The US Should Spray Herbicide on Colombia’s Deadly Cocaine Fields
Udumbara
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None of this is acceptable. In 2023, the United States provided $740 million in aid to Colombia, which dropped to $377.5 million in 2024. That is more than $1.1 billion combined, which is part of the approximately $14 billion provided by the United States to the Colombian military since 2000 to fight drug traffickers and leftist guerrillas. The aid facilitated daily cooperation between U.S. and Colombian counternarcotics officials, including about 80 percent of actionable intelligence the United States receives on drug traffickers in the Caribbean.
Yet Colombia remains the world’s top producer of coca leaf, the key raw ingredient in cocaine. Cocaine production in Colombia is skyrocketing. In 2013, thanks to U.S.-sponsored aerial spraying of herbicides on coca plantations, nearly 62,000 families planted the crop. After the Colombian government ended spraying in 2015 due to health concerns, the number of families dependent on the crop steadily increased. By 2020, the number climbed to 100,000. Now, it’s 230,000 families. Last year, cocaine production facilities in Colombia also increased by about 50 percent.
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The United States decertified Colombia on Sept. 16 due to its “failing to cooperate in the drug war.” Petro is a leftist former guerrilla negotiating with leftist guerrillas who profit from the drug trade. Not surprisingly, he is too soft on them.
Even if most coca farmers shifted to legal crops, this would reduce the supply of coca, raise its price, and incentivize other farmers to plant the crop elsewhere. Incentives to shift to legal crops tend to fail if unaccompanied by tough disincentives.
The office of the Colombian presidency has released figures that show an increase in cocaine seizures. Petro said, “The greatest enemy drug trafficking ever had in Colombia in the 21st century was the one who exposed its connections to the country’s political establishment; and that was me.”
This is why the Trump administration is taking more of a lead against illegal drugs in Colombia. One tactic the U.S. military is using is to sink the boats that carry fentanyl and cocaine north, including a boat in Colombian territorial waters on Sept. 15 and a semi-submersible on Oct. 17.
The first strike was particularly controversial, as Petro argued that the United States hit a fisherman in distress and provided no evidence that the boat was involved in the drug trade. The United States called the target a “Venezuelan narcoterrorist.”
Some U.N. human rights experts called the U.S. strikes on drug boats “extrajudicial executions.” However, this rings false as the U.S. Navy rescued two of the men from the damaged sub on Oct. 17 and returned them to their countries of origin—Colombia and Ecuador. The intent in this case was clearly to stop the drug trafficking, not to “execute” people.
Regrettable civilian casualties from the war on cartels must be compared to the hundreds of thousands of drug overdose deaths in the United States over the past few years. Something must be done, and what the United States has done in the past—occasional interdictions and arrests—was woefully inadequate. Every day that the U.S. government delayed in defeating the cartels and their backers in communist China in the past, almost 300 Americans died of overdose.
This drives the U.S. government’s current urgency to eradicate drug operations throughout Latin America and China, from which most of the precursors for illicit fentanyl come. Trump said in his Oct. 19 post that Petro “better close up” Colombia’s “killing fields immediately, or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely.” Trump has also announced that he will impose new tariffs on Colombia, which are apparently linked to the Latin American country’s lack of counternarcotics cooperation.
He could also be referring to military strikes on drug labs in Colombia or herbicide spraying of coca fields. These strategies should be carried out with Colombia’s cooperation, if possible, but without it if necessary. Herbicide spraying of illegal drug fields is highly effective in eradicating coca plants, as it does not require on-the-ground vulnerability to cartel militias or the political navigation of local corrupt officials.
Petro has complained that the United States is violating Colombian sovereignty. But sovereignty is a privilege of countries that do not contribute to hundreds of needless deaths in other nations on a daily basis. When Colombia’s inaction leads to tens of thousands of U.S. deaths annually, it can no longer talk of sovereignty or believe that it is immune to the U.S. Department of War. The United States has been nice about Colombia’s cocaine fields in the past, with U.S. government subsidies for eradication and private philanthropy. But these strategies failed, and the cocaine farmers and fentanyl traffickers have taken advantage.
The same happened to the United States in Afghanistan when the U.S. military tried to eradicate opium poppy crops there. The United States relied on the local government to eradicate crops by hand—often by burning or mowing poppies with machetes—but this was insufficiently comprehensive to make a real dent in production. This was because the Taliban terrorists controlled the farming, processing, and distribution of the drug, and corrupted politicians in Kabul to look the other way. Despite the war, the United States failed to spray the opium crops with herbicide.
So opium produced a steady source of revenue for the Taliban, which kept them killing Americans until we tired of the war and retreated. It made the United States look weak and gave up U.S. military bases to our adversaries, including the Taliban and the Chinese regime. The world took notice of another American failure after Vietnam and Iraq. Aggressors like Russia and Iran became emboldened to start wars in Ukraine and Israel.
As usual, weakness invites aggression. Peace is only secured against dictators and cartels through the relative economic and military strength of democracies, and the willingness to use that strength against our adversaries.
