{"id":4365,"date":"2008-12-10T12:47:11","date_gmt":"2008-12-10T18:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/?p=4365"},"modified":"2008-12-10T12:47:11","modified_gmt":"2008-12-10T18:47:11","slug":"foreign-policy-the-top-10-stories-you-missed-in-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/2008\/12\/foreign-policy-the-top-10-stories-you-missed-in-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreign Policy: The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/081207-coca-float.jpg\" width=\"392\" height=\"255\" alt=\"081207_coca_float.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/www.foreignpolicy.com\/top10-2008\/index2.html\">\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Coca is a serious destabilizer\u2014keeping Colombia\u2019s rebels armed and the country\u2019s progress in check. But after almost a decade, U.S.-assisted efforts to reduce the crop\u2019s production in Colombia haven\u2019t just failed; they\u2019ve been downright counterproductive. Plan Colombia was meant to improve security, stamp out drug cultivation, and improve law and order after a decades-long conflict with leftist militants. But coca cultivation rose 15 percent between 2000 and 2006, an October 2008 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) study found. A separate U.N. study found that in 2007 alone, the area of land hosting coca crops rose 27 percent. To put it mildly, something is not working. Coca, the base crop for cocaine, has funded the operations of various paramilitaries and the rebel group FARC for decades. Although Colombian military operations have severely hampered FARC\u2019s activities during the last several years, the drug trade continues apace. Aerial spraying and manual eradica [From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignpolicy.com\/top10-2008\/index2.html\" ><cite>Foreign Policy: The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008<\/cite><\/a>]\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Listened to: <span class=\"title\">Station 5<\/span> from the album &#8220;<span class=\"album\">Music For BBC2 Documentaries<\/span>&#8221; by <span class=\"artist\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=%22Brian%20Aspro%22\" >Brian Aspro<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But after almost a decade, U.S.-assisted efforts to reduce the crop\u2019s production in Colombia haven\u2019t just failed; they\u2019ve been downright counterproductive.   Plan Colombia was meant to improve security, stamp out drug cultivation, and improve law and order after a decades-long conflict with leftist militants. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4RRl-18p","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}