Leave Colombia Alone

Trump is lashing out at Colombia because Petro has condemned the president’s murders in the strongest terms.

The administration’s murderous boat attacks are further wrecking relations with Colombia:

“U.S. government officials have committed a murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” Mr. Petro wrote on social media. He said the man killed in the mid-September attack, Alejandro Carranza, was a “lifelong fisherman” whose boat had experienced damage and was adrift, probably in Colombian waters, at the time of the attack. His description of Mr. Carranza and his boat could not be immediately confirmed.

Mr. Trump responded by accusing Mr. Petro of not doing enough to curb the production of illegal drugs, calling him an “illegal drug dealer” with “a fresh mouth toward America.” Mr. Trump also said that the United States would halt aid payments to Colombia, which has long ranked among the largest recipients worldwide of U.S. counternarcotics assistance. He later told reporters on Air Force One that he would announce new tariffs on Colombian goods on Monday.

The president’s attacks on Colombian President Gustavo Petro are absurd. Trump is lashing out at Colombia because Petro has condemned the president’s murders in the strongest terms. In addition to the usual pettiness that defines Trump’s foreign policy, punishing Colombia reconfirms that Trump has little interest in truly combating the drug trade. Antagonizing the Colombian government is the last thing that the administration should do if it were genuinely interested in reducing the flow of narcotics out of Colombia. The president wants to use U.S. military power to intimidate and threaten other countries in the region, and now he is adding Colombia to the list of targets. In response to Trump’s threats and insults, Colombia has recalled its ambassador from Washington.

Trump’s one-sided “war” was bound to expand to threaten other countries. The so-called conflict that the president has invented out of thin air is not restricted to any particular place, nor does it focus on any one particular group. As far as the administration is concerned, they can attack anyone they choose no matter where they are. The administration recognizes no limits on its actions.

Obviously, no one in the administration respects U.S. or international law. It doesn’t seem to matter to the administration if a government has been an adversary or a longtime partner. If governments in the region don’t fall in line and applaud the president’s murders, they risk punishment from Washington in one form or another.

Cutting funding to Colombia is a huge own goal. It will significantly undermine the Colombian government’s security and counter-narcotics efforts. Trump faults Petro for not doing enough, and then kneecaps Petro’s government’s ability to do anything. The Miami Herald reports:

A full funding cut “would really be sort of the U.S. shooting themselves in the foot in terms of counter-narcotics policy,” [Elizabeth] Dickinson said.

Combating the drug trade is a pretext for Trump’s aggression in the region. He doesn’t care if he is sabotaging that effort. Indeed, his threats against Colombia prove that he will actively undermine that effort if it means that he can lord it over our Latin American neighbors.

Some analysts are skeptical that Trump would follow through on his threats because it would be so destructive and stupid:

“It’s really hard to imagine a Republican administration doing that. But if they do, the outcry within the Defense Department will be just deafening,” said Adam Isacson, director for Defense Oversight at Washington Office on Latin America.

One might have thought that there would have been a backlash over the boat attacks, too, but it never happened. The assumption that Trump will be constrained from doing something extremely reckless because of pushback from inside the Pentagon is a flawed one. If you can’t imagine Trump arbitrarily punishing a partner country because he doesn’t like the other country’s leader, I can only assume that you haven’t been paying attention for the last nine months. It is unfortunately all too easy to imagine Trump punishing all of Colombia to settle a score with Petro. Just look at what he has done to Brazil and India.

It is striking how little internal dissent there is over this policy. There doesn’t appear to be anyone inside the administration opposed to these attacks. The president is asserting extraordinary tyrannical power to use the military to kill civilians, and no one in the national security team or the Cabinet so much as blinks. Except for Rand Paul and perhaps a few House members, there is overwhelming support from Republicans in Congress for these murders. Perhaps the last time there was this much mindless support in the party for a Republican president’s aggressive foreign policy was in the darkest days of the Bush era.

The president also threatened that the U.S. might take military action inside Colombia. He said, “Petro… better close up these killing fields immediately, or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely.” Launching attacks on targets in Colombia would of course be illegal and outrageous. It will only further destabilize the country and kill more Colombians. It isn’t going to achieve anything, but that doesn’t mean that the president won’t do it anyway.

Many analysts were initially pleased that Trump wanted to pay more attention to Latin America after a long period of U.S. neglect. I warned that our neighbors were not going to like the kind of attention they would receive from the hardliners and militarists in this administration. The more attention that the U.S. pays to another part of the world, the worse it tends to be for the people in that region. Now Colombia is in the president’s sights, and that is very bad news for both of our countries.