US Expands Scope of Its (Fake) War on Drug Cartels to Colombia; Colombia Responds By Threatening to Stop Buying US Weapons

Is this the beginning of another US-sponsored coup?

The Trump administration is expanding its war on non-aligned, progressive governments in resource-rich countries in Latin America the drug cartels while making bad jokes about killing innocent fisherman in the Caribbean Sea, an area spanning 2.7 million square kilometres. Seeing the audience laugh at such a bad-taste joke gives an indication of why most Latin Americans are not exactly thrilled at the US’ newfound interest in neighbourly relations.

Get it? The joke is that we might kill some totally innocent people! Haha that’s funny, right? https://t.co/D3RmVB5Q2h

— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) September 17, 2025

Following a US strike against a second small speed boat on Monday, this time allegedly holding three civilians, Trump bragged that there were “no boats in the ocean anymore,” and conceded that the fishing industry had been “hurt” as a result of US military actions in the Caribbean. Once again, his administration failed to provide a single shred of evidence that the incinerated occupants of the boat were drug traffickers.

On Tuesday, before departing for the UK, Trump told reporters that a third Venezuelan boat had been “knocked off,” without providing further details. He also cautioned that the same gung-ho approach to the so-called “war on cartels” could be extended to alleged land routes.

The Nicolás Maduro government has responded to the US’ escalating hostilities by accusing Washington of trying to goad Venezuela into a “major war” for oil-driven regime change ends. Caracas has also signed a new “strategic partnership treaty” with Russia that will expand the scope for political and economic cooperation between the two countries.

Venezuela’s Minister of Interior Affairs, Diosdado Cabello, claims that Venezuelan forces have dismantled an attempted false flag attack by the DEA aimed at framing Venezuela for drug trafficking and justifying US aggression:

🇻🇪 NEWS: Venezuela announced on Sept. 17 the seizure of 3,700 kilograms of cocaine and the arrest of five people in what Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello called a “false flag” operation aimed at framing Venezuela for drug trafficking and justifying foreign aggression. Among… pic.twitter.com/Fm18zW2TyA

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) September 18, 2025

There is no way of confirming these claims. However, one thing that is clear is that the US’ acts of summary murder in the Caribbean are intended as a warning, not just to Venezuela but to all non-aligned governments in the Latin America and Caribbean. Just as it did in the Middle East, the US government reserves the right to drone-strike anyone it deems a threat to US security.

This week, the Trump administration shone the spotlight on the left-leaning government of Colombia, its long-time vassal state, by decertifying the country as a drug control partner for the first time since 1997. In a memorandum to Congress, President Trump accused Bogotá, together with Afghanistan, Bolivia, Myanmar and Venezuela, of “failing demonstrably to meet its drug control obligations.”

In a statement, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said:

Colombia’s been a great partner historically.  Unfortunately they have a president now that in addition to being erratic has not been a very good partner when it comes to taking on drug – the drug cartels.  So they just don’t meet the standard under his leadership.

I think we have willing partners.  If it was up to the military, the police – we’ve been working with them for decades.  It’s a great – good news story.  But they have bad leadership right now when it – especially on this issue of drugs.  But they can change.  They can be more cooperative.  And they can meet the criteria to get off the – get back on the list of certification.

.@StateDept: @POTUS ha determinado que el gobierno colombiano no cumplió con sus obligaciones en materia de control de drogas, pero otorgó una exención para que la cooperación crítica con EE. UU., incluida la lucha contra el narcotráfico, pueda continuar. Los resultados importan:… https://t.co/mV1ZLuoroB

— US Embassy Bogota (@USEmbassyBogota) September 16, 2025

From NPR:

Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine producer, is behind a record-breaking year for the global cocaine market, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) most recent annual report, published in June.

It found that from 2022 to 2023, the most recent year with available data, Colombia’s estimated cocaine yield rose by 50%.

Trump used the decertification announcement to personally criticize Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a former leftist rebel who has been at odds with the White House since a spat over deportation flights in January.

Petro has attempted to stem drug trafficking through crop substitution programs and negotiations with criminal organizations that have enjoyed little success.

“Under the erratic and ineffectual leadership of President Gustavo Petro, coca cultivation and cocaine production and trafficking by narco-terrorist organizations in Colombia has surged to unprecedented levels,” wrote Trump.

This is presumably the first step in Washington’s progressive demonisation of Colombia as a rogue government. The White House has so far stopped short of imposing sanctions on Colombia, preferring to grant its erstwhile vassal state a “national interest waiver” that preserves US aid and security cooperation.

South America’s Israel No More

Until not so long ago, Colombia was the US’ bestie in South America, and was even sometimes referred to as the “Israel of the region”, including by former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and former Bolivian President Evo Morales. It’s not hard to see why. From our June 21, 2022 post on the election of Colombia’s first left-wing president Gustavo Petro, “A Political Earthquake Just Took Place in Latin America“:

The US currently has seven formal military bases in Colombia, according to the Latin American Strategic Center for Geopolitics (also known as CELAG). Other reports I have come across suggest it has eight. However, a report (in Spanish) published by School of Americas Watch in April 2021 claims there are also dozens of so-called “quasi-bases” — which differ from formal bases in no other way than that they lack a formal lease agreement for use of facilities — scattered around the country, particularly in areas rich in mineral resources and/or close to Colombia’s border with Venezuela.

Since the year 2000 Colombia has received $13 billion of aid from the US, according to the Washington Office on Latin America. In recent years the US has further strengthened its military ties with Colombia. In 2017, Colombia became one of NATO’s global partners, and the Alliance’s first Latin American partner. The apparent benefits of being a global partner of NATO include interoperability with NATO forces as well as the opportunity to participate in NATO-led operations and missions around the world. As a matter of fact, Colombian forces already participated in Ocean Shield, NATO’s maritime operation to counter piracy off the Horn of Africa, in 2015, two years before becoming a NATO partner.

As CNN Español puts it, since the late ’90s Colombia has served as Washington’s most trusted ally in South America on national security and defence issues — aka the perfect vassal state. However, that began to change in June 2022, when the former M-19 guerrilla Gustavo Petro made history by becoming Colombia’s first left-wing president since the country won independence in 1819.

Tensions with Washington began to rise when Colombia became one of the first countries in the world to sever ties with Israel over its ongoing genocide in Gaza. That was in early 2024. Petro’s Colombia would also become one of the first — and for a long time, only — countries to impose economic sanctions on the Jewish state. Now, other nations, including Spain, Belgium and Slovenia, are finally doing the same.

Petro has also strengthened Colombia’s relations with China, even going so far as to sign Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and become a member of the BRICS’ New Development Bank, neither of which will have earned him plaudits in Washington.

“No More Glyphosate,… No More Dead Policemen”

One possible way for the Petro government to get back into Washington’s good books would be to revoke its recent suspension of key drug extraditions to the United States. In late June, it introduced a radical shakeup in the country’s extradition agreement with the US, so that drug traffickers who comply with government surrender conditions, lay down their guns and abandon the narcotics trade are not extradited.

But Gustavo Petro has shown little willingness to comply with Washington’s orders, arguing that it is the US’ insatiable demand for drugs, not Colombian supply, that is ultimately driving the recent surge in output. He also refused to bow to US pressure to readopt policies of forced substitution of crops, which often leads to widespread environmental destruction or bloody clashes between state security forces and drug traffickers.

“That’s over, no more dead policemen,” Petro said, adding that forced fumigation, “is a US policy that has failed”:

“In order to reduce coca leaf cultivation, what is needed is not glyphosate dropped from small planes, but a decrease in the demand for cocaine, mainly in the United States and Europe.”

This echoes arguments Petro used in his scathing critique of the US-led war on drugs from the podium of the UN General Assembly in New York in 2022. From our post, “The US-Led War on Drugs, Now in Its 51st Year, Just Hit a Major Snag in Colombia“.

Petro… blasted the indiscriminate use of glyphosate and other noxious chemicals used by previous governments to eradicate cocaine farms, leaving in its wake a vast trail of environmental destruction. Yet Colombia’s output of the illicit white stimulant has continued to grow despite the $13 billion Washington has splashed on eradication, policing and military programs in the country.

To destroy the coca plant they throw poisons, such as glyphosate, that drip into our water. They arrest the growers and imprison them. In the battle to destroy or possess the coca leaf, a million Latin Americans are murdered and two million Afro-Americans are imprisoned in North America. ‘Destroy the plant that kills,’ they shout from the north, but this plant is just one among the millions that perish when they unleash fire on the jungle.

The Nuclear Option

In response to the US’ decertification of Colombia, Petro appears to have opted for the nuclear option of ceasing all purchases of US-made weapons. In a bold move, Petro insisted that the Colombian army’s long-standing dependence on US weaponry will be brought to an end. He also announced that Colombia will begin to finance the purchase or production of weapons with its own resources.

“The dependence of the Colombian Army and its Military Forces on U.S. weapons is over. No more handouts or gifts. (…) The Colombian Army does better if it buys its weapons elsewhere or if we manufacture them with our own resources. Otherwise, it will not be an Army of national sovereignty.”

According to Petro, his government’s goal is to strengthen national sovereignty and reduce external influence over Colombia’s national defence strategy. Of course, while trying to do all that Colombia still has seven (or more) formal US military bases on its territory as well as all the other quasi bases.

At the same time, 11 opposition parties have published a communique denouncing Colombia’s deteriorating relations with Washington under Petro’s presidency and distancing themselves from his threat to stop buying US weapons:

The 11 parties that signed this statement express our firm rejection of President Gustavo Petro’s statements against the United States government, represented by President Donald Trump, following Colombia’s recent decertification in the fight against drug trafficking. The executive branch’s statements do not reflect the country’s position and constitute an insult to a nation that has supported Colombia in this effort for decades.

Former President Ivan Duque, a strong critic of Petro, wrote on X:

“As we warned so much, the Petro government was decertified by the U.S. for the dismantling of manual eradication groups, the exponential growth of illicit crops and the lowest seizures (of drugs) as a percentage of potential production in decades.”

This is ironic given that during Duque’s presidency (2018-22) cocaine production in Colombia soared by 50% to levels not seen since the days of Pablo Escobar in the 1990s.

Colombia produces more cocaine now than it did in the early 1990s when drug cartel leader Pablo Escobar was at the height of his notoriety https://t.co/1oQigqFb0M pic.twitter.com/7euYu0ByT5

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) February 22, 2021

Duque also had alleged ties to the now-deceased narco-linked cattle rancher José Guillermo Hernández, aka Ñeñe Hernández.

Even more important, Duque’s political mentor, Alvaro Uribe, who has arguably wielded more influence over Colombian politics this century than anyone else and was just found guilty of fraud and witness tampering. He was also listed among “important Colombian narco traffickers” by the DEA in 1991, 12 years before he became president and a “key US partner in the war on drugs”. From a 2004 document in the US National Security Archive:

Then-Senator and now President Álvaro Uribe Vélez of Colombia was a “close personal friend of Pablo Escobar” who was “dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín [drug] cartel at high government levels,” according to a 1991 intelligence report from U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officials in Colombia. The document was posted today on the website of the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research group based at George Washington University.

Uribe’s inclusion on the list raises new questions about allegations that surfaced during Colombia’s 2002 presidential campaign. Candidate Uribe bristled and abruptly terminated an interview in March 2002 when asked by Newsweek reporter Joseph Contreras about his alleged ties to Escobar and his associations with others involved in the drug trade. Uribe accused Contreras of trying to smear his reputation, saying that, “as a politician, I have been honorable and accountable.”

The newly-declassified report, dated 23 September 1991, is a numbered list of “the more important Colombian narco-traffickers contracted by the Colombian narcotic cartels for security, transportation, distribution, collection and enforcement of narcotics operations.” The document was released by DIA in May 2004 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the Archive in August 2000.

The source of the report was removed by DIA censors, but the detailed, investigative nature of the report — the list corresponds with a numbered set of photographs that were apparently provided with the original — suggests it was probably obtained from Colombian or U.S. counternarcotics personnel. The document notes that some of the information in the report was verified “via interfaces with other agencies.”

President Uribe — now a key U.S. partner in the drug war — “was linked to a business involved in narcotics activities in the United States” and “has worked for the Medellín cartel,” the narcotics trafficking organization led by Escobar until he was killed by Colombian government forces in 1993. The report adds that Uribe participated in Escobar’s parliamentary campaign and that as senator he had “attacked all forms of the extradition treaty” with the U.S.

Stirrings of a Coup?

Could there be an even darker side to this unfolding story?

As we warned in mid-June, evidence was mounting that that a coup against Petro may be in the works. Petro himself certainly seemed to believe so, especially after Miguel Uribe Turbay, an opposition MP and potential presidential contender, was assassinated by a 15-year old sicario.

The hit bore echoes of the assassination of the journalist-turned-presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in the lead-up to Ecuador’s presidential elections in 2023. Villavicencio’s assassination was widely credited with galvanising support for the eventual election winner, Daniel Noboa, the US-born and raised son of Ecuador’s richest man, Alvaro Noboa, a banana magnate whose family business is accused of trafficking cocaine to Europe.

Noboa has not only designated drug cartels as terrorist organisations but also signed agreements with Washington for the reestablishment of US military bases in Ecuador after the country voted in a 2009 referendum to eject all foreign military bases. Pointedly, this week he issued a presidential decree officially designating Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as terrorist organisations.

In recent months Villavicencio’s widow has gone public with allegations that Ecuador’s Attorney General, Diana Salazar, pressured her into blaming Ecuador’s former left-leaning President Rafael Correa for the murder of her husband, which in turn helped to get Noboa elected.

As happened in Ecuador, the attempted assassination of Uribe Turbay created an atmosphere of fear and panic in Colombia, a country that has spent much of the past 100 years in a state of civil war. In our June article, we noted that the situation in Colombia was, as Lambert was wont to say, “overly dynamic”, as well as the fact this was not the first time that Petro had accused his opponents of plotting a coup against him.

As such, as we conceded in that post, our contention that Colombia could be witnessing the early stirrings of a coup was unavoidably speculative in nature.

Two or three weeks later, however, El País released leaked recordings revealing that Petro’s former foreign minister, Álvaro Leyva, had with met with advisors close to the Trump administration in order to drum up support for a coup against Petro. In the recordings Leyva could be heard saying he’d already drummed up support for coup from the Clan del Golfo, a prominent right-wing Colombian neo-paramilitary group and the country’s largest drug cartel.

A week later, the Colombian publication Revista Raya published the testimony of an alleged witness to Leyva’s discussions with US lawmakers. According to the witness, the first stage of the coup would involve disseminating rumours accusing Petro of uncontrolled drug abuse, which Leyva executed by writing three letters to media outlets.

Crucially, the next stage would involve US congressmen such as Mario Díaz Balart pressuring Donald Trump to decertify Colombia in the fight against drugs — a measure that, according to the witness, “would be fundamental for the transition of a new government that would be headed by Vice President Francia Márquez.” As Revista Raya notes, this would not be the first time the US used decertification as a tool of punishment against Colombia:

In the 1990s, the US decertified Colombia during the government of Ernesto Samper, alleging lack of cooperation in the fight against drugs. At the time, Washington denied the country access to financial resources and technical assistance, and included it in the list of “pariah nations.” The measure, far from being technical, was clearly political: the U.S. Congress used it to try to force the departure of Samper, who clung on in office but was marginalised from the international community.

The strategy drawn up and led by Leyva evokes that precedent. The aim, it seems, was to recreate a similar scenario of isolation, with economic, legal and diplomatic consequences, in order to force a transition of power without the need for impeachment or military intervention.

During Trump’s presidency, the threat of decertification this year has been repeatedly evoked. In January 2025, Juan Cruz, a former Trump adviser, said Colombia should prepare for that scenario. And in April, Kevin Whitaker, former US ambassador in Bogotá, was more direct, saying that if Colombia did not demonstrate concrete results, it would be punished.  

War on Drugs: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

As we have been saying since the very beginning of direct US hostilities against Venezuela over a month ago, this confected conflict has nothing to do with stemming the flow of drugs to the US and everything to do with furthering US strategic interests in the region.

As the UN has reported, Venezuela is a relatively bit part player in the drugs trade and has no role in the trafficking of fentanyl, which is killing the lion’s share of US addicts. Granted, the same cannot be said of Colombia, which has consistently produces roughly 70% of the world’s cocaine supply, regardless of how intensively the government of the day has implemented Plan Colombia, the US’ counter-narcotics plan.

Even the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee admitted in 2020 that Washington’s Plan Colombia had been a resounding failure from a counter-narcotics perspective. It did, however, provide short-term benefits from a counter-insurgency perspective. It is those benefits the US is once again looking to leverage, by using the War on Drugs as a pretext for intervening in any country in the region that catches its fancy.

Meanwhile, China’s Foreign on Ministry issued a declaration urging Washington to stop forcing countries in the region to pick a side.

“We urge the US to stop forcing them to choose sides, stop interfering in their domestic affairs and do more to contribute to their development and prosperity, instead of meddling and sowing discord,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said in a news conference. “”No attempt to disrupt China’s friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation with Latin America will ever succeed.”

China Foreign Ministry: "Latin America is no one's backyard." pic.twitter.com/FCFBaTq9sz

— COMBATE |🇵🇷 (@upholdreality) September 19, 2025

Lastly, one development that isn’t getting much traction in the English-speaking press (quelle surprise!) is that 17 congressmen and women have just signed a letter calling on US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to stop trying to intervene in the legal case against Alvaro Uribe in Colombia.

In July, Uribe, the alleged former drug trafficker (according to the DEA) was found guilty on charges of fraud and witness tampering and was sentenced to 12 years’ house arrest in a case . The case dates all the way back to 2012, when Uribe accused then-congressman Iván Cepeda of bribing witnesses, a complaint that the Supreme Court dismissed in 2018 after finding indications that it was Uribe himself who sought to alter witness testimony.

In echoes of Trump’s recent attempts to interfere in the judicial case against Brazil’s former president (and Trump associate) Jair Bolsonaro, including going so far as to impose 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods, Rubio said the ruling against Uribe constituted a “political attack” by “radicalized” judges.

Former Colombian President Uribe’s only crime has been to tirelessly fight and defend his homeland. The weaponization of Colombia’s judicial branch by radical judges has now set a worrisome precedent.

— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) July 28, 2025

In the letter, the 17 US lawmakers warned that Rubio’s words ignore the principle of separation of powers and Colombia’s progress in judicial independence.

“His statement is contrary to the principles of the rule of law, sovereignty and judicial independence. The people of Colombia deserve more from the U.S. government,” they said.