The Colombia Gambit

Office of White House Press Secretary Photo by Karoline Leavitt, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Under threats from President Trump that included steep tariffs, President Gustavo Petro of Colombia has relented and will allow U.S. military planes to fly deportees into the country, after turning two transports back in response to what he called inhumane treatment.

The two leaders had engaged in a war of words on Sunday after Colombia’s move to block Mr. Trump’s use of military aircraft in deporting thousands of unauthorized immigrants.

But on Sunday night, the White House released a statement in which it said that because Mr. Petro had agreed to all of its terms, the tariffs and sanctions Mr. Trump had threatened would be “held in reserve.” Other penalties, such as visa sanctions, will remain in effect until the first planeload of deportees has arrived in Colombia, the statement said.

Let’s walk through the events here.

The United States has been deporting people at a rate about a thousand a day for the last year. It’s not clear if deportations are up under Trump, but publicity of them definitely is. The Administration staged a few photo ops of illegal immigrants being boarded onto military planes in handcuffs and leg irons to be sent to their native countries. Such deportations have been routine — at various levels — for decades. But most of those deportations are done through commercial or charter aircraft. Military planes might look good on TV but they’re actually more expensive (in addition to being less humane).

Unfortunately for Trump, it turned out that other nations balk at their citizens being treated like animals for publicity purposes. Colombia, Mexico and Honduras, which have routinely accepted deportation flights, balked at military flights. The President of Colombia, in particular, refused to accept the flights and demanded that his citizens be treated humanely.

Trump, of course, threw a fit and immediately threatened 25-50% tariffs against Colombia (which would mainly punish Americans, but he does not and never will understand that). In his first week as President, this has become part of the routine: threatening tariffs against any country that so much as looks crossways at him. Because, I guess, when all you have is a hammer and one brain cell, everything looks like a nail.

Colombia has now agreed to resume flights although whether they will involve military planes is still a bit unclear. At one point, Petro offered his own Presidential jet to be used for deportations. So the trade war has been averted, for now.

The conservative media is portraying this as a huge win for Trump. This fits a pattern we’ve seen in the Administration of creating an unnecessary problem, “solving” it and then claiming victory.

I see it as the opposite. Maybe Trump won in the court of Fox News opinion. But this incident has weakened both him and the country. An important ally was needlessly infuriated so that the President could have a photo op. Colombians, who generally have a positive view of the United State, were treated like an enemy and threatened by an increasingly senile man-baby. As one commentator on BlueSky said, we may forget this incident quickly; but Colombia will remember it for some time. President Petro is unpopular for a variety of reasons and is well to the left in Colombian politics. This will give him a boost with his people. That’s all on top of the added expense, paperwork and bother associated with deportation flights.

Most importantly, this has demonstrated that the United States is an unreliable partner; a nation run by a toddler who will threaten to wreck economies over trivia. The rest of the world is watching. And they will be alarmed. The Trump White House has crowed, “Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again.” I could not agree with that statement less. Respect is a two-way street and if we treat other nations like playthings, they will turn away from us toward nations that treat them with respect. Despite what the Republican Party thinks, alliances built through mutual respect, cooperation, trade and cultural exchange are stronger and longer lasting than those built through threats and intimidation. Think how fast the Warsaw Pact imploded after the Cold War versus NATO becoming stronger than ever.

It has taken decades to build the intricate network of alliances and trade agreements that have made the United States the most powerful nation on Earth and given us the ability to call on other nations for help when we need it, knowing it will be provided. The new Administration is taking a sledgehammer to that because they are too stupid to understand the value of soft power, too lazy to think through the long-term implications of their actions and too bigoted to care that we live in a big world and other nations matter to our economy and our national security. And they have a Congress that refuses to exercise its authority and take away the ability of the President to use tariffs as a club.

It’s only been a week and this cadre of fools is already confirming what we knew: that they are massively unfit for office. It’s now just a matter of how much wreckage they’re going to leave behind.

1. Not “Columbia” as the White House’s press release claimed.