Colombia's President Gustavo Petro, left, and Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez at the General Santander Police Academy in Bogota in November, 2025.RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP/Getty Images
Colombia’s Minister of Defence says his country does not see the United States as a threat and warned against being “distracted by the noise,” after U.S. President Donald Trump expressed support for a military operation against the South American country.
Mr. Trump issued a new warning to Colombia on Sunday, saying it is “run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he’s not going to be doing it very long.” He was speaking days after a U.S. military operation seized Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and took him to New York.
When asked by a reporter if he was considering military action against Colombia, Mr. Trump said, “Sounds good to me,” his latest threat against a country whose President, Gustavo Petro, has accused Mr. Trump of war crimes.
Colombia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry has dismissed Mr. Trump’s comments as undue interference in its internal affairs, and Mr. Petro, a former guerrilla fighter, warned that arresting him would “unleash the popular jaguar” in his country.
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But Pedro Sánchez, Colombia’s Defence Minister, said the heated rhetoric has done nothing to disrupt co-operation between the two countries, particularly in their efforts to combat drug production and trafficking.
“We do not see the United States as a threat, nor does the United States see Colombia as if we were their enemies,” Mr. Sánchez told The Globe and Mail in an interview Monday from the Ministry of Defence headquarters.
“We must not be distracted by the noise that some comments made by people around some statements may generate,” he added. “What we must focus on is affecting the cancer of drug trafficking – transnational organized crime.”
Mr. Sánchez, a retired air force major-general, dismissed the verbal jousting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Petro, saying “Colombia’s international positions regarding different situations belong to the President of the Republic of Colombia.”
But, he said, nothing has changed in how the militaries of Colombia and the U.S. work alongside each other.
“If any channel of international co-operation were to break, drug traffickers would win.”
The Globe’s Nathan VanderKlippe is at the border between Colombia and Venezuela. He says steady cross-border traffic reflects the “temporary stability” in the region.
The Globe and Mail
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime, in its most recent report on Colombia, said the country’s land cultivated for coca bush had risen 10 per cent in 2023, with potential cocaine production rising to 2,664 tonnes – up 53 per cent year-over-year, capping a decade-long rise.
Mr. Petro, the country’s first leftist president, took office promising a public-health-focused response to narcotics, offering agricultural substitution programs instead of aerial spraying to kill coca plants.
There is no evidence he is personally involved in drug trafficking, said Sebastián Bitar, a political scientist at the University of the Andes.
But “I do think that he has been a complete failure in dealing with drug trafficking, and this is very worrying. I know that the U.S. government is quite preoccupied with the lack of results and the expansion of coca cultivation,” Prof. Bitar said.
That record has likely informed Mr. Trump’s views on Colombia.
“Everything he hears from Marco Rubio is that Gustavo Petro is a disaster. And he is,” Prof. Bitar said.
Mr. Petro, meanwhile, has found political currency in sparring with the U.S. President.
“He wants to be seen as this great hero who is attacked by the U.S.,” Prof. Bitar said. “It’s quite useful for him to have this narrative that he is being persecuted by an unjust empire.”
At the same time, Mr. Petro is a legitimately elected leader, unlike Mr. Maduro.
And the institutions of Colombian justice and defence continue to work well alongside their U.S. counterparts, Prof. Bitar said. For that reason, he does not expect the White House to follow through on military threats against Colombia.
In Venezuela, the Trump administration appears prepared to accept hostile rhetoric from its new leader, former vice-president Delcy Rodríguez, as long as she demonstrates a willingness to act in U.S. interests.
Similarly, “they don’t care if Petro is out there saying awful things about the U.S., as long as co-operation and obedience is observed.”
For Mr. Sánchez, the Defence Minister, the U.S. seizure of Mr. Maduro has brought other problems, including the potential for drug traffickers and cartel members to leave Venezuela and cross into Colombia.
He expects Colombia’s National Liberation Army, a powerful armed group known locally as ELN, to “try to establish itself even more” in Catatumbo, an area that has seen a resurgence in violence over the past year, forcing tens of thousands to flee and leaving dozens dead.
“We are 100 per cent activated with intelligence and operational capabilities to confront and neutralize them as soon as conditions allow, even to use bombing as we have done during recent months here in Colombia,” he said.
He added that the country has also worked to combat cocaine production in ways that have not yet been recognized by United Nations statistics, which haven’t been updated in more than a year.
Colombia, he said, interdicted nearly 1,000 tonnes of cocaine last year, and with the measures it has taken, he believes growth in cultivation “has stalled and is reaching an inflection point to reduce production.”