The verbal escalation between US President Donald Trump and his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, has reached a new fever pitch. In a message on the social network Truth this Sunday, the Republican president accused the Colombian president of being “a drug trafficking leader who encourages massive drug production, both in large and small fields, throughout Colombia.” Petro, for his part, responded with a brief message on X in which he claimed that Trump is being “deceived” by his advisors. “I recommend you read Colombia carefully and determine which side the narcos are on and which the Democrats are on,” said the Colombian president.

Tensions between the two leaders have been growing since last week, when Trump ordered, in an extrajudicial military operation, the bombing of a submarine at shallow depths in the Caribbean Sea that was allegedly carrying a drug shipment. The Republican claimed it was a drug boat from Venezuela. But Petro suspects the attack took place in Colombian waters and that the submarine was crewed by citizens of that country.

In fact, one of the survivors of the US military attack is Colombian, and the other is Ecuadorian. Both have been repatriated to their countries, Trump announced this Saturday. Petro confirmed shortly afterward that he had already received the Colombian."We are glad he is alive and he will be prosecuted according to the law," he wrote on social media.

The Colombian president echoed a report from RTVC, the public media outlet. “The boat attacked on September 16 was Colombian. It had one engine [pointing] upward, indicating damage, and was turned off. It was presumably in Colombian waters. The person there was a fisherman who has not returned home. Alert the Attorney General’s Office,” he wrote on X, without detailing the scope of that instruction or whether it referred to a single vessel.

Shortly afterward, he added that US officials"have committed murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters." "We await explanations from the US government," he concluded.

The two leaders' verbal exchange has soured relations between two countries with close trade ties. Washington is Bogotá's main commercial and military partner."[Drug trafficking] has become Colombia's biggest business by far, and Petro is doing nothing to stop it, despite massive payments and subsidies from the United States, which are nothing more than a long-term scam," Trump tweeted Sunday."As of today, these payments, or any other form of payment or subsidy, will cease to be made to Colombia," the Republican threatened.

“The main enemy,” Petro said on the X network this Sunday, “that drug trafficking had in Colombia was the one who exposed its ties to Colombia's political powers in the 21st century. That was me.”

Seventh attack on a drug boat

While the exchange between the two leaders was taking place, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth reported in a post on X about another military attack, without judicial or congressional authorization, on an alleged drug boat that, according to his version, was crewed by Colombian guerrillas. “On October 17, at the direction of President Trump, the War Department conducted a lethal attack against a vessel affiliated with the National Liberation Army (ELN), a designated terrorist organization, operating in the United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) area of responsibility,” Hegseth wrote.

This is the seventh such operation by the US military in recent weeks against vessels in the Caribbean Sea. Hegseth explained that there were three crew members aboard the alleged drug boat, but there are no survivors. Thus, the death toll from these military operations has risen to 33."Our intelligence had knowledge that the vessel was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was navigating a known drug trafficking route, and was transporting substantial quantities of narcotics," stated the Secretary of Defense, who heads the newly renamed War Department.

The White House has described these operations as"acts of war," even though they contradict both the principles of international law and the US legal system.

The head of military affairs compared drug trafficking organizations to Islamic terrorists. “These cartels are the al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere, using violence, murder, and terrorism to impose their will, threaten our national security, and poison our people. The U.S. military will treat these organizations as the terrorists they are: they will be hunted down and destroyed, just like al-Qaeda,” Hegseth added.

Gustavo Petro has been very critical of the US military deployment in the Caribbean from the very beginning, despite the risk of further deteriorating his relations with Washington, which are going through a difficult time. “Petro, an unrecognized and very unpopular leader, a loudmouth about the United States, should close these [drug production] death camps immediately, or the United States will close them, and it won't be done nicely,” Trump wrote on his social media platform this Sunday.

Last Wednesday, the US president acknowledged that he had authorized"covert CIA actions" in Venezuelan territory, a decision reminiscent of Washington's years of interventionism in Latin America during the last third of the last century. Two days later, on Friday, he asserted:"We attacked a submarine. It was specifically designed for the mass transport of drugs. Just so you understand. It wasn't a group of innocent people. I don't know how many people have submarines."

Ideologically polar opposites and both very active on social media, Petro and Trump have already clashed head-on on more than one occasion. The most serious episode so far occurred at the beginning of the year, when they clashed over repatriation flights, which the Colombian initially rejected due to what he considered undignified treatment of deportees traveling in handcuffs. At that time, the Republican's tariff threat brought the Colombian economy to the brink, but the crisis was resolved in less than 24 hours.

The Colombian government has just suffered the dreaded decertification by Washington in the fight against narcotics, although until now it had avoided the worst sanctions. Furthermore, Petro's visa was revoked last month after what the State Department described as"reckless and incendiary actions" during a pro-Palestinian protest in New York. After addressing the United Nations General Assembly, with a speech in which he attacked Trump and proposed"an armed force to defend the lives of the Palestinian people," Petro participated in a demonstration to repudiate the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu's Israeli government. On the streets of New York, megaphone in hand, he urged US soldiers to disobey Trump's orders and obey"the order of humanity."