Asymmetric Threat in an Andean Country

By Alejandro Chafuen

Mauricio Ríos García, a Bolivian economist who learned from Manwaring and Humire, has incorporated these principles into the FRACTAL Index — Fragility & Risk Assessment of Asymmetric Conflict Threats Across the Americas and Liberal Societies — an analytical framework for evaluating asymmetric threats and institutional fragility in liberal societies of the Western Hemisphere (riosmauricio.com). Applied country by country, it measures exactly the kind of vulnerability Manwaring theorized.

His recent analysis of Iran in Bolivia documents systematic, layered Iranian penetration — through media, civilian infrastructure, the coca movement, and possibly military structures — describing it as “a postmodern coup in progress” and “a textbook case of asymmetric influence over a fragile society.” The FRACTAL Index deserves a dedicated treatment; it will be the subject of a future article.

Pope Leo XIV spent nearly two decades in Peru — another Andean country facing asymmetric threats, in its case increasingly from the strategic ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party. One wonders how that experience shaped the passages in Magnifica Humanitas that feel most attuned to the realities of hybrid conflict.

Find the complete column written by Chafuen here.