Far-left President of Colombia Gustavo Petro criticized on Monday President Donald Trump’s “Shield of the Americas” counter-cartel and security initiative for leaving him out — claiming that its members are “weak” and inexperienced at fighting cocaine trafficking.
On Saturday President Trump announced the Shield of the Americas, a coalition between the United States and 12 Latin American and Caribbean countries to fight drug trafficking, illegal and mass migration, and other security issues while stopping other forms of malign influence in the region. Trump was joined by the heads of state of El Salvador, Panama, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Bolivia, Trinidad and Tobago, Honduras, and Guyana, and Chile’s President-elect José Antonio Kast, who will take office on March 11.
Colombia, the world’s top cocaine producer, is among the Latin American countries that were not invited to form part of the United States-led coalition. While drug trafficking is a decades-old issue in Colombia, the drug fighting policies implemented by Gustavo Petro — an open advocate for the legalization of cocaine and a former member of the Marxist M19 terrorist group — resulted in record-breaking surges in cocaine production in 2023, according to the latest world drug report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
On Monday, Petro participated in the opening of the 69th session of the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna, Austria, where he defended the importance of addressing “socio-economic drivers” of illicit crop cultivation and targeting transnational criminal networks, both of which he has repeatedly claimed as fundamental elements of his administration’s drug-fighting policies.
During his speech at the CND, Petro criticized the Shield of the Americas initiative and questioned his country’s absence in the counter-cartel regional coalition. He also questioned the efficacy of the group’s “weak” Latin American member-nations in the fight against drug trafficking.
“Alliance meetings are held excluding Colombia, when in the case of cocaine, Colombia is essential due to its experience in eradicating it,” Petro said. “We didn’t go to Miami, and I’m not criticizing the formation of political coalitions. But I do think that with 17 small, weak countries that lack experience in dealing with cocaine, it’s impossible to create a southern shield. They’re going to poke holes in it.”
Hours later, Petro published a social media post claiming that he “did not criticize” Colombia’s exclusion from the “Southern Shield [sic]” group, referring to its members as “countries that lack the capacity to combat drug trafficking due to a lack of experience and other reasons” while asserting that Colombia has “the most experience” and has established police force coordination with 75 other countries, including the United States.
“Cocaine drug trafficking is combated not only by preventing demand, but also through the unity of all countries in the world, regardless of political or religious differences, in order to pursue capital and drug traffickers,” Petro wrote. “Judicial negotiations in the U.S. must be changed to restrict all drug trafficking activity anywhere in the world to drug traffickers who negotiate with that justice system.”
The Trump administration has called Petro’s alleged drug fighting efforts into question over the past months. In September, the U.S. Department of State announced that Trump submitted a Presidential Determination to Congress designating Colombia and several other countries as having failed to adhere to international counternarcotics obligations and agreements to fight against drug trafficking — which greatly infuriated Petro.
A month later, in October, Trump accused Petro of being an “illegal drug dealer.” In response, Petro accused Trump of being “rude and ignorant.” Days later, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Petro, members of his family, and Interior Minister Armando Benedetti for their alleged involvement in the global illicit drug trade.
Petro responded by ordering local authorities to disclose his personal financial information, a decision that, Petro claimed, would “contradict” Trump’s accusations. Instead, it revealed Petro’s own lavish spending, including a strip club visit in Portugal in 2023.
During his speech at the CND the Colombian president reportedly expressed criticism of Colombia’s “decertification” in drug fighting when “we are proving our effectiveness” and asked, “Why, when we have seized 3,300 tons, something no other country in the world has ever done before?”
“Colombia, despite its mistakes and problems, has the most sophisticated intelligence to, in alliance with seventy-five nations, seize 3,300 tons without killing anyone,” Petro claimed.
Petro met with President Trump at the White House in February after the Colombian president spent months maintaining an extremely hostile stance against Trump that included open calls to “get rid” of him and calls for the U.S. military to disobey Trump as their commander-in-chief, among other actions.
Hours after the meeting, Petro ordered a bombing attack against the warring National Liberation Army (ELN) and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), two Marxist terrorist groups that over the past year have waged an intense conflict against each other over control of key coca leaf crops in the Colombian region of Catatumbo. The attack marked the first time in Petro’s administration, which began in 2022, that he ordered a bombing strike against ELN.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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