In 2023, Alfonso Camacho-Martinez wrote, “By Weakening the Military, Colombia’s Petro Imperils His Hopes for Peace,” where he argued that President Gustavo Petro has significantly weakened the military while in office. Three years later, in the midst of heightened tensions between the United States and some Latin American countries, we asked Alfonso to revisit his arguments. Image: U.S. National GuardIn your 2023 article, “By Weakening the Military, Colombia’s Petro Imperils His Hopes for Peace,” you argue President Petro’s actions significantly weakened Colombia’s military, resulting in the strengthening of armed non-state actors. What is your current assessment of the health of the Colombian armed forces? What changes have we seen since your article was written?Colombia’s armed forces now look less like an institution in free fall and more like an institution in crisis management mode. The force still retains hard-earned operational experience and pockets of excellence, but it carries a large readiness debt and often allows criminal groups to set the tempo.The most important changes since 2023 have been political and organizational. President Gustavo Petro has sustained high command churn and broke a long-standing civil-military tenet by naming a recently retired general, Pedro Sánchez, as minister of defense. The decision tightened the link between politics and operations, but it also blurred a boundary that earlier administrations treated as essential for objective civilian control, risking a more tactical executive and partisan capture of the officer corps, making command more sensitive to political signaling than to institutional doctrine.Meanwhile, the government has signaled its capability repair through troop-growth efforts and headline procurement announcements, including the purchase of 17 Gripen fighter jets, even though the bottlenecks remain in mobility, training, and modern intelligence and communications.To pivot from crisis management to shaping the fight, the administration should prioritize agility over mass through specialized small units, close the
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In 2023, Alfonso Camacho-Martinez wrote, “By Weakening the Military, Colombia’s Petro Imperils His Hopes for Peace,” where he argued that President Gustavo Petro has significantly weakened the military while in office. Three years later, in the midst of heightened tensions between the United States and some Latin American countries, we asked Alfonso to revisit his arguments. Image: U.S. National GuardIn your 2023 article, “By Weakening the Military, Colombia’s Petro Imperils His Hopes for Peace,” you argue President Petro’s actions significantly weakened Colombia’s military, resulting in the strengthening of armed non-state actors. What is your current assessment of the health of the
