During the Cold War, tensions between the West and the Soviet Union affected virtually all countries worldwide. As a result, throughout Latin America, guerrilla groups emerged, seeking to destabilize military dictatorships and attain democracy, freedom, and policy reform - goals that they believed could not be achieved peacefully.
There have been many examples in the world of people doing crazy things because they want to keep war going.
Protectionism is something that will hurt everybody, but especially the United States.
I am a believer in free trade, fair free trade.
I say that building peace is like building a cathedral. You have to have a solid base, and then you do it brick by brick. But the process is irreversible. There's no way back.
We want to be a country with a competitive edge in the world. And a country with a solid democracy. To do that, we need to attack the social problems, and extreme poverty is probably the worst of those.
My ideal - and here, the sky is the limit - is to attract foreign investment via concessions.
That has been the concept to my life - setting very high objectives and trying to fulfil them.
If you go around Colombia or Latin America, without doubt you will find that 80 per cent of the time, you're discussing the past and only 20 per cent about the future.
That's what peace processes are about - changing bullets for votes.
No one has hit the FARC harder than I. But all wars have to end at some point, and that requires a negotiated solution.
That is why every military officer fights - so that there may be peace.
You will never hear me denigrating other countries.
