The disaster in bilateral relations between the United States and Colombia exhibits no indicators of abating. Although Gustavo Petro, the loquacious Colombian president, maintained an eloquent silence, his American counterpart, Donald Trump, raised the already excessive tone of his assaults in opposition to a person he has most just lately described as a “thug” and a “unhealthy man,” after accusing him of being a “drug trafficking chief” over the weekend. He did so on Wednesday within the Oval Office, throughout a press convention following his assembly with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. “They’re doing very poorly, Colombia. They make cocaine,” he added, with out offering proof of the Colombian president’s alleged felony involvement. “Today we suspended all funds to Colombia. He higher watch it or we’ll take very severe motion in opposition to him and his nation.”
Trump’s phrases, nonetheless, this time got here after the occasions. Late this morning, Secretary of Defense (now relabeled Secretary of War) Pete Hegseth had introduced a brand new extrajudicial assault, the eighth, in opposition to a suspected drug boat. It introduced two novelties: it was the primary time the Trump administration acknowledged that certainly one of these operations had taken place off the Colombian coast, and, in contrast to the earlier ones, the navy killed the 2 crew members whereas they have been crusing within the Pacific Ocean, the route for a lot of the medicine that attain the United States by sea, and never within the Caribbean, the place an ongoing navy deployment has been interpreted as stress on Venezuela.
A couple of hours later, the identical official revealed a second assault within the Pacific, during which he didn’t point out Colombia this time, however he did resort to the identical narrative: calling the victims “narco-terrorists” and evaluating them to members of Al Qaeda. “We will discover them and kill them till the risk to the American folks is extinguished,” he mentioned.
The U.S. president all the time justifies these assaults by advantage of a warfare on medicine that he himself declared in early September, based mostly on a Seventies legislation that provides the president authority to take action, though it had by no means been used earlier than in opposition to drug trafficking organizations. On Wednesday, he additionally repeated one thing he has mentioned in current weeks: that the marketing campaign is able to proceed “by land.” It was unclear whether or not he was referring solely to Venezuela, the place, in keeping with his administration, all of the drug vessels up to now have originated, or whether or not the risk additionally consists of Colombia.
Regarding the brand new offensive within the Pacific, Petro has mentioned that these are murders and are a part of a method that “breaks the norms of worldwide legislation.” In response to Trump’s assault on Wednesday, he merely mentioned he’ll pursue authorized motion within the United States for what he referred to as “slander.” If he has exchanged assaults with anybody, it hasn’t been with the U.S. president however fairly different Republican politicians, comparable to Florida Representative Carlos Giménez. “Insults all the time point out the scale of the mind; the extra insults, the much less brains,” the Colombian president responded to a message during which the congressman of Cuban descent referred to as Petro a “clown.”
Petro has as a substitute chosen to argue that his authorities has acted successfully in opposition to drug trafficking. He insists that cocaine seizures have been the very best in historical past and, in response to the declare that this determine merely displays a rise in manufacturing, criticized the supply of that information. It is the annual report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which, in keeping with the president, has erred in its projections. The company has formally responded that it “acknowledges that information associated to potential cocaine manufacturing is restricted” and that it’ll work to incorporate a brand new indicator in its future research, the quantity of cocaine obtainable available on the market, to higher mirror elements comparable to seizures.
The Colombian Interior Minister has argued that the American president is misinformed about Petro’s authorities, echoing Petro’s personal criticism of the UN report. The restraint of those responses contrasts with the president’s resounding criticism of earlier U.S. assaults, the warfare on medicine, and Trump’s place on Israel and Palestine. A month in the past, he mixed all these accusations in his speech earlier than the United Nations General Assembly. “They say the missiles within the Caribbean have been to cease medicine. That’s a lie; they have been merely poor younger folks from Latin America,” he mentioned on the time. Three days later, in New York, he referred to as on U.S. troopers to disobey orders when it got here to supporting Israel’s navy offensive in Gaza. Washington responded by revoking his visa and calling the Colombian’s statements “reckless and inflammatory.”
In February, Washington added a number of Mexican cartels and the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua felony group to the State Department’s listing of terrorist organizations. Four years earlier, with Biden within the White House, the 2 fundamental branches of the various dissident teams of the defunct FARC guerrilla group, the so-called Central General Staff and the Second Marquetalia, have been added to the listing. Furthermore, for the reason that listing was created in 1997, the National Liberation Army (ELN), a guerrilla group created within the mid-Twentieth century and which as we speak has such a big presence in Venezuela—and good relations with its regime—that many analysts think about it a binational guerrilla group. Indeed, the U.S. Secretary of War had already indicated over the weekend that one of many vessels attacked within the Caribbean belonged to this group.
Since final Sunday, Trump has threatened Bogotá with new tariffs as punishment for Petro’s accusations of getting carried out extrajudicial killings of Colombian residents in these offshore assaults. So far, Colombia, whose fundamental buying and selling associate is the United States, is among the many international locations with probably the most favorable tariffs, with solely 10%, which has given it a aggressive benefit in sectors comparable to espresso and flowers.
The South American nation has been holding its breath for the reason that starting of this week, and a number of other political and personal sector figures have initiated talks with their contacts in Washington, though these new tariffs have but to materialize. Over the previous few a long time, a powerful spirit of collaboration has united the 2 international locations, spurred by, exactly, the joint struggle in opposition to drug trafficking. The concept of curbing free commerce via tariffs contradicts probably the most broadly held financial theories about one of the simplest ways to fight drug trafficking. Making authorized exports much less profitable doesn’t seem to be one of the simplest ways to fight crime.
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