WASHINGTON — Over the decades, the U.S. government has sent billions of dollars in aid to Colombia to help the country stamp out its cocaine industry, which feeds America’s demand.
The U.S. military provided training and equipment to Colombian forces and shared intelligence. That led to some milestones, including the killing of drug lord Pablo Escobar by Colombian special forces in a rooftop shootout in 1993.
Now President Donald Trump is threatening to cut off aid to Colombia, jeopardizing the longtime antidrug cooperation and other security arrangements, including what analysts say is a covert CIA presence in the country.
Trump announced his action this month while accusing President Gustavo Petro of Colombia of being a drug kingpin who had allowed the cartels to flourish. It is an expansion of U.S. hostilities toward Colombia’s neighbor, Venezuela, whose leader the Trump administration has also accused of being a drug gangster.
The intensifying campaign has included lethal strikes against boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific that the Trump administration says are transporting drugs, and an extraordinary buildup of military forces in the region.
The administration has presented neither evidence for its accusations about the people in the boats nor a legal basis for the strikes, and officials in the region and family members say some of the victims were fishermen.
On Friday, the Trump administration imposed financial sanctions against Petro, his wife, a son and a close adviser. The same day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated an administration decision to decertify Colombia as a cooperative partner on counternarcotics, the first time that has happened in nearly three decades.
Rubio told reporters Saturday that the administration was reacting to “a hostile foreign leader,” though he praised Colombia’s security forces.
Colombia is the latest Latin American country to end up in Trump’s crosshairs because of what he and his top aides perceive as ideological chasms. Petro, a former leftist guerrilla, is openly critical of America’s power, including the way multiple U.S. presidents have waged the so-called war on drugs and the country’s support for Israel.
“If Mr. Trump keeps being complicit in the genocide, as he is up to today, he deserves nothing but jail, and his army should not obey him,” Petro said last month in Bogotá, Colombia.
In the eyes of the Trump administration, Petro joins the ranks of Latin American villains: President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil.
Trump’s actions are part of his drive to increase America’s dominance of the Western Hemisphere — what some call “Monroe Doctrine 2.0.” In the original 19th-century doctrine, the U.S. government sought to establish the hemisphere as its sphere of influence and to limit Europe’s presence and sway there.
Trump and his aides are taking different tacks with each of the leftist governments.
With Venezuela, they are killing civilians in boats in what appear to many to be illegal military airstrikes and keeping up broad economic sanctions.
With Brazil, they have imposed tariffs of 50% on most goods imported from that country, even though U.S. companies pay the tax.
With Colombia, the United States is enacting the financial penalties and vowing to cut off assistance. And the strikes on boats have killed Colombians, too, according to Petro.
Late last month, Rubio canceled Petro’s visa after the Colombian leader called for U.S. soldiers to disobey Trump during a pro-Palestinian rally in New York. Petro was in the city for the annual U.N. General Assembly.
Petro’s criticisms this month of Trump over the boat strikes have brought the feud to a new level. Since Sept. 2, the Trump administration has said it has killed at least 57 people in 13 strikes on civilian boats. It just ordered an aircraft carrier to the region.
“The Trump administration has always had a testy relationship with Petro,” said Ryan Berg, the director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “His criticism of our new approach is further proof of their view of him.”
But punishing Colombia broadly could destabilize the security cooperation that has been an anchor of relations between the two nations. That would weaken the ability of the Colombian government to fight the country’s armed groups, which have increased cocaine production recently.
The U.S. government budgeted at least $377 million in aid to Colombia in the 2024 fiscal year, according to the Congressional Research Service. About a third of that was designated to fight drug trafficking and support law enforcement.
Colombia is a critical listening post in the Andes region for U.S. intelligence agencies. In a letter to Trump last month, Rep. Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that between January 2024 and June 2025, 85% of all information acted on by a Pentagon task force in Key West, Florida, originated in Colombia.
The United States would be “flying blind” if cooperation ended, and the power of the armed groups would surge, said Elizabeth Dickinson, a security analyst in Bogotá with the International Crisis Group.
“The security situation in Colombia is a boiling pot,” she said. “Up until now, the security forces are sort of barely keeping the lid on it. Very quickly, if the U.S. cooperation stops, the security forces will no longer be able to fulfill that mission. The threat will greatly outstrip the capacity to control it.”
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In an interview in Bogotá recently, Colombia’s ambassador to the United States, Daniel García-Peña, acknowledged the rising tensions between the two countries’ presidents but said he was optimistic that officials around them would find ways to keep cooperating on security, the economy and migration issues.
“I am confident that if the facts and the results and the clear benefits of working together are analyzed, that it will continue,” he said, adding that he had cordial meetings recently with the top U.S. diplomat in his country.
Daniel DePetris, a researcher on Latin America at Defense Priorities, a research group in Washington that advocates U.S. military restraint, noted that Petro’s expected departure next year because of term limits could end this hostile period.
“A lot of the dissension right now is very personality-driven,” he said. “Trump and Petro just don’t like each other, and they are polar opposites in terms of politics and ideology. Once Petro leaves, which is soon, I anticipate the Trump administration will try to turn the page.”
But until then, concern among current and former U.S. military officials over the fraying relationship is certain to grow.
“They have been one of our strongest partners in the region for decades,” Adm. James Stavridis, a former head of U.S. Southern Command, now retired, said of Colombia.
“I don’t think it likely President Trump would elevate tensions to the point of conducting strikes inside Colombia,” he said. “The focus at the moment seems to be on Venezuela, where the administration has plenty of more attractive targets to attack.”
Since the launch in 2000 of Plan Colombia, a Washington initiative aimed at counternarcotics and counterterrorism, the United States has worked closely with the Colombian military and national police force to tamp down on coca production in the country.
Colombia’s supporters in Congress say the cooperation has helped disrupt transnational criminal organizations and bolster the rule of law.
While Trump has ordered an end to aid to Colombia, García-Peña said that there had been no actual change in payments yet — and that intelligence-sharing and military cooperation have continued.
He noted, however, that the U.S. Navy was not sharing any information about the boat strikes.
Sergio Guzmán, the director of Colombia Risk Analysis, a consulting group in Bogotá, said he viewed the dispute as one centered on both presidents seizing “an opportunity to perform for their domestic audiences.”
Petro has tried to position himself as a regional and even global leader on issues important to the left, including climate change and Palestinian rights — and he is finishing out his first and only four-year term.
Guzmán said that in swinging at Trump, Petro was trying to solidify his reputation as a leader of the global resistance. “If you take that into account,” he said, “then what motive does Petro have to de-escalate?”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2025 The New York Times
