The peace treaty announced this week between the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, marks more than the end of one war. It is a milestone for peace in the Americas and the world.
The
52-year war between the Colombian state and the FARC is the oldest and
only armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere, and the last one held
over from the Cold War. From Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, war — in the
classic sense of a violent conflict over governance or territory fought
by at least one national army — has disappeared. Although drug-related
gang violence in Latin America continues, the extinguishing of political
armed conflicts from an entire hemisphere deserves note.
One
has only to look back a few decades to see how momentous a change this
is. In Guatemala, El Salvador and Peru, as in Colombia, leftist armed
forces battled American-backed governments, with deaths mounting into
the hundreds of thousands. In Nicaragua, the conflict was the other way
around: American-backed rebels fought to overthrow a leftist government.
The United States and the Soviet Union poured in support that kept such
wars raging. The “dirty war” in Argentina also flowed from a clash of
left and right, in which tens of thousands were killed.
In
that era, wars between countries also occurred regularly. During the
1980s, the United States invaded Panama and Grenada to overthrow their
governments. In 1982, Britain and Argentina fought a war over the
Falkland Islands. Ecuador and Peru skirmished along their contested
border, and a simmering dispute between El Salvador and Honduras burst
into war in 1969 after the two countries faced off in a series of
bitterly contested soccer matches.
The
region was also militarized by frequent coups and juntas. In 1981,
countries run by authoritarian or military governments included
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Suriname, Brazil, Bolivia,
Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay and Argentina.
Today,
there are no military governments in the Americas. No countries are
fighting one another. And no governments are battling major
insurgencies.
This
progress of an entire hemisphere toward peace follows the path of other
major regions of the world. Western Europe’s bloody centuries of
warfare, culminating in the two world wars, have given way to seven
decades of peace. The last military governments in that region, in
Greece, Spain and Portugal, yielded to democratic rule in the 1970s. In
East Asia, the wars of the mid-20th century — Japan’s conquests, the
Chinese civil war and the wars in Korea and Vietnam — took millions of
lives. Yet despite serious political disputes, East and Southeast Asia
today are almost entirely free from active combat.
In
fact, the world’s wars are now concentrated almost exclusively in a
zone stretching from Nigeria to Pakistan, an area containing only a
sixth of the world’s population. Far from being a “world at war,” as
many people believe, we inhabit a world where five out of six people
live in regions largely or entirely free of armed conflict.
Latin
America can now join that group. Of course, this cannot make us
complacent about the horrific violence in the afflicted one-sixth.
Rather, by marking the progress in some parts of the world, we can place
in sharp focus those parts still ravaged by warfare. Our efforts for
peace in those regions can be informed and emboldened by the example of
regions like the Americas. War can be transformed from a pervasive means
of resolving disputes into something rare, small in scale, and outside
the norms of accepted behavior.
Waging
peace can be almost as difficult as waging war, and for Colombia, the
remaining challenges are considerable. The agreement must be ratified in
a plebiscite, and implementing it will require the rebels to surrender
their weapons, withdraw from drug trafficking and submit to a procedure
of transitional justice. The agreement does not yet embrace a smaller
rebel group known as the National Liberation Army, though negotiations
are in progress. There must also be investments in rural governance and
infrastructure to deal with violence, poverty and corruption.
Post-conflict
societies always remain fragile and risk backsliding into war. Only
continuing effort, support and vigilance can consolidate and expand the
gains that have been made.
Because
we have come this far, we know we can go further. Where wars have
ended, other forms of bloodshed, such as gang violence, can also be
reduced. (In just 25 years, Colombia, for example, has slashed its
notoriously high homicide rate by 60 percent.) Since the Americas have
succeeded in moving away from war, we know this could happen even in the
world’s most stubbornly violent regions.
Progress
toward peace moves slowly and uncertainly, but it is propelled by
determination, ingenuity and the will of millions — and by the
realization that peace is not a utopian ideal but an eminently
attainable outcome.
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