Security in the Andean Region, Diplomacy, Post Cold War Transformations

The state has not been immune to post-Cold War transformations and the state centered model no longer applies. Global forces have resulted in a reconfiguration of the state that has had important consequences for the institution of sovereignty and for the Westphalian model. New global processes do not imply the death of the state but they suggest the need to question the conventional disaggregated, state centric view of international and domestic level politics. Globalization is all about the transformation of social geography marked by the growth of supraterritorial spaces that both transcend and coexist with conventional state units. New analytical tools are required for conceptualizing mechanisms and units that no longer strictly coincide with the modern state and state system logics.
Among the multiple global processes that are reshaping sociopolitical actors in world politics, the globalization of security is one of the most evident. Security concerns and threats are borderless; they are relational and they are experienced by multiple actors at multiple levels. This article explores the current security problematic in the Andean region (Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador.) Spiraling levels of violence and social unrest, armed subversion, criminality, drug trafficking, poverty and deprivation, corruption, and ungovernability, the Andes have become the epicenter of hemispheric instability.
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