On January 26, days after U.S. President Donald Trump was inaugurated for the second time, Colombian President Gustavo Petro provoked his country’s most significant bilateral crisis with Washington in over 30 years by refusing to accept Colombian deportees from the United States. The Trump administration immediately retaliated with 25 percent tariffs on imports from Colombia, a ban on Colombian government officials’ entering the United States, and a slowdown in inspections of incoming Colombian cargo and visitors. Colombia capitulated within hours, and the crisis was resolved. But the confrontation set the tone for relations going forward.

In the months since, the two countries have careened from crisis to crisis. Petro’s outspoken condemnation of U.S. policies irritated Washington, as did his failure to distance himself from China and Venezuela, two U.S. adversaries. Petro repeatedly denounced U.S. military strikes on alleged drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, going so far as to call Trump a war criminal and urging American troops to disobey his orders. In response, the U.S. State Department revoked the American visas of Petro and members of his inner circle and applied sanctions against other Colombian officials, freezing their assets in the United States and denying them access to the U.S. banking system.

Separately, Petro’s failure to control crime and narcotics production within Colombia, an enforcement effort that had been at the heart of the traditional bilateral relationship, merited and received a sharp response from Washington. In September, the United States “decertified” Colombia—that is, found that it had not met its international counternarcotic obligations—for the first time in nearly 30 years. The following month, Trump called Petro an “illegal drug dealer” and announced an end to all U.S. aid to Colombia. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later hedged, suggesting that U.S. support for some security activities might continue. (In 2024, the United States provided Colombia with nearly $590 million, according to the U.S. State Department.)

After decades of successful cooperation on fighting drug trafficking and transnational crime, relations between Colombia and the United States are at a historic nadir and precipitously getting worse. “I hear Colombia, the country of Colombia, is making cocaine,” Trump told reporters earlier this month. “They have cocaine manufacturing plants, OK, and then they sell us their cocaine. . . . Anybody that’s doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack.” Responding on social media, Petro invited Trump to come to Colombia to observe the destruction of cocaine laboratories, which he said happens at a rate of one every 40 minutes. He added, “Do not threaten our sovereignty, because you will awaken the jaguar.” Petro has also warned against U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, calling any such operation an “aggression against Latin America.” Speaking to reporters a week later, Trump doubled down on his threat to move on Colombia, singling out Petro: “He better wise up—or he’ll be next.”

It is now possible that the U.S.-Colombian relationship could collapse entirely, bringing an end to the array of political, diplomatic, law enforcement, military, and judicial cooperation developed over the last four decades. For Colombia, a definitive break would dramatically worsen security, especially in rural areas, and enable armed groups to extend their reach in neighboring countries and potentially foment instability on Colombia’s borders. The United States, having lost a key partner in the region, would see its ability to confront transnational crime curtailed. A rupture is an outcome neither side should want—but under the current administrations in Bogotá and Washington, it may be difficult to avoid.

Cooperation on security and law enforcement between the United States and Colombia began in the 1980s at the height of what came to be known as the Escobar era, a time when the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar and his Medellín cartel were smuggling more than 80 tons of cocaine into the United States each month while terrorizing the Colombian people. By the late 1990s, a Marxist insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known by its Spanish acronym, FARC), used profits from the cocaine trade to create a 14,000-member army that represented an existential threat to the Colombian state. In response, the Clinton administration established Plan........

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