ABSTRACT
This Chapter begins by positing that Colombians invited United States intervention through Plan Colombia; and that they represented their Plan to the American public as serving fundamentally different purposes than they themselves intended. Like few other countries, Colombia's politics springs from its own history, a causal matrix that features the state's chronic incapacity to maintain civil peace over the whole of its territory. Plan Colombia was a Colombian concept and initiative, even if by its nature dependent for ultimate success on the interplay between Colombia and the interests and resources of state actors in and beyond Washington. Congressional resistance is some of the best evidence that Plan Colombia was a Colombian idea; even its overlap with United States foreign policy goals did not suffice to elicit the funds the Colombians were counting on. The United States and Colombia discovered that their domestic affairs spilled over into each other's territory in much the same way as ecological issues.
