--- title: "Colombia Just Joined Trump's Cartel War" description: "Fronts video analysis of Colombia Just Joined Trump's Cartel War, with context on conflict, defense, and security." url: https://fronts.co/videos/colombia-just-joined-trumps-cartel-war.md canonical: https://fronts.co/videos/colombia-just-joined-trumps-cartel-war/ datePublished: 2026-08-19T20:10:46.000Z dateModified: 2026-08-19T20:10:46.000Z author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://fronts.co/authors/simon-whistler/ publisher: Fronts image: "https://media.fronts.co/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,height=630,fit=cover,gravity=auto,quality=80,format=auto/images/articles/colombia-just-joined-trumps-cartel-war-f1bb2a4d.png" type: NewsArticle language: en access: members isAccessibleForFree: false tokens: 4296 --- Earlier this year, the United States went ahead and set up a brand new military coalition for itself. Because what else are you going to do between raids on Caracas and Tehran? While the second Trump administration hasn't been particularly keen on multilateral alliances, this one is the major exception. An alliance that relies heavily on Uncle Sam empowering other countries while avoiding doing any heavy lifting himself. We are talking, of course, about the shield of the Americas. And the other day, this alliance got its latest member, Colombia, under new president Abelardo de la Esprea. You know, the guy who's been campaigning on going full Nayib Bukele against the cartels and insurgents fighting his nation. And now he's got a superpower and 18 other governments standing behind him. So with all of that firepower, just what is Esprea ultimately bringing to the table here? And what does this new U.S.-Colombia security alliance mean for the Trump administration's war on cartels? Back in business. Esprea, or El Tigre, as his supporters like to call him, has been president of Colombia for all of 12 days. And he has wasted precious little time in rushing to undo just about all of his predecessor, Gustavo Petro's policies. Several of these were pretty straightforward. Petro had spent years championing unilateral ceasefires and negotiations with armed groups that Abelardo, fresh off a campaign where he became internationally recognized for declaring total war, had no intention of continuing. The first few days were bound to feature a heavy emphasis on rhetoric to signal that there was a new sheriff in town. And this sheriff was not interested in sitting down and discussing things. He got straight to it too. Rather than being sworn in before Congress in Bogota, Esprea did so late at night in Cali, which is one of the most violent parts of the country. By the time the sun had come up, Colombia didn't just have a new president. The total peace plan that had been championed by his predecessor, Gustavo Petro, was officially canned and total war was on. This wasn't just a handbrake turn on domestic policy, but also on foreign policy. Petro had long been a thorn in the side of the Trump administration. By the time last September rolled around, they'd lost their patience with him and determined that Bogota failed demonstrably to meet its obligations on counter-narcotics and trafficking. A fine the U.S. hadn't handed down on Colombia in nearly 30 years, and one that carries an automatic partial suspension of aid. Trump waived the penalty on a temporary basis, but the message was clear. This relationship is falling apart. Something hammered home when the administration sanctioned four Colombians over their alleged involvement in the drug trade. Petro's son, his wife, his interior minister, and Petro himself. Yeah, it was that bad. Keep in mind, this wasn't Cuba or Venezuela that Washington was targeting. This was Colombia, the country in Latin America that has been the most resolutely pro-U.S., working in close coordination with Washington for the better part of three decades to get their security problems under control. Washington's operation, Plan Colombia, had moved north of $10 billion into the country since 2000, along with helicopters, staff to train pilots, and the U.S. intelligence apparatus that put commanders of FARC, the Marxist guerrilla army that fought the Colombian state between 1964 and 2016, in the crosshairs. For a while, Colombia was Washington's only friend in the entirety of South America. Well, as of 12 days ago, that relationship is seemingly back on. Within hours of Esprea taking office, the State Department announced that the U.S. intends to announce $1 billion in assistance for the new administration, ostensibly to support Abelardo in the crackdown on gangs that he's spent the better part of a year promising. Apparently, not being Gustavo Petro does come with a premium. And then a few days later, that relationship took off beyond merely being about money. In a meeting in Panama City, Esprea's defense minister, Jorge Eduardo Mora, down with U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and signed a military cooperation memo bringing Colombia into the U.S.-led counter-cartel coalition, known as the Shield of the Americas, as its 19th member. Now, if you're thinking, the what? Is it a wrestler or something? Well, don't worry. It is relatively new, and it is something that hasn't been getting much coverage, you know, given everything else that's been going on in the world. But from the signs of it, we're going to be hearing a lot more from this organization in the years to come. Shields Up For much of the last century, Latin America was dismissed by most U.S. presidential administrations, place that everyone kind of knew was close and guessed was probably important, but didn't get a fraction of the bandwidth that the Middle East, Indo-Pacific, or Europe got. The reasons for that apathy are a subject for another video. But suffice it to say, the region was often forgotten about until the situation on the southern U.S. border became truly chaotic, and suddenly everyone remembered that there are over two dozen countries to its south. That apathy even kind of survived Trump's first term. Despite the president's insistence on building the wall and discussing border security, actual engagement with the region largely just rested on linking aid to whether governments were willing to stop people long before they reached U.S. soil. None of it worked, and Biden's approach was similarly hands-off. He aimed billions of dollars at development projects to tackle the root causes of migration. In short, the region was always seen as a problem to be managed by Washington rather than a collection of countries with priorities of their own. throughout all of that, there has been a steady shift to the right across much of Latin America, trend we covered in depth over on our sister channel, Homefronts. Check it out, by the way. Curiously, Colombia was one of the few to buck that trend. Bogota has long enjoyed a very close relationship with Washington, and since independence from Spain in 1819, had really never had a left-wing government. That changed in 2022 when they elected Gustavo Petro, a former member of the M19 Marxist guerrilla movement who had spent over a year behind bars for possession of illegal weapons and explosives. Although he'd long transitioned to a regular political figure running Bogota as mayor for a stint in the mid-2010s, his ideas were very irregular. He championed a chief peace across all the different insurgent groups by having the government declare unilateral ceasefires and unconditional negotiations with all of them hence total peace spoiler alert on that one it did not work while petro was pursuing total peace other latin american leaders were going in the opposite direction the obvious example is el salvador's naib bukele but ecuador's daniel naboa also launched a manodura crackdown as did honduras and other nations and then trump returned to the white house apparently determined to pursue as close a relationship as possible with latin america's new rights mostly this has taken the form of his bromance with argentina's javier malay who he has repeatedly lauded as his favorite president but it also included the new wave of security focused leaders in spring of this year that burgeoning network of friendships got a formal name headquarters and even its own flag fantastic trump announced the shield of the america's initiative on march 5th and formally launched it two days later at a summit held naturally at his own golf resort in miami he somewhat controversially handed the reins of the newfound organization over to christine gnome who was on her way out of heading the department of homeland security where she'd created such a hardline social media focused persona for herself that she got parodied on south park 12 countries joined at launch including argentina el salvador and costa rica since then they've been joined by a steady trickle as many more right-wing governments took office across the continents like peru and now colombia but while the shield of the americas has the potential to be the next big thing in security in the western hemisphere it's nevertheless gotten off to a rather lackluster start one of the most central tactics has been u.s forces striking boats allegedly carrying drugs heading north but that was something well underway before the organization was created they've also tailed off since june with no sign of starting back up possibly a sign that the u.s has slightly more important issues to deal with iran right now one area the organization has done something genuinely new though is ecuador the same month that it debuted ecuadorian special forces began raiding drug facilities with u.s personnel helping coordinate with them on the logistics feeding them intelligence in real time and hegseth himself having weighed in to order southcom the u.s military command responsible for all of latin america to support what the pentagon was calling the lethal kinetic operations one of these strikes flattened a training camp in sucumbios belonging to a colombian dissident group that had taken up across the border ecuadorian president daniel naboa ended up posting the video of the place going up in flames himself that arrangement more than any of the boat strikes seems at least at the time of recording in august 2026 to be what the shield is actually built around the phrase that keeps popping up in pentagon statements on the matter is burden sharing which is well in line with the broader push from washington to reduce its share of the heavy lifting and while europe and now south korea have taken the lion's share of the blame publicly under Trump's two terms, there's also a genuine eagerness for the US's newfound American allies to be doing more of the heavy lifting. At that same Panama meeting where Colombia signed itself up to be part of the team, the US general who runs all of this, Francis Donovan, told The Room that the coalition now needed to become, quote, a functional organization to fight the enemy, end quote. And it does seem as though Washington has a plan, or at the very least, concepts of a plan on how to push forward. They're currently working to figure out which country is going to take responsibility for what corner of the region and oversee the containment of which criminal groups. If all goes well, they should have a written game plan come November. And so, Colombia's timing was near perfect. Defense Minister Jorge Eduardo Mora reportedly spent the meeting arguing that Bogota should be handed the lead on both the Caribbean and the Pacific, rather than waiting to be assigned something. But as Washington can tell you, from its experience going toe to toe with Iran over the last half year, sprinting headfirst into battle and emerging victorious are two completely separate things, which might be a lesson that Esperea is about to learn the hard way. A paper tiger Overall, it is pretty clear why Esperea would be eager to sign up for a group like the Shield of the Americas. Generous checks from Washington, assistance in getting his country's military in tip-top shape, of his other right-wing American buddies to hang out with. I mean, how could he possibly say no? question, though, is whether he could actually deliver. Because while everyone likes to point to El Salvador as evidence that Mano Dura policies can work, we also already have counter examples in Mexico and Ecuador of it failing to stem the tide of Ireland's. Esperea's version of Mano Dura, the one that starts by taking up the men at the top of the organizations, happens to be the part that he's best equipped for. After all, finding commanders in the world is fundamentally an intelligence side problem, and Washington can, with pretty minimal effort, step in to assist him whatever he'd need to do to track these guys down and get the job done. In fact, that's more or less the exact plan they rolled out in Ecuador earlier this year. Whether catching the top guys actually accomplishes much of anything, separate question, and the research on it is not very encouraging. That method, also known as the kingpin strategy, has been attempted in countless conflicts across the Americas and beyond, and in almost all the cases it was tried, it led to a similar outcome. Violence in the group's respective territory tends to dip for a few months, then climb once again as the group almost inevitably splinters during the resulting succession crisis. And once that fighting does break out, it's usually game over for the peaceniks. Mexico is something of the case study here. Former President Calderon's forces ultimately took down 25 of the country's 37 most wanted kingpins, and then watched four major cartels with bad track records of violence fracture into nearly two dozen, most of whom made the old guys look like the model of gentlemanly restraint. Ciudad Juarez took the worst of it going from a few hundred murders a year to over 3 000 in 2010 alone as the sinaloa cartel moved in and largely mowed down the juarez gang colombia knows this better than most in the region given that they've gone through this process twice already breaking the medellin and kali cartels both ended up scattering their cocaine business across huge swaths of the colombian interior rather than ending it and just a quick reminder here that colombia faces not just drug cartels but also left-wing insurgents and right-wing paramilitaries with decades of experience fighting the state arrests on the other hand typically produce better results than the kingpin strategy which is doubtlessly why esprea is leaving so heavily towards the bukele model locking people up carried real weight for colombia in the past their prison population quadrupled between 1994 and 2014 amidst a broad decline in violence though it should be noted that during the same time the reduction in violence was also matched with a serious professionalization campaign of the state's security forces but if esprea is going to attempt both at once he's going to be facing some serious shortages of where to actually put the people he wants to arrest colombia's prison system is already overcrowded holding some 103 000 inmates inside facilities built for 82 000 they also do so while short no fewer than 12 000 guards which has led to the gangs essentially running many of the prisons themselves the minimal guards that the country does have on hand are able to keep them in but once you're past that entrance gate you're in gangland that's why he's been leaning quite so heavily into building bukele star mega prisons it's basically a fresh start he doesn't have to worry about regaining control over crumbling facilities that had been gang run since the nixon administration and it would also enable him to avoid any mexico-style collapse following kingpin operations the colombian state is already quite cash strapped and the question of how i was going to afford the 10 separate mega prisons that esperea was calling for has always been in question already since taking office that plan has shrunk from 10 down to seven and the other day when he was in cali he confirmed that he would be proceeding with their construction but wouldn't say where any of them would go how large they'd be when work might actually get started on these things or who was going to pay for them throughout the campaign his answer to the question of who's paying for all this was basically a don't look at me instead he'd just let private companies build and run them under leases though they would be guarded by an entirely new prison corps that was to be made up of military veterans so if esperea is looking to arrest his way out of the current situation he's certainly going to need more room and a lot of it armed group membership across colombia climbed from somewhere around 15 000 when petro took office to more than 27 000 earlier this year and that's just the full-time armed paramilitary soldiers alone once you add all the other smaller time gangs and local criminal groups you're looking at tens of thousands more while the failure of the total peace plan is likely to dominate petro's legacy if there is one thing he had going for him it's that he recognized that there had to be progress made by way of development in the rural areas so that people had something else to do other than entering the crime business the fear now is that colombia will swing from a left-wing populist who got development right but ignored security to a right-wing populist who will focus exclusively on security to the detriment of development and that's the bigger issue sitting underneath all the checks and coalition memos colombia has been down the enforcement road before and what eventually turned things around was doing both at once whether colombia's new president is any more capable of balancing these two priorities than his predecessor is something we'll just have to wait and find out thank you for watching