Colombia: De la Espriella's Military-Led Security Strategy and Its Risks

Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF)

Abelardo de la Espriella was inaugurated as Colombia's president on 7 August 2026 after a campaign built on ending his predecessor's "total peace" negotiation framework and launching a military-led crackdown against the country's armed and criminal groups. High ConfidenceWe judge that total peace failed to arrest a decade-long expansion of these groups, whose estimated combined membership nearly doubled between 2022 and 2025. Moderate-High ConfidenceWe assess that a purely kinetic strategy, absent sustained investment in rural governance and civilian institutions, risks fragmenting armed structures into more numerous and less predictable factions rather than reducing the aggregate threat. Moderate ConfidenceWe assess that Colombia's own historical record favors negotiated demobilization when paired with continued military pressure and a credible legal framework, and that categorically foreclosing dialogue narrows the government's future options rather than eliminating risk. Moderate ConfidenceWe further assess that the 2016 Final Peace Agreement's constitutional protections, extending across three presidential terms to 2030, will constrain the extent of any rollback well below what campaign rhetoric implied.

Key Judgments

Key Assumptions

I. The Collapse of "Total Peace" and the Security Baseline Inherited

The outgoing administration's total peace framework opened parallel dialogue channels with organized armed groups pursuing political demands and with "high-impact criminal structures" oriented toward dismantlement through the ordinary justice system, on the premise that simultaneous engagement would deny spoiler groups room to expand. Early results were genuinely encouraging: a temporary truce in the Pacific port of Buenaventura halted homicides for a sustained period, demonstrating that negotiated de-escalation was achievable even amid active criminal competition. Over the full term, however, unreciprocated unilateral ceasefires — beginning January 2023 with five groups that made no matching commitments — allowed several organizations to consolidate territorial and economic control. Independent research found that while some ceasefire arrangements reduced direct violence against civilians, they simultaneously deepened other forms of coercion; residents of Buenaventura summarized their experience as a substitution of extortion and recruitment for outright homicide, not a net reduction in harm.

II. The Political Origins and Program of the New Government

De la Espriella, a criminal-defense lawyer and self-described political outsider, defeated left-wing Senator Iván Cepeda by fewer than 250,000 votes in a runoff held under conditions international observers characterized as orderly, notwithstanding disputed-fraud claims from the outgoing camp. His victory forms part of a wider rightward realignment across the region and was reinforced by an explicit endorsement from U.S. President Donald Trump. The new administration's ten-point security program mixes defensible elements — expanded coordination with local authorities, prioritized rather than dispersed territorial deployments, and an illegal-mining traceability initiative — with high-risk measures: intensified aerial bombardment, a mass-incarceration model drawn from El Salvador's prison strategy, and the dissolution or defunding of institutions established to implement the 2016 accord and pursue reconciliation.

III. Structural Constraints on a Military-Led Campaign

The Colombian armed forces enter this campaign materially weaker on several dimensions than a decade ago. A large majority of the country's utility-helicopter fleet, including most of its U.S.-supplied Black Hawks, is currently unserviceable, constraining air mobility in the country's difficult rural terrain. Active-duty personnel levels have declined over a multi-year period, a trend the outgoing government's 2022 removal of roughly forty generals on corruption grounds did not reverse and arguably accelerated by pushing less experienced officers into sensitive posts. Air and technology investment represents a small single-digit share of total defense spending, and secure-communications shortfalls have pushed some units toward commercial messaging platforms. Washington's anticipated role centers on equipment repair, training, and coalition-building — for example through the announced Shield of the Americas initiative — rather than financing at the scale of the earlier decade-long Plan Colombia program.

IV. Risk Calculus: Decapitation, Aerial Operations, and Civil-Military Trust

Unlike the hierarchical insurgency the Colombian military was originally built to fight, today's armed and criminal groups function as decentralized, revenue-driven supply chains in which no single leader is operationally indispensable. Removing commanders through capture or lethal operations therefore tends to trigger internal succession contests rather than degrade aggregate capacity, and rapid replacement of lower-tier fighters — an estimated half of new recruits are minors — further limits the durability of any gain. Aerial and other less discriminate operations carry an elevated risk of civilian harm, a risk magnified by groups' documented use of children as bodyguards for higher-value targets specifically to deter strikes. A renewed emphasis on force also risks reopening institutional wounds from past abuses, including the early-2000s "false positives" scandal, for which several thousand former service members have appeared before Colombia's transitional justice court — a history that argues for close, sustained oversight of any expanded operational tempo.

V. The Legal and Institutional Durability of the 2016 Accord

De la Espriella has announced the closure of the peace-oriented presidential offices, replacement of the High Commissioner for Peace with a security-focused successor office, and reduced funding for the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, the accord's transitional-justice court. His authority to act is nonetheless bounded: a 2017 Constitutional Court ruling and subsequent legislation converted core elements of the 2016 agreement — transitional justice, former-combatant security guarantees, political participation, and conflict-affected voting districts — into constitutionally protected transitory articles, with implementation constitutionally guaranteed across three presidential terms through 2030. Data from 2025 indicate roughly eleven thousand former combatants, 85 percent of those who originally demobilized, remain in civilian life, while the United Nations has recorded 493 former FARC members killed since 2016 — a protection gap that would widen, not narrow, if reintegration programs were defunded.

VI. Three Forward Trajectories

Structured scenario analysis identifies three plausible paths for Colombian internal security over the coming eighteen to twenty-four months.

VII. Analysis of Competing Hypotheses

A structured alternative-analysis pass was applied to the administration's stated rationale for terminating all dialogue. One hypothesis holds that the rejection of talks is a durable strategic commitment reflecting the president's stated view that negotiation is functionally equivalent to impunity. A competing hypothesis, consistent with the administration's simultaneous willingness to negotiate reduced costs for the transitional-justice court rather than abolish it outright, holds that the "total peace equals total impunity" framing functions primarily as opening leverage — intended to pressure armed groups toward faster, more one-sided demobilization terms than total peace secured, while leaving the government room to negotiate once it has demonstrated capability gains. We assess the latter as plausible and consistent with observed early moderation on the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, but treat it as a moderate-confidence judgment pending the outcome of the initial demobilization ultimatum window.

VIII. Indicators to Watch