This article studies the behavior of the actors in Colombia's armed conflict (armed forces, guerrillas and paramilitaries) with the dynamic, non-traditional approach of game theory, according to which the starting point of each game is a temporal state which, in turn, is the result of the earlier history of the conflict. This history involves not only the formation of a set of strategies, but also the perceptioncreated of the enemy, the identification of his weaknesses and of his threat capacity, and the development of technologies to attack him efficiently. In the Colombian case, in accordance wi th the mutual perception of the contenders and their exp10itation of the civil economy to support their military effort, we find that escalation of the conflict is the most probable course of action. The irruption of the paramilitaries and their strategy of controlling the populationthrough terror also contribute to the escalation of the conflict and to making the path to a negotiated settlement more complex.