Airstrikes and insults: Trump’s new Latin America crisis

MEXICO CITY — For decades, Colombia and the United States have been devoted allies, sharing military intelligence, a robust trade relationship and a multibillion-dollar fight against drug trafficking.

Now that is all at risk as the U.S. ramps up deadly airstrikes off Colombia’s coast and the leaders of both nations trade scathing verbal attacks.

President Trump called Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla fighter and Colombia’s first leftist president, an “illegal drug dealer.” Petro called Trump “rude” and accused the U.S. of murder, saying an American strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat had killed a Colombian fisherman in Colombian waters.

Petro has decried the massive buildup of U.S. troops, warships and jets in the Caribbean, which, he charges, aims to force a change of governments in neighboring Venezuela.

Relations between the nations hit their lowest point in memory Monday as the Colombian government recalled its ambassador to the United States, and Trump vowed to suspend all U.S. aid to Colombia and impose new tariffs on imports from the South American nation.

“Petro does nothing to stop” drug trafficking, Trump charged on his social media site, “despite large scale payments and subsidies from the USA that are nothing more than a long term rip off of America.”

The Colombian leader, Trump warned, “better close up these killing fields immediately, or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely.”

A coca leaf collector, or raspachin, works at a plantation in Catatumbo, Colombia, in 2022.

(Raul Arboleda / AFP/Getty Images)

Petro has defended his record in deterring drug trafficking despite rising production in Colombia of coca plants, the raw material in cocaine. He has said the rampant consumption of illicit drugs in the United States and Europe is behind the bloody drug war in Latin America.

Meanwhile, the U.S. said Sunday that it had blown up yet another boat, this one allegedly associated with a Colombian rebel group. Petro said the boat in fact belonged to a “humble family.”

The growing binational crisis threatened to further destabilize a region already on edge over the U.S. military strikes. Some analysts said it threatened to embolden the same drug traffickers Trump claims to be targeting.

“In a fight between the world’s largest drug producer and the world’s largest drug consumer, only organized crime wins,” former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said at a forum in Barcelona, Spain. “As long as we have two presidents who insult each other on Twitter every day, [combating crime] will be more difficult.”

Colombia is facing its worst security crisis in a decade, with armed groups competing for control over drug trafficking, illegal gold mining and other illicit economies in the years since militants with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, gave up their arms in a peace deal with the Colombian government in 2016.

If the U.S. ends its military and other aid to Colombia, the effect could be disastrous, said Elizabeth Dickinson, a senior analyst for the Andes region at the International Crisis Group, a think tank.

The Colombian military, which has long been fortified by U.S. training, weapons and other aid, is so skilled that its members are paid by the U.S. to teach anti-narcotics operations in other parts of the world, she said. “If the United States was truly interested in combating organized crime and drug trafficking,” she said, “why would they alienate the one partner in the region who is capable and willing to help?”

“The U.S.-Colombia relationship has for many years transcended personal politics because both sides understood how important it was,” Dickinson continued. “Now the wisdom of the relationship that held it together for so long and made it so productive for both countries is being thrown out the window, and we’re losing decades of progress.”

Relations between the nations have been unraveling since January, when Trump returned to the White House for a second term.

After Petro refused to receive U.S. military flights of deported migrants, Trump threatened tariffs. Petro at first vowed retaliatory tariffs but backed down and agreed to accept the migrants to avert a trade war.

More recently, the State Department announced it was revoking Petro’s visa after an appearance at the United Nations General Assembly in New York where he decried U.S. support for Israel and called for American soldiers to disobey Trump and “obey the orders of humanity.”

The massing of U.S. forces in the Caribbean has further strained the relationship.

The Trump administration has stationed roughly 10,000 troops and a fleet of ships and aircraft in the Caribbean, the largest U.S. military buildup in the region in decades.

Although the force is ostensibly aimed at interrupting the drug trade, it is widely believed to be an effort to drive out Venezuela’s left-leaning autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, who, critics say, has plunged his nation into an economic and political crisis.

Petro warned against U.S. meddling in Venezuela in a post on X on Monday, saying Washington was after the nation’s expansive oil reserves.

“The Venezuelan people do not want invasions, blockades, or threats against them,” he wrote. “They do not like dictators, not domestic or foreign.”

Last month, the Trump administration decertified Colombia as partner in the war on drugs, a move that could cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars in annual aid, much of it for anti-drug efforts.

Petro’s spat with Trump has sparked intense controversy in Colombia, which is starkly divided ahead of next year’s presidential election. (Petro is constitutionally barred from seeking reelection.)

Petro’s supporters praised him for standing up to a global bully. But his critics said he has imperiled Colombia’s economy. The United States is Colombia’s top trading partner; it sent nearly $10 billion in exports to the U.S. in the first eight months of this year.

Petro’s provocative attitude with the Trump administration contrasts with that of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, a leftist who has sought to accommodate Trump to avoid punishing tariffs on Mexican exports to the United States. But many worry that Mexico could also be in the Trump administration’s military crosshairs, as it is the major supplier of fentanyl and other drugs to the U.S. market.