{"id":7137,"date":"2025-11-05T16:35:31","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T16:35:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/11\/05\/why-is-colombias-president-provoking-trump-the-atlantic\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T16:35:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T16:35:31","slug":"why-is-colombias-president-provoking-trump-the-atlantic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/11\/05\/why-is-colombias-president-provoking-trump-the-atlantic\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Is Colombia\u2019s President Provoking Trump? – The Atlantic"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Last month, Donald Trump called <\/span>Colombia\u2019s president, Gustavo Petro, an \u201cillegal drug leader<\/a>.\u201d That gave Colombians reason to worry: The last country whose president Trump accused of running a drug enterprise was Venezuela, and those accusations served as justification to send a flotilla of warships to lurk by its coasts and blow up boats. Republican officials are now threatening to go to war with Venezuela. If Petro is a drug lord, does that mean that the United States might go to war with Colombia, too?<\/p>\n

In an interview<\/a> with Univision two weeks ago, Petro didn\u2019t appear all that concerned about the prospect. He used the airtime to discuss various other topics, such as his pique at not being invited to the opera singer Andrea Bocelli\u2019s concert in his country. Then, an hour and 20 minutes into the interview, Petro offered what sounded like a Freudian analysis of Trump\u2019s persona, ruminating about genitals and machismo. Toward the end, Petro suggested that David (presumably Colombia) could beat Goliath (presumably America) in a conflict.<\/p>\n

Stupefied, the interviewer asked Petro to clarify that his goal was not actually to oust Trump. His goal was negotiation, right? But Petro replied that Trump indeed had to leave, preferably by choice. \u201cThat\u2019d be easier,\u201d he said. \u201cIf not, Trump should be ousted.\u201d<\/p>\n

The moment was rather stunning, not least because the Colombian president seemed so blas\u00e9. Historically, threats of regime change have flowed from North to South America, not the other way around.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the Univision interview, the U.S. struck another drug boat\u2014this time near Colombia\u2019s Pacific coast, rather than Venezuela\u2019s Caribbean one. More such strikes have followed. Suddenly, American war threats included not just one South American country but two: Trump is considering \u201cfuture potential military operations against Venezuela and Colombia,\u201d Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told CBS<\/a> the week before last.<\/p>\n

All this may very possibly amount to nothing, at least where Colombia is concerned. But the exchange of insults between Trump and Petro has already strained an alliance that is more than two centuries old\u2014one on which much of Colombia\u2019s economy and America\u2019s anti-drug efforts depend.<\/p>\n

The awkwardness between Bogot\u00e1 and Washington set in soon after Trump returned to power. Jorge Rojas, who was then Colombia\u2019s vice minister of foreign affairs, told me that Petro\u2019s government tried to establish a dialogue with Secretary of State Marco Rubio during the presidential-transition period, but that Rubio showed little interest in talking with Colombians unless they moved in \u201cMiami right-wing\u201d circles, as Rojas put it. Then, a few days after the inauguration, Trump sent two American deportation flights to Colombia, and Petro refused to allow them to land. The Trump administration threatened tariffs in retaliation, and Petro backed off, but relations have remained tense. (A State Department spokesperson told me via email that \u201cthe Trump Administration has had plenty of private and public exchanges with Petro and his representatives,\u201d adding that the problem is Petro\u2019s refusal to alter course on his \u201cdisastrous and ineffective counternarcotics policies.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Since then, Petro has seemed at times to be trying to provoke Trump. Shortly after the first Caribbean strike in September, for example, he joined an impromptu demonstration outside of the United Nations headquarters, in New York City. Many Latin American leaders had condemned the strike, but Petro went further<\/a>. \u201cI ask all the soldiers of the United States Army not to point their guns at humanity,\u201d Petro said, holding a megaphone. \u201cDisobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who have followed Petro\u2019s career see a certain logic behind his grandstanding. \u201cPetro believes in his heart that he can be the face of an international anti-Trump coalition,\u201d John Feeley, a retired American diplomat who was posted in Colombia in the 1990s, told me. A former guerrilla, Petro \u201cwants to leave a legacy that will outlive him, and here\u2019s the best way he can think of doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Edgar Quintero, a journalist for La Silla Vac\u00eda, reminded me that 12 years ago, when Petro was mayor of Bogot\u00e1, an inspector general sought to remove him from office. Instead, the scandal made him more popular, and Petro later credited this official with making him president. \u201cPetro is skilled at finding enemies who victimize him,\u201d Quintero said. \u201cNow he\u2019s found the most powerful and important one, which is the president of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, Petro complained that one of the U.S. strikes targeting an alleged drug boat near Venezuela had killed a Colombian fisherman. (The United States government supplied no evidence that the boat was in fact transporting drugs.) This was the provocation that finally unleashed a Trump reaction, and a big one. Trump started accusing Petro of being a drug dealer and deployed warships to stalk boats near Colombia. Then the U.S. Treasury added Petro and others close to him to its list<\/a> of \u201cspecially designated nationals,\u201d putting the Colombian president in the company of terrorists and drug traffickers.<\/p>\n

Petro is not, in fact, a drug trafficker. The mere allegation has sufficed to inspire more than a week of protests in front of the American embassy in Bogot\u00e1. Colombia\u2019s mighty drug cartels funded belligerent groups in an armed conflict that terrorized Colombia in the 1990s. An official peace agreement, signed in 2016, remains somewhat precarious, but the country is much safer and prosperous than it was back then, and many are eager to put the country\u2019s past behind it. Colombia is not the country of Pablo Escobar: More than 30 years after the death of the Medell\u00edn kingpin, Colombia\u2019s poets<\/a>, TikTokers<\/a>, and Petro<\/a> himself continue to invoke variations of this assertion. Amalia Salgado, who served as Colombia\u2019s consul general in Houston a few years ago, told me that when she arrived in the United States, she feared that Americans would associate Colombia with nothing but cocaine. She was pleasantly surprised: \u201cThey said, \u2018Pa\u00eds lindo, mujeres bonitas, Cartagena!\u2019\u201d She now worries that recent events will change that.<\/p>\n

Whether Petro is at fault for reviving that ugly reputation is a matter of some disagreement inside Colombia. Right-leaning politicians, Salgado among them, blame Petro for taunting Trump and jumping to defend Venezuela\u2019s Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. \u201cPetro wants to be a world leader, but he cannot even lead the country,\u201d Salgado told me. Petro\u2019s supporters tend to argue that America is the one insulting Colombia\u2019s president, and they are inclined to rally around him. The country is preparing for a presidential election in 2026, and in a party primary held on October 26, Petro\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9 won the left-wing ticket. Many centrist politicians, including<\/a> a couple<\/a> of Petro\u2019s electoral opponents, have defended him. Members of the media have, too: \u201cOur publication takes pride in being critical of the government, whoever is in power,\u201d Quintero, the journalist, told me. \u201cBut whatever you say about the president, he\u2019s clearly not a drug trafficker.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Petro\u2019s display of bravado could cost his country. Colombia\u2019s economic ties with America are \u201cvery, very close, intimate,\u201d Bruce Mac Master, an economist and the head of Colombia\u2019s National Business Association, told me. The United States is \u201cby far our biggest commercial partner,\u201d he said: Every year, the U.S. buys about one-third<\/a> of Colombia\u2019s exports. As we spoke, Mac Master was preparing to travel to New York and Washington with a delegation of Colombian businesspeople seeking to salvage their country\u2019s relationship with the United States and prevent the Trump administration from imposing the tariffs it promised last month.<\/p>\n

One particularly ironic consequence of Trump and Petro\u2019s quarrel is already being felt. Since the 2000s, Colombia has relied on the United States for military assistance in fighting its drug cartels. With that help, Petro\u2019s government has destroyed thousands of coca-paste labs and extradited hundreds<\/a> of Colombian nationals wanted by the United States. But now that the United States has decertified<\/a> Colombia as a \u201cdrug control partner,\u201d it will no longer supply intelligence to Colombia\u2019s authorities\u2014a move that will almost certainly increase the flow of drugs to the United States more than the boat strikes will reduce it.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month, Donald Trump called Colombia\u2019s president, Gustavo Petro, an \u201cillegal drug leader.\u201d That gave Colombians reason to worry: The last country whose president Trump accused of running a drug enterprise was Venezuela, and those accusations served as justification to send a flotilla of warships to lurk by its coasts and blow up boats. Republican […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}