Foreign Policy and National Security

  • I wrote this for a class on theories of decision-making. Thought I’d share it here in case anyone finds it useful. Around 2010, the sheriff of Mission, Texas, Lupe Treviño, established an “elite” anti-narcotics squad to be headed up by his son, Jonathan Treviño. According to a January 2015 report by journalist Josh Eells that…

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  • Cross-posted with Public Diplomacy Musings Two recent killings of Mexican immigrants by American police have sparked outrage in both the U.S. and Mexico. Antonio Zambrano-Montes, an undocumented agricultural worker, was allegedly throwing rocks at police before he was shot and killed last month in Pasco, Washington. Rubén García Villalpando, another unarmed, undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was shot and killed…

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  • Cross-posted with Public Diplomacy Musings On Friday, U.S. President Barack Obama named Bernie Aronson as a special envoy to the ongoing peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC rebel group. The move is perhaps the United States’ strongest signal of its support for the process since it began in 2012. In a statement announcing…

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  • Cross-posted with Public Diplomacy Musings Recent revelations about Colombian taxpayers’ money being spent on publicity for the country’s ongoing peace talks with the FARC guerrilla group have raised questions about whether the government is trying to buy support for the slow-moving and controversial negotiations. According to Latin Correspondent, “David Barguil, the president of the Conservative Party, shared a…

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  • Cross-posted with Public Diplomacy Musings In an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine last spring, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos lamented that his “rivals have been quite effective in sowing the seeds of skepticism around the peace process” that is currently underway between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels. “Waging war is much more popular than negotiating,”…

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