Washington put an end to months of anticipation on Monday, September 16, by formally decertifying Colombia as a drug cooperation partner for the first time since 1997.
While the Donald Trump administration used the occasion to lambast Colombian President Gustavo Petro, it held back from a full decertification that could have led to 50% aid cuts and sweeping financial and political sanctions.
Despite relief in Colombia that U.S. assistance will continue, analysts warn the move may damage relations between Washington and a country that has historically been its strongest Latin American ally.
“In Colombia, coca cultivation and cocaine production have surged to all-time records under President Gustavo Petro, and his failed attempts to seek accommodations with narco-terrorist groups only exacerbated the crisis,” wrote Trump in a memorandum to Congress announcing decertification.
Throughout the memorandum and the adjoined “national interest waiver”, which watered down the decertification, Trump personally blamed Petro for soaring coca and cocaine production.
The global cocaine market reached a historic peak in 2023, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) latest World Drug Report, published in June.
The body reported a staggering 50% increase in potential cocaine yield in Colombia, the world’s top cocaine exporter, from 2022 to 2023.
Petro has struggled to reduce coca crop cultivation, a key U.S. metric for whether producing nations are cooperating with counter-narcotics operations.
His administration has focused on crop substitution, hoping to encourage coca farmers to shift to legal agricultural economies, but the programs have been dogged with problems.
The Trump administration also criticized Petro’s faltering “total peace” plan, which established ceasefires with armed groups, many of which are involved in the cocaine trade. Analysts say groups took advantage of the ceasefires, which have largely collapsed, to increase coca and cocaine production.
In response to Trump’s comments, Petro countered that the reason for soaring cocaine production was not his failed crop eradication efforts but demand in the U.S. and Europe, the world’s largest consumer markets for the drug.
“To reduce coca leaf cultivation, what is needed is not glyphosate sprayed from planes, but a fundamental reduction in demand,” he wrote on X.
Despite the public humiliation for Petro, whose term ends in August 2026, analysts say Trump’s national interest waiver will come as a relief to the government.
“I think this is a rare moment when reason seems to have prevailed, when we can agree that there is work to be done, but that the U.S.-Colombia partnership does transcend some of those political disputes,” Elizabeth Dickinson, Senior Colombia Analyst at International Crisis Group, told Latin America Reports.
For weeks, senior government officials, including Minister of Defense Pedro Sanchez, have petitioned top Republicans not to cut military assistance amid Colombia’s mounting security crisis.
Their lobbying efforts appear to have worked, according to Dickinson, who described the national interest waiver as “an understanding that the more than quarter century long partnership between these two countries has delivered enormous amounts of results for both sides.”
But the analyst also noted that decertification, despite lacking material sanctions, may undermine the historic alliance in the eyes of Colombia’s security forces, who have fought on the front lines of counter-narcotics operations.
Nevertheless, the White House appeared keenly aware not to insult Colombia’s security forces, writing in its memorandum: “The failure of Colombia to meet its drug control obligations over the past year rests solely with its political leadership.”
The personal criticism of Petro and his administration comes amid surging tensions between Bogotá and Washington this year. In January, Trump threatened sweeping tariffs and sanctions on Colombia after Petro turned back two deportation flights – he capitulated shortly after.
Colombia has also formally increased ties with China this year, joining the Belt and Road Initiative in May and signing up to the BRICS development bank in June.
Relations further deteriorated after leaked recordings revealed Colombia’s former Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva seeking U.S. backing for a coup attempt to overthrow Petro. Washington and Bogota mutually withdrew their ambassadors during the spat.
Colombia has only been decertified twice before, in 1996 and 1997, when President Ernesto Samper refused to extradite criminals to the U.S. and was accused of taking money from narcotraffickers.
Trump threatened to decertify Colombia in 2017 during his first term, saying the government was not doing enough to reduce drug exports. Since then, coca and cocaine production has only proliferated.
Featured image description: Colombian National Police stand on guard after burning a coca laboratory near Tumaco
Featured image credit: Policía Nacional de los colombianos via Flickr
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