Colombia vs. USA or the domestication of foreign policy
By: Beatrice E. Rangel - 28/01/2025
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This century has brought us many new and in some cases contradictory concepts, such as the word hot tepid, which in Spanish means warm.
Apparently the magic of the Internet attracts opposite poles and fuses them to create a new concept that mocks all rationality.
Something similar seems to be happening in politics. The digital age has brought realities so close that the boundaries between foreign policy and international politics have been blurred. Now there is only one reality: that of influencing the minds of those who follow us on a daily basis in order to have a safe and palpable flock of unconditional supporters every day. And this reality leads heads of state to perform political calisthenics capable of blowing up the minds of those who until now had been busy codifying the rules of international behaviour, such as Sir Halford John Mackinder George Kennan; Henry Kissinger, Gérard Chaliand and the Baron of Rio Branco.
To better understand this new world, it is enough to analyze the behavior of Donald Trump and Gustavo Petro in the meeting held in the wake of the deployment carried out by the United States in terms of deportations of undocumented foreigners in the United States. The Trump administration, responding to a concern of a good part of the electorate in relation to the rotating door policy at the border maintained by the Biden administration, attacked in its first hours of office any immigrant it could find. Initially, it was said that it was about the express deportation of people accused of crimes or tried and imprisoned. However, the raids carried out last week were carried out in factories, plantations and other public places. The sequitur was the return flights of the undocumented to their countries of origin. And it was the turn of Colombia, whose head of state does not enjoy much popularity at the moment, having carried out a disorderly management without positive results for Colombians. He then needed to regain the affection of a people who increasingly see him more as the successor of Cacaseno than as a head of state. And here the Trump administration gave him the long-awaited wish of rising in the esteem of his fellow citizens. Of course, we are talking about what pollsters call the E and D strata, that is, the population with the lowest income, little education and little availability of time to be glued to social networks all day long. President Petro then decided to suspend the landing of the military planes that brought the deportees, citing as an argument the poor treatment they received by being handcuffed and chained by the feet.
President Trump's response was not long in coming. He immediately imposed tariffs of 25% on Colombian exports with the promise of raising them to 50% if Petro's veto on the transport of deportees persisted. Visas to the United States were frozen and sanctions were stipulated for Colombian government officials. Petro retorted by saying that deportees could come but with good treatment and proceeded to send the plane that transports the heads of state of Colombia to pick them up. Then, on one side, the businessmen who distribute vegetables in the United States intervened, frightened by the prospect of not being able to put yucca, yams and beans from Colombia in supermarkets. On the Colombian side, all those who know and want to return to Disneyworld, which has properties in Miami Beach and who spend their vacations in the United States, intervened. Both interventions were really unnecessary because both presidents were not doing foreign policy but domestic policy. And both scored goals. And the game was tied.
Trump was able to prove to his followers who favor order at the borders and isolationism that his government would be capable of deporting even Uncle Rabbit, and Petro told his followers that he would not allow the most humble Colombians to be abused. And according to the polls I have seen, Trump managed to increase his current popularity by 5 percentage points. Petro raised his by 7. Because let us remember that in Latin America those who go to Disneyworld are the minority while those who take the migration route are the majority. And that is how it has been for 500 years.
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