The Bush administration faces an immediate foreign policy problem in an area that still receives little attention in Europe: what to do about Colombia. It may lack the grander echoes of the European rapid deployment force and the future of NATO, or of discussion on the feasibility and dangers of a new anti-missile system, but it is more pressing and perhaps more intractable, and the regional dimensions larger than is generally realised.
Incoming US administrations are always scrutinised about their foreign policy priorities, and are frequently over- confident about their ability to set the international agenda when they state them. Rarely has a new administration seen anything Latin American as a priority, yet it has been quite common for Latin American problems to disturb the expected order of things.
