Colombia Between Dialogue and the Iron Fist
After the limits of “Total Peace”, a new security doctrine promises strength. But lasting peace will require more than either negotiation or force.
A state must be strong enough to protect its citizens, but wise enough to understand that security imposed without justice rarely becomes peace.
Colombia is entering a new and uncertain chapter.
After four years in which President Gustavo Petro placed negotiation at the centre of his ambitious “Total Peace” policy, the political pendulum has moved sharply in the opposite direction.
The new administration of President Abelardo de la Espriella comes to power promising tougher security, stronger military pressure on armed groups and a decisive break with the philosophy of its predecessor.
The shift is understandable.
But it is also dangerous if Colombia interprets the difficulties of one peace strategy as proof that dialogue itself has failed.
The International Crisis Group, in its timely analysis “From ‘Total Peace’ to Iron Fist: Colombia’s Risky Turn to Hard Security”, examines precisely this dilemma.
Its warning deserves attention well beyond Colombia: neither negotiation without effective state authority nor coercion without a broader political strategy is likely to produce lasting security.
The promise and limits of “Total Peace”
When Gustavo Petro took office in 2022, his approach represented an ambitious attempt to rethink one of Latin America’s longest and most complicated conflicts.
The historic 2016 peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC, had ended one major chapter of the conflict. It did not, however, remove the conditions that allowed violence to survive.
Armed organisations fragmented. FARC dissidents remained active. The National Liberation Army, or ELN, retained considerable influence. Criminal networks competed for territory and for control of cocaine production, illegal mining, extortion and other illicit economies.
Petro sought to negotiate simultaneously with a broad range of these actors.
The underlying idea was important. Colombia’s violence could not simply be defeated militarily. Its roots also lay in weak state presence, poverty, inequality, illicit economies, contested territory and the historic exclusion of communities far from the centres of political power.
Yet ambition was not matched by sufficient results.
Negotiations stalled or collapsed. Some armed organisations expanded their influence. Communities in several regions continued to experience displacement, confinement, recruitment, extortion and violence.
For people living under such conditions, peace cannot remain an abstract political aspiration.
It must also mean being able to travel safely, send children to school, work without intimidation and live without fear.
Why the iron fist has returned
The political reaction was almost inevitable.
When citizens believe that dialogue is failing to protect them, promises of decisive action become attractive.
De la Espriella understood this mood. His campaign offered a radically different message: greater military pressure, tougher prisons, fewer concessions and the restoration of state authority.
There is an important truth behind this argument.
A democratic state cannot abandon its responsibility to protect its citizens.
Dialogue cannot mean impunity. A ceasefire cannot become an opportunity for an armed organisation to recruit, rearm, increase territorial control or expand illegal businesses.
Peace negotiations require rules, verification and consequences.
But there is another truth that Colombia knows from its own history.
Military power alone has not solved the conflict either.
For decades, successive governments pursued increasingly sophisticated counter-insurgency strategies. Armed groups were weakened, commanders were killed and territories were recovered.
Yet violence repeatedly adapted.
Organisations fragmented. New groups emerged. Criminal economies survived. Where one armed structure disappeared, another often occupied the space it left behind.
The names changed more easily than the conditions that produced the violence.
The attraction of the Bukele model
Colombia’s debate is also part of a much wider Latin American discussion.
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has transformed regional thinking about crime and security. His government’s campaign against gangs produced a dramatic reduction in violence and generated enormous public support.
For societies exhausted by insecurity, the attraction is obvious.
Results matter.
But so do methods.
Mass detention, weakened judicial safeguards and the concentration of political power raise fundamental questions about what societies may sacrifice in the pursuit of security.
The Colombian challenge is therefore larger than whether another country’s model can be copied.
It is whether a democracy can provide effective security without weakening the democratic institutions that security is ultimately supposed to protect.
Peace requires a capable state
Perhaps the most important lesson from Colombia is that the traditional distinction between “peace” and “security” is misleading.
Peace requires security.
Security requires institutions.
And institutions require public trust.
A government that negotiates but cannot protect communities will eventually lose legitimacy.
A government that protects communities but disregards rights, accountability and the rule of law may achieve temporary control while creating deeper problems for the future.
Colombia therefore needs something more difficult than either “Total Peace” or an “iron fist”.
It needs a capable democratic state.
That means effective police and security forces, functioning courts, schools, infrastructure, economic opportunities and public institutions that are present not only in Bogotá and the major cities but also in remote regions where armed organisations have often exercised more influence than the state itself.
Not every conflict is the same
There is another difficulty.
Colombia does not face one conflict.
Violence varies enormously between regions. The dynamics along the Venezuelan border are not identical to those on the Pacific coast. Communities affected by coca cultivation face different pressures from those living in areas dominated by illegal mining or urban criminal networks.
A single national formula is therefore unlikely to work everywhere.
Some armed actors may be susceptible to negotiation.
Others may respond only when credible state pressure changes their calculations.
Some communities primarily require protection.
Others need roads, schools, courts, legitimate employment and alternatives to illicit economies.
A serious security strategy must be capable of recognising these differences.
Dialogue is not weakness
One of the dangers of the present political moment is that negotiation itself may become associated with failure.
That would be a serious mistake.
Colombia’s own history demonstrates that carefully designed negotiations can work. The 2016 agreement did not solve every problem, but it ended the conflict with the largest guerrilla organisation in the country and transformed Colombia’s political landscape.
Dialogue is therefore not the opposite of strength.
Sometimes a state negotiates effectively precisely because it is strong enough to establish clear conditions.
The question should not be whether Colombia talks to armed organisations.
It should be with whom, under what conditions, toward what objective and with what consequences if commitments are broken.
Nor is security authoritarianism
The opposite simplification should also be avoided.
Demanding security does not make citizens authoritarian.
People living under threats, extortion or armed control have every right to expect protection from their government.
A progressive peace policy that cannot provide basic security will eventually lose public confidence, regardless of the moral intentions behind it.
The challenge is therefore to make security effective without allowing it to become unlimited.
Police power must remain accountable.
Military operations must remain within the law.
Victims must remain at the centre of policy.
And the state must distinguish between defeating an armed organisation and resolving the conditions that allow another organisation to replace it.
Beyond Colombia
The importance of this debate extends far beyond one country.
Across the world, democratic societies are struggling with a similar tension.
Citizens demand safety, order and effective government. At the same time, democratic institutions are under pressure from political movements promising simple solutions to complex problems.
Colombia may therefore become an important test.
Can a democracy learn from the failures of an ambitious peace experiment without abandoning the pursuit of peace?
Can it restore security without treating human rights and the rule of law as obstacles?
Can it use force where necessary while keeping negotiation available where it can save lives?
There are no easy answers.
But perhaps that is precisely the point.
The failure of an imperfect peace policy does not prove that peace is naïve.
The popularity of an iron fist does not prove that force is sufficient.
Colombia’s real challenge is not to choose between peace and security.
It is to build a state capable of delivering both.
And that requires something more difficult than either slogans or strength: patience, institutions, accountability, critical judgement and the willingness to recognise that lasting peace is rarely achieved by a single method.
- Arnold McKergow is an independent political analyst specialising in foreign policy, alliance dynamics and security dilemmas. His work focuses on the risks created by strategic retrenchment and personalised leadership in international affairs.