Behind the Colombia Blowup: Mapping Trump’s Rapid-Escalation Tactics
The New York Times
There were no Situation Room meetings and no quiet calls to de-escalate a dispute with an ally. Just threats, counterthreats, surrender and an indication of the president’s approach to Greenland and Panama.
In the end it took only about 12 hours for President Trump’s first head-to-head confrontation with one of the United States’ closest allies in Latin America, a blowup over Colombia’s rejection of U.S. military flights to return illegal immigrants, to result in a complete retreat by the target of Mr. Trump’s threats.
It wasn’t much of a contest. Colombia depends on the United States for more than a quarter of its exports. And while the specifics of the dispute will probably be quickly forgotten, the rapid-fire threat by Mr. Trump to impose crushing tariffs, and the quick surrender by President Gustavo Petro, are likely to encourage Mr. Trump as he contemplates how to make use of the same weapon against new targets.
There is little mystery about whom he has in mind: Denmark, whose prime minister told him Greenland was not for sale during a heated, expletive-filled conversation almost two weeks ago, and Panama, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio is supposed to land in a few days to demand it return control of the Panama Canal to the United States — the country that built it, 120 years ago.
Welcome to the age of what Fred Kempe, the president of the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, characterized as the era of “more mercantilism, less free trade and more big-power swagger.”
The Sunday diplomatic debacle with Colombia had elements of all three. But it was also instructive about how foreign-policy decision-making in the Trump White House happens: There were no policy papers, or Situation Room meetings to weigh options, or talk of a quiet mission to de-escalate tensions with an ally whose cooperation America needs on a variety of problems. That would be how a dispute over returning Colombians, deported because they were in the United States illegally, would be resolved in an ordinary presidency, whether the president was a Democrat or Republican.
In this case, perhaps there wasn’t much need for internal debate: Colombia is not China, or Russia, or even North Korea and Iran, all countries that have ways to strike back at the United States or its interests. So it was an easy target — and a relatively cost-free place for Mr. Trump to make a point about how he envisions the use of American power.
