Colombian President Gustavo Petro — a far-left ideologue and staunch advocate for drug legalization — has officially suspended all intelligence cooperation with the United States, escalating an already fraught relationship over the U.S.’s intensified anti-narcotics operations in the Caribbean.
Petro made the dramatic announcement Tuesday on his official Twitter account, directly citing a CNN report that the United Kingdom had ceased intelligence sharing with the U.S. over concerns about the legality of American military strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats. Without naming officials or sources, the Colombian president stated unequivocally that no level of Colombian law enforcement or intelligence is to maintain communication with U.S. security agencies “as long as missile attacks on boats in the Caribbean continue.”
Petro’s decree appears aimed squarely at President Donald Trump, whose administration has spearheaded a series of aggressive interdiction operations in international waters. These operations — under the codename Arctic Frost — have already resulted in the destruction of multiple vessels and at least 76 reported deaths, targeting what the U.S. has designated as narco-trafficking operations run by Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s regime.
Se da orden a todos los niveles de la inteligencia de la fuerza pública suspender envío de comunicaciones y otros tratos con agencias de seguridad estadounidenses. Tal medida se mantendrá mientras se mantenga el ataque con misiles a lanchas en el Caribe. La lucha contra las… https://t.co/IZRWiL4s6t
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) November 11, 2025
But Petro, who has consistently opposed militarized drug enforcement, lashed out again at the characterization of the deceased as drug traffickers. In October, he referred to them not as criminals, but as “drug trafficking workers,” and accused the U.S. president of “murder.”
The irony, however, is that Petro’s decision to cut ties with U.S. intelligence appears to weaken Colombia more than it constrains the United States. Colombian analysts and security experts were swift to note that the information flow between the two nations is heavily one-sided — the U.S. provides Colombia with far more actionable intelligence than it receives.
Jorge Mantilla, a top conflict and intelligence analyst, told El Colombiano that while Petro’s move might project sovereignty on the surface, it’s “naive and ineffective” in practice. The decision jeopardizes Colombia’s role in critical international frameworks, such as the Egmont Group and NATO’s intelligence cooperation networks, which are built around collaboration with the U.S.
Erich Saumeth, another leading defense expert, suggested the policy shift was not only abrupt but politically reactive. “If the United Kingdom had not made that decision, it would never have crossed the Colombian president’s mind,” he said, pointing to a lack of any clear or coherent anti-narcotics strategy under Petro’s leadership.
Petro’s presidency has been deeply controversial from the outset. A self-described revolutionary and former member of the M-19 guerrilla group, Petro has long advocated for the decriminalization of cocaine, even claiming it is “less harmful than sugar.” Under his administration, Colombia — already the world’s leading cocaine producer — has seen record-breaking increases in production, according to the most recent report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Petro has rejected the UN’s data outright, accusing the organization of falsifying its findings and demanding a “review” of the statistics. But the numbers are hard to ignore — and they were central to President Trump’s September determination that Colombia had “failed demonstrably” to uphold its international drug enforcement commitments. The following month, Trump froze all U.S. funding and subsidies to Colombia, going as far as to label Petro “an illegal drug trafficker.”
In October, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Petro for his alleged ties to narcotics trafficking, citing his role in contributing to the proliferation of illicit drugs and the means to produce them.
