ABSTRACT
Since autumn 2014, the challenge posed by the Islamic State (IS) has intensified academic and policy debates in the United States (US), and their European partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), over the possibility of dispatching boots on the ground to assist their allies in the Middle East. Scholar Douglas Porch, a military historian and counterinsurgency expert, has made the case for Colombian exceptionalism since 2008, that is, some years before the country became the COIN and military assistance success model it has turned into recently. This chapter offers a brief outlook of key contingencies that shaped US military intervention in Colombia. It highlights a series of structural factors that illustrate the unsuitability of the small footprint approach in Colombia to inform what is happening in the Middle East. A fundamental point is that in Colombia, there is a clear absence of the ethnic or religious divisions that affect most Middle Eastern and African countries.
