Colombia Geopolitical Interests
AT-33 at Military Air Base, Apiay
Courtesy Lloyd W. Mansfield
Navy Aero Commander, Cali
Courtesy Lloyd W. Mansfield
Although by the 1980s Colombia had not developed a
distinctive
geopolitical doctrine, such concerns did exercise some
influence in
the formation of the country's foreign and military
policies.
Colombia shares land borders with five countries--Panama,
Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador. The country also has
lengthy
coastlines on the Pacific Ocean and in the Caribbean Sea.
United
States military planners also have considered Colombia to
be
important because of the latter's proximity to the Panama
Canal, a
classic geopolitical choke point.
In the late 1980s, Colombia's two dominant geopolitical
concerns centered on its claims to sovereignty over the
San Andrés
and the Providencia archipelago, islands lying off the
Caribbean
coast of Nicaragua, and over maritime territory lying off
the
Guajira Peninsula and in the Golfo de Venezuela
(see Relations with Latin America
, ch. 4). Both of these disputes were caused
by
vaguely defined territorial limits dating from the
colonial epoch.
In 1988 the Nicaraguan government maintained its claim to
the
islands but accepted Colombia's de facto occupation of the
island
chain. Colombia's conflicting claim with neighboring
Venezuela, in
contrast, had on several occasions brought the countries
to the
brink of war. The possibility that the Colombian maritime
claims
included seabed oil deposits helped maintain the dispute.
These two
areas of conflicting territorial claims continued to
reflect the
national will to maintain control over, if not expand,
Colombia's
national territory.
Data as of December 1988
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