There is something wonderful about the bilateral relationships the United States has enjoyed in the decades during and since World War II. Our dealings, notably with Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Jordan, Spain, Thailand, and Turkey, while not always perfect, have been marked by a high degree of tangible and genuine collaboration in a host of political, economic, and military areas. On every substantive issue, the United States and its bilateral counterparts have found a large and unforced common ground.

The outstanding examples have been the U.S.-U.K. relationship, which has endured and flourished for more than a century, and the natural, almost unconscious affinity between the U.S. and Canada. The relationship between Colombia and the United States has been growing ever since World War II, and, while perhaps less obvious, is equally strong and fully as important.

Colombia, which celebrates its independence bicentennial in 2010, has enjoyed one of the best democratic records in all of Latin America. To be sure, there have been years of trial and turmoil, including a 1953 coup d’etat that saw armed-forces commandant Gustavo Rojas Pinilla serve as president for four years. The coup, ironically — given current events in Honduras — was supported (many say sought) by Colombia’s two political parties, as a last effort to quell prolonged inter-communal fighting that threatened to become a full blown civil war.

U.S.-Colombian military collaboration initially involved joint naval operations in the Caribbean, and with the outbreak of the Korean War, Colombian troops fought in the U.N. coalition led by the United States. Colombia subsequently became a free-market economic example for the rest of Latin America during President Kennedy’s “Alliance for Progress” hemispheric initiative.

The long years combating Marxist terrorism and narcotics trafficking have required the U.S.-Colombian bilateral relationship to develop further, culminating in the massive Plan Colombia aid program initiated by presidents Bill Clinton and Andres Pastrana and fully implemented by presidents George W. Bush and Alvaro Uribe.

The United States has provided major funding for community development, vocational training, and the modernization of Colombia’s military. The Colombian government has allowed extensive U.S. air reconnaissance to locate narco-terrorist hideouts throughout the country, and provided strong intelligence and logistical support as Colombia’s army has successfully carried the battle to the enemy. It has been a multifaceted and particularly difficult enemy to combat, comprising ultra-leftists supported by Venezuela, Ecuador, and more recently Iran, nominal rightist anti-Communists, and standard, non-ideological criminal gangs.

When former Drug Enforcement Agency station chief Joseph Toft left Colombia in September 1994, he famously but not unfairly termed the country where he had served for six years a “narco-democracy,” reflecting the corrupt election and do-nothing regime of former president Ernesto Samper. By the time Alvaro Uribe assumed office in 2002, it is estimated that the government effectively controlled as little as 30 percent of the country, with most of the country ruled by, or at least under major threat from, the FARC and ELN leftist narco-traffickers and AUC rightist so-called paramilitary groups.

Extraordinary Colombian-U.S. collaboration has seen such significant cuts in the Colombian cocaine trade that numerous narco-traffickers have fled the country to operate elsewhere in Latin America. The Colombian narco-expatriates have received thinly veiled support from Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua), Manuel Zelaya (Honduras), and of course Hugo Chávez (Venezuela).

While the geographic diversification of coca cultivation, refining, and exportation may have in some respects complicated the issue for the DEA, it reflects the success achieved to date in Colombia. Another success indicator: More than 800 arrested narcotics operatives have been sent to the United States for trial and imprisonment.

The most recent step in the bilateral relationship has been the agreement for U.S. air-force units to fly from three strategically located Colombian airbases, with access to two additional bases still pending. The accord replaces and greatly expands the effectiveness of a ten-year arrangement at a single base in Ecuador, and it is not surprising that Rafael Correa, thinking he had hurt America’s ability to seek out narco-terrorists, has reacted in anger.

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It is equally unsurprising that almost simultaneous with announcement of the Colombian-U.S. bases agreement, the Associated Press reported a claim by FARC comandante Mono Jojoy that his organization (though decimated, still the largest such group in Colombia) had contributed $300,000 dollars to Mr. Correa’s 2006 election campaign.

All of the experience — and success — gained in the last 30 years has been a major benefit to America’s War on Drugs while sharply reducing the ability of Marxist and other drug traffickers to take over our greatest friend in Latin America, thus resulting in well-balanced benefits to both countries.

Unfortunately still pending is the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, successfully negotiated and signed in 2006. President Uribe has presented the pact to his people as an important indicator of the strong relationship between the two countries. In Washington, unfortunately, labor-union activists and their Democratic congressional allies have labeled it a threat to U.S. jobs and a sop to a government that flagrantly violates the human rights of union members.

Both arguments are specious. The agreement provides for virtually all U.S.-sourced products to enter Colombia duty-free, while Colombian exports — already largely granted duty-free entry — are, in some agricultural areas such as sugar, penalized. The human-rights charge flies in the face of major efforts by the Colombian government during the seven years of the Uribe administration.

The government has repeatedly proven that narco-terrorists use union membership as a way to avoid being killed and captured. When engaging militant groups, military and police units are under strict orders from the president to arrest, but not shoot, participating union members wherever possible, although this is often not possible when those union members are on the front lines alongside the guerillas. There is, in short, no human-rights issue of significance involving genuine union members.

Failure by the Congress to ratify the eminently fair free-trade agreement is the first significant negative issue to arise between the United States and Colombia in the memory of informed observers in Bogota and Washington. It is providing grist for Colombian leftists — who roundly oppose the agreement — and undermining American support in the media and among the population.

Failure to approve the free-trade pact will not only drop this long-standing positive bilateral relationship from the ranks of those noted above: It will do grievous damage to the already poor regard in which the United States is held from Mexico all the way south to Argentina and Chile.

– John R. Thomson is a geopolitical analyst and former diplomat whose professional focus is on developing countries.