When President Biden declared Colombia a major non-NATO ally in 2019, he called it the “linchpin … to the whole hemisphere.” The designation, meant to reinforce economic and security cooperation between Colombia and the U.S., also recognized a unique 200-year relationship based on shared values: democracy, trust, rule of law, security and sovereignty.
In the early 21st century, bilateral cooperation in “Plan Colombia” had transformed the country from a near-failed state to the most reliable U.S. security partner in Latin America. Once besieged by violent narco-insurgencies it was powerless to combat, Colombia by 2016 had become an emerging economy with a burgeoning middle class and strong institutions.
The recent social media standoff between Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Trump portends a deterioration of the U.S.-Colombia relationship, which has been declining since 2022. The decoupling, examined alongside the doubling of cocaine production potential in Colombia in 2023, and the fact of a former violent revolutionary occupying the Casa Nariño, have several common causes. But seen under a broader lens, those causes can be linked to a stream of self-serving misinterpretations of the 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine — a policy originally intended to extend goodwill and protect fledgling South American democracies.
Last month’s war of words between the two populist presidents expressed mutual ill will and deep ideological differences. Petro refused to receive 200 deportees back to Colombia, citing inhumane treatment. Trump used economic leverage to bully Petro into submission, threatening immediate sanctions, tariffs and a freeze of Colombia’s aid. That furnished Petro fresh ammunition to rant about American arrogance and imperialism, his favorite grievance and a key component of his political messaging.
Trump’s exploitative version of the Monroe Doctrine only bolsters Petro’s propaganda power. In 2019 Trump invoked the doctrine in a speech to the United Nations, linking it to his brand of “America First” hegemony, and reducing it to “rejecting foreign interference,” which is code for China. Ironically, Trump’s bullying might drive Colombia into China’s arms.
The decline of positive U.S. engagement in Colombia had already contributed to the spread of faux-democratic thinking and disinformation-fueled populism throughout the hemisphere. Today U.S. policy in Latin America is reduced to one of two extremes, neglect or bullying. Neither supports Colombia’s democracy.
Biden’s policy of neglect in Colombia coincided with the inclusion of former guerrillas as prominent players in Colombian politics.
Mayor Elicier Camacho Gral, former general of the Colombian National Police, told me in an interview that Colombia declined rapidly from a sophisticated democracy to a destabilized territory with a compromised government where criminal groups have a presence in two-thirds of the nation. Many Colombians believe their first leftist president is more friendly to narco-terrorist groups than to the democratic state Colombia has arduously built.
To be sure, the Monroe Doctrine has been interpreted in varied ways, sometimes to justify military intervention and imperialism. But its original intent, as articulated in President Monroe’s seventh address to Congress, was to protect the Western Hemisphere from outside interventions and show respect for the sovereignty of governments that the U.S. recognized as independent.
It said that the U.S. “could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”
If transnational terrorist groups can be considered oppressors, Plan Colombia was a successful manifestation of the Monroe Doctrine. Colombian General Eliecer Camacho told me Colombia’s security crisis is related to the gradual dismantling of Plan Colombia in favor of the 2016 Peace Deal between the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the Colombian government, which he feels started an ethos of “permissiveness towards delinquency.”
“Contrary to popular opinion, the U.S.-Colombian partnership was a success,” he said.
Plan Colombia trained and modernized the national army into something capable of combating the armed insurgencies. It also trained and strengthened Colombia’s judiciary, ushering in an era of accountability and stability.
Today, Colombia is isolated, with a president complicit in institutionalizing impunity for terrorists. Until last month, there was no military or police presence in the volatile border region of Catatumbo, when a border-control war broke out between the ELN (National Liberation Army, now a proxy of the Venezuelan dictatorship) and FARC dissidents, in which 80 people died and 50,000 were displaced.
In response, Camacho said, “Petro sent forces to Catatumbo, but the military had already been drained of its strength — both financially and by the firing of leadership.”
But instead of declaring a state of conflict in the region, the president declared a 90-day state of emergency over all of Colombia. Camacho said, “Analysts believe the president is trying actually to increase the presence of delinquents, in order to take emergency controls to the point of staying in power in 2026.”
“For the United States, losing Colombia as a security ally is like losing Israel,” the general warned. Venezuela’s patronage of Iran’s Hezbollah and the ELN constitute a “grave security threat to Colombia and the entire hemisphere.”
Ingrid Serrato, a San Francisco-based immigration legal consultant, left her position in the Petro mayoral administration because of rampant corruption.
“Colombia’s democracy is falling apart under a false leftist discourse,” she told me. “Petro’s reforms have a criminal origin. They buy votes and reforms with the money they are stealing.”
From my experience living in Colombia, many there share her concern, as evidenced by the president’s 60 percent disapproval rate of 60 percent.
There is a hidden link between self-oriented U.S. foreign policies and the rise of faux democracies in South America. “America First” threatens everything in its barbaric path, from security to trust to public opinion. Colombia doesn’t need a vacuum or a bully; it needs trustworthy partners. Trumpism is the opposite; it lacks the goodwill necessary to build trust.
Deconstructionists want to tear down all that has been built together for the public good. Amid the ensuing gloom, it’s imperative for democracy builders to cling to those values that have historically brought people together, instead of those that tear us apart.
Kristina Foltz is a Rotary ambassadorial scholar. She writes on U.S.-Latin American affairs
