Trump Administration to Fast-Track Military Cooperation with Colombia
As Colombia’s newly elected president Abelardo De La Espriella assumes office this Friday, he brings with him a promise to aggressively dismantle the country’s powerful drug traffickers with the direct assistance of the United States. These collaborative plans are already in motion, positioning Colombia to become the critical centerpiece of the Trump administration’s broader strategy to militarize the war on drugs across Latin America, according to The New York Times.
The incoming Colombian administration has wasted no time aligning with Washington. Following a trip to the U.S. capital last month by Colombian officials, a senior U.S. defense official stated to the New York Times that the traditionally strong alliance between the two nations is being taken to unprecedented levels.
Demonstrating this commitment, President-elect De La Espriella has officially named the city of Medellin as the operational hub for the “Shield of the Americas,” President Trump’s newly formed regional anti-trafficking alliance.
This aggressive bilateral approach is part of a sweeping Trump administration initiative that prioritizes targeting Latin American traffickers, whom the White House blames for fueling the American overdose crisis and violent crime. The U.S. government has officially designated two dozen regional groups as terrorist organizations and authorized the use of lethal force against them.
U.S. officials have also established an anti-cartel coalition featuring 18 other nations, drawing direct comparisons between this military task force and the campaigns against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
The Trump administration welcomes Abelardo de la Espriella’s administration in Colombia
For Washington, De La Espriella’s inauguration marks a drastic and welcome shift from the tenure of outgoing leftist President Gustavo Petro.
Petro had vehemently opposed President Trump’s militarized strategy, specifically condemning U.S. military strikes on boats suspected of carrying drugs off the South American coast, operations that have killed at least 221 people, as outright murder.
In response to Petro’s stance, U.S. authorities imposed sanctions on him, decertified Colombia as a counternarcotics partner, and threatened to sever financial aid. During the first year of President Trump’s second term, U.S. security assistance to Colombia was slashed from US$400 million to approximately US$187 million.
De La Espriella, a hard conservative who previously praised the U.S. boat strikes, won domestic support by promising to strike armed traffickers “with the wrath of God”. His incoming defense minister, Gen. Jorge Eduardo Mora, recently announced “Plan Colombia 2.0,” a renewed security strategy emphasizing joint action and integration with U.S. forces.
According to U.S. officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to the New York Times, ongoing discussions include plans to supply the Colombian military with U.S. intelligence, increase the extradition of captured traffickers, and restart the aerial eradication of coca plants. Additionally, the partnership is expected to reinforce Colombia’s helicopter fleet and provide advanced drone protection technology.
Stark on-the-ground challenges are expected for Colombia and the US
However, executing this strategy faces severe on-the-ground challenges. During President Petro’s term, military operations were largely suspended to facilitate peace talks in the Paz Total framework, which critics argue allowed armed groups to massively expand.
Conflict researchers report that the number of combatants in these groups nearly doubled, rising from around 13,000 in 2022 to nearly 27,000 last year. These groups now operate across borders into Venezuela and Ecuador, and increasingly recruit minors to deter airstrikes.
Furthermore, former U.S. ambassador to Colombia Kevin Whitaker cautioned that while a “kinetic approach” is appropriate, the Colombian armed forces have been weakened by recent funding cuts and leadership purges under Petro, meaning immediate military success will require careful planning and investment rather than just snapping fingers.
Reinstating aerial coca eradication will also require navigating the fact that Colombia banned the use of the herbicide glyphosate in 2015 due to World Health Organization health warnings.
Plan Colombia 2.0 is already drawing criticism
The revival of a militarized approach has also drawn fierce domestic criticism, rooted in the dark history of the original Plan Colombia. That 2000s-era U.S.-backed offensive successfully weakened the FARC guerrilla army, but a truth commission later found it also resulted in extreme violence and extrajudicial killings by state forces.
Leftist Senator and former presidential candidate Ivan Cepeda, who narrowly lost the recent presidential election to De La Espriella, warned that the new U.S. partnership is a strategy to compromise Colombian sovereignty and turn the nation into a protectorate.
The immediate dangers of this renewed conflict were highlighted today in Cali, which hosted De La Espriella’s inauguration. Colombian authorities reported intercepting a bus loaded with 1,000 pounds of explosives, an attack that police say was orchestrated by a FARC dissident group to target police and military facilities during the inaugural ceremonies.