yet the state is losing ground. Child soldier recruitment is up 1,000 percent since 2021. Over 1.6 million people were affected by violence in 2025. The ICRC declared it the worst humanitarian year of the decade. Gustavo Petro’ s Paz Total has failed, and the numbers are not debatable.
But the right's alternative — deep realignment with Washington — deserves equal scrutiny. The United States that underwrote Plan Colombia no longer exists in the same form. Seven weeks of operations against Iran burned through 45 percent of U.S. precision missiles and half its air defense interceptors. Replenishment will take three to five years. A government that makes Washington its core security strategy is betting on a partner whose attention is overcommitted and whose reliability is conditional on political subordination.
The hemisphere has also shifted. While Trump dismantled USAID in 2025, China announced $9 billion in new Latin American credit lines and published an explicit military cooperation doctrine. The next Colombian president will govern a region where extra-regional competition is not a coming threat — it is an existing fact.
The question voters should be asking is not which candidate has the toughest rhetoric. It is which candidate has a plan for a security crisis that no existing framework — military, diplomatic, or political — has managed to contain. So far, none has answered that question.
