[News] War on drugs or war for trusteeship? Petro tears down US narrative

[Anti-Imperialist News]

english.almayadeen.net 
<https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/war-on-drugs-or-war-for-trusteeship--petro-tears-down-us-nar> 



  War on drugs or war for trusteeship? Petro tears down US narrative

Al Mayadeen English
November 9, 2025
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gustavo Petro’s bold accusations against Colombian conservatives 
reignite scrutiny of the US-backed drug war, revealing how it has long 
served geopolitical control rather than justice.

  * War on drugs or War for custodianship? Petro tears down US narrative
    <https://alpha-en-media.almayadeen.net/media/image/2025/11/9/b44b5472-6c16-4316-a849-32693225f90e.jpg?v=3&width=1000>
    A man wears a shirt with an image of US President Donald Trump
    during a government-organized rally against foreign meddling, in
    Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025 (/AP/)

When Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced he could prove close 
links between right-wing Colombian politicians and the country’s 
powerful cocaine-trafficking networks, Washington largely brushed them 
aside.

But his declaration pierced the core of a decades-long US hypocrisy, one 
in which the so-called war on drugs has often served as a smokescreen 
for propping up the top tier, while turning a blind eye to their ties 
with the very cartels the war claims to tussle with.

For more than half a century, the United States has used the “war on 
drugs” not merely to fight narcotics but also to go after Latin American 
governments that stray from its geopolitical orbit. From Colombia to 
Venezuela, drug policy has become an instrument of trusteeship, a 
convenient moral cloak for regime-change ambitions 
<https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/inside-rubio-s-push-for-government-change-in-venezuela--drop>.

Petro’s remarks, amplified by journalist Ben Norton in a post on X, 
pointed directly at conservative Colombian figures who, he said, 
traveled to Washington to meet allies of Senator Marco Rubio.

The president said these politicians had “direct or family links with 
the cocaine-trafficking mafias of Colombia.”

One photo Norton shared tells its own story: in 2014, Rubio appeared 
alongside former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe and other right-wing 
politicians. Uribe, once Washington’s most loyal partner in the Andean 
region, has long faced accusations, some documented in US intelligence 
reports, of connections to paramilitary groups that financed themselves 
through narcotics.

Rubio, in a recent X post, even called the judicial pursuit of Uribe a 
"witch hunt".

The narcotics allegations are not new. Declassified US Defense 
Intelligence Agency documents from 1991, released years later, by the 
National Security Archive, included Uribe among figures “linked to 
narcotics trafficking.”


    Uribe-Escobar ties

The released US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report from 1991 
unmasked that then-Senator Álvaro Uribe Vélez, President of Colombia 
from August 7, 2002, to August 7, 2010, was a “close personal friend of 
Pablo Escobar” and collaborated with the Medellín drug cartel “at high 
government levels.”

The document describes Uribe as one of several high-profile Colombian 
figures connected to the cartel’s narcotics operations.

The declassified intelligence memo 
<https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB131/dia910923.pdf>, dated 
September 23, 1991, lists Uribe among “important Colombian 
narco-traffickers contracted by the Colombian cartels for security, 
transportation, distribution, collection, and enforcement.” Although 
parts of the report remain censored, it notes that some of its 
information was cross-verified with other agencies.

According to the DIA document, Uribe “was linked to a business involved 
in narcotics activities in the United States” and “worked for the 
Medellín cartel,” led by Escobar until his death in 1993. It further 
states that Uribe participated in Escobar’s political campaign and, as a 
senator, “attacked all forms of the extradition treaty” with the US.

The document was declassified in May 2004 following a Freedom of 
Information Act request by the National Security Archive. Its 
classification markings, “CONFIDENTIAL NOFORN WNINTEL,”  indicate that 
it contained sensitive intelligence not meant for foreign dissemination.

Michael Evans, director of the Archive’s Colombia Documentation Project, 
said that while the report’s sources and evaluation comments were not 
declassified, US intelligence officials deemed it serious enough to 
distribute to analysts in Washington.

Uribe’s name appears as number 82 on the list, alongside notorious 
figures including Escobar.


      A political chameleon

That same year, and after the enlistment of Uribe, then-US President 
George W. Bush visited Colombia under heavy security, including 
warplanes, battleships, and 15,000 troops, to praise what he painted as 
the country’s campaign against narcotics and insurgents.

Standing alongside Uribe, Bush claimed the operation was succeeding, 
asserting that “this courageous nation can win its war against 
narcoterrorists.”

Bush lauded what he described as “significant progress” under Uribe in 
curbing drug production and weakening rebel forces. “The number of acres 
under cultivation are down significantly,” he said. “The number of 
arrests are up. The number of murders is down. In other words, this 
man’s plan is working.”

Bush also reaffirmed US support for Plan Colombia, the $3.3 billion 
military and anti-drug initiative launched in 2000. “We will request 
enough funds to make the plan effective,” he said, alleging its 
importance in combating “narcoterrorists.”

“We have made progress, but the serpent is still alive,” Uribe remarked 
at the time, a striking admission from a leader hailed in Washington as 
a pillar of anti-narcotics reform. But to critics, Uribe was less a hero 
than a political chameleon, adept at shifting tones to blend into a 
carefully curated image of integrity, all while operating within a 
system deeply stained by ties to drug cartels.


    The myth of “Plan Colombia”

To understand today’s tension between Petro and Washington, one must 
revisit Plan Colombia. Allegedly designed to eradicate coca and combat 
insurgents, the plan militarized vast regions of Colombia, deepened 
dependence on US security contractors, and displaced hundreds of 
thousands of rural civilians.

Academic assessments, including a study by economist Daniel Mejía titled 
"PlanColombia: An Analysis of Effectiveness and Costs 
<https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/mejia-colombia-final-2.pdf>," 
published by Foreign Policy at Brookings, concluded that while the 
program led to short-term declines in coca cultivation, it had minimal 
long-term impact and failed to produce meaningful improvements in social 
and economic development. The findings underscore the limitations of 
militarized drug policies and raise serious questions about the 
sustainability of Washington’s flagship “counter-narcotics” scheme.

But Plan Colombia’s real success lay elsewhere: it secured US 
geopolitical dominance in northern South America and tied Colombian 
security elites to Washington’s strategic priorities.

That is how Uribe’s presidency became a laboratory for fusing 
counter-insurgency with counter-narcotics, an approach exported later to 
Mexico under the Mérida Initiative. The drug war thus became a 
profitable business for US defense firms and a political weapon against 
left-wing movements.

Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, threatens that legacy. His 
foreign policy emphasizes regional integration with Venezuela and 
Brazil, peace attempts with insurgent groups, and an end to fumigation 
campaigns that devastated rural ecosystems. For Washington’s hawks, such 
autonomy is intolerable. Smear campaigns branding Petro as soft on crime 
<https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/us-adds-colombia-to-drug-list--drawing-petro-s-rebuke>, 
or insinuating ties between his allies and traffickers, echo Cold War 
tactics used to discredit reformist governments across the Global South.


    Venezuela: The perpetual scapegoat

The same script plays out next door. Since the early 2000s, successive 
US administrations have accused Venezuela’s leadership of running the 
so-called “Cartel de los Soles 
<https://www.state.gov/translations/spanish/el-departamento-del-tesoro-sanciona-a-un-cartel-venezolano-dirigido-por-maduro>,” 
a claim largely unsubstantiated by international courts but endlessly 
recycled in US media. The accusation serves a political purpose: to 
paint the Bolivarian government as a "narco-state" and justify sanctions 
that have crippled the country’s economy.

Professor of Comparative Politics at the School of Public Policy, 
Central European University, Julia Buxton has shown how these sanctions 
<https://blogs.shu.edu/journalofdiplomacy/files/2018/06/Defusing-Venezuela.pdf>, 
far from promoting democracy, have strangled the legal economy and 
empowered illicit networks.

Washington’s narrative thus becomes self-fulfilling: sanctions produce 
scarcity and criminality, which are then cited as evidence of what they 
dub "the regime’s corruption." Meanwhile, Venezuelan officials argue 
that the true traffickers operate with impunity through US-backed 
Colombian intermediaries, using Caribbean routes protected by Western 
intelligence cooperation.

This dynamic intensified after the US placed bounties on Venezuelan 
leaders in 2020, accusing them of “narco-terrorism". While no credible 
international body corroborated those claims, the US and co. used drug 
trafficking as a pretext for naval deployments in the Caribbean and 
covert support to opposition groups. Today’s sporadic US strikes in the 
region 
<https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/new-us-strike-on-alleged-drug-boat-in-caribbean-kills-three>, 
justified as "anti-smuggling operations", echo the same logic: policing 
the hemisphere under the banner of drug control while targeting 
governments that refuse to align with Washington.


    Drugs as diplomacy by other means

Behind the moral rhetoric lies a cynical calculus. The global cocaine 
trade, worth more than $130 billion annually based on figures referenced 
in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 
<https://www.unodc.org/unodc/data-and-analysis/world-drug-report-2025.html> 
Report 2025, cannot thrive without financial systems that launder its 
profits. Major Western banks, from Wachovia to HSBC, have been fined for 
processing 
<https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/hsbc-holdings-plc-and-hsbc-bank-usa-na-admit-anti-money-laundering-and-sanctions-violations> 
drug money, yet none of their executives faced prison. The selective 
enforcement of justice mirrors the selective definition of “narco-states".

Today, Colombia and Venezuela sit at opposite poles of this hypocrisy. 
Uribe's Colombia, under right-wing leadership, was rewarded with aid and 
free-trade agreements despite being the world’s largest cocaine 
producer. Venezuela, after nationalizing its oil sector and defying US 
interests, was branded a criminal enterprise.

Petro’s attempt to expose the nexus between Colombian elites, US 
politicians, and drug cartels touches a nerve precisely because it 
inverts the narrative. Instead of a benevolent United States rescuing 
Latin America from narcotics, he depicts a system in which US power has 
long relied on those same flows to maintain leverage. Washington’s 
decades-long presence in Colombian military bases, its training 
programs, and its intelligence sharing all operate under the premise 
that controlling drug routes equals controlling politics.


    A region pushes back

Across Latin America, governments are beginning to question this 
premise. Former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has 
repeatedly accused the US Drug Enforcement Administration of violating 
sovereignty 
<https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/mexicans--united-against-any-interference--in-country--shein>. 
Bolivia restored relations with Venezuela and expelled US 
counternarcotics agents years ago. And now Petro calls for a new 
paradigm 
<https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/gustavo-petro-slams-drug-abuse-claims-by-ex-minister-as--sla>.

These shifts terrify Washington’s foreign-policy establishment because 
they erode the ideological foundation of US dominance in the hemisphere. 
A drug war that no longer convinces Latin Americans of its moral purpose 
becomes transparently political.

The latest wave of US hostility toward Petro’s government, and the 
military pressure on Venezuela’s borders, must therefore be understood 
not as isolated reactions but as attempts to reassert control over a 
region moving toward multipolarity 
<https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/donroe-doctrine--trump-s-neocolonial-drive-in-latin-america>.


    Cost of US hypocrisy

The human toll of this weaponized drug war is staggering. In Colombia, 
aerial fumigation destroyed food crops and poisoned rivers. In 
Venezuela, sanctions have deprived hospitals of medicine and pushed 
millions into migration. Yet the architects of these policies continue 
to preach about democracy and human rights. Their real objective, as 
history shows, is to prevent any government from using its natural 
resources outside US dictates.

Petro’s challenge and Venezuela’s defiance represent more than national 
struggles; they are part of a continental demand for sovereignty.

Today, every “anti-narcotics” mission will carry the stench of 
geopolitical manipulation.

The United States may have built its global influence on the rhetoric of 
law and order, but Latin America has long learned to read between the 
lines. The so-called war on drugs was never truly about narcotics; it 
was a pretext for regime change, military aggression 
<https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/maduro--war-on-venezuela-aims-at-regime-change-and-oil-theft>, 
and the extraction of resources.

Today, in a shifting geopolitical landscape marked by rising 
multipolarity and regional defiance, Washington’s grip is loosening, and 
its old playbook is losing credibility 
<https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/petro-renews-call-for-gran-colombia-union-to-unify-latin-ame>.

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