{"id":218261,"date":"2026-09-07T08:33:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T08:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/218261\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T08:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T08:33:12","slug":"from-the-shield-of-the-americas-to-the-golan-heights-de-la-espriella-keeps-his-promise-to-align-with-trump-and-netanyahu-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/218261\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Shield of the Americas to the Golan Heights, De la Espriella keeps his promise to align with Trump and Netanyahu | International"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colombian president Abelardo de la Espriella has repeatedly shown he is more than willing to fulfill his promise to align unreservedly with Donald Trump \u2014who returned the favor with his \u201cfull endorsement\u201d during the campaign\u2014 and to move closer to Israel without qualms. The criminal lawyer, who marks his first month in office this Monday, has already joined the Shield of the Americas<\/a>, the Republican-led alliance of like-minded political leaders in the hemisphere that seeks to coordinate the fight against drug trafficking, and on Tuesday he is scheduled to meet with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.<\/p>\n

On the diplomatic front, the De la Espriella government has been defined by a series of weighty announcements, in stark contrast with his predecessor, Gustavo Petro, who clashed repeatedly with Trump \u2014to the point of suffering the feared decertification in antinarcotics cooperation\u2014 and who repeatedly denounced the \u201cgenocide\u201d in Gaza. Perhaps the most striking decision by the new president as part of that shift was to recognize Israel\u2019s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a territory disputed with Syria, occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War and illegally annexed in the 1980s. He made the decision in the middle of the emergency caused by the August 10 earthquake<\/a>. Only the United States, under Trump, had taken that step, which was welcomed by Benjamin Netanyahu and rejected by around 20 Arab countries \u2014including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.<\/p>\n

That gesture \u201cwill quite simply mean that Colombia will not find the support of the United Nations when it needs it,\u201d assessed former diplomat Eduardo Pizarro Leong\u00f3mez, an emeritus professor at the National University and a security analyst, in an interview with this newspaper. \u201cWe lost the support of all Arab and Muslim countries, of much of Africa and of the progressive countries of Western Europe, because of this unnecessary recognition, which had also been condemned by the United Nations itself. If Colombia continues its foreign policy as it now appears, it will end up deeply isolated at the United Nations,\u201d he added. \u201cColombia could perfectly well have moved its embassy to Jerusalem, which is already a gesture that would have generated international tension, but without going so far as to recognize the Golan Heights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Military operations<\/p>\n

Another of the most notable announcements was the authorization for the United States to conduct military operations<\/a> on Colombian soil, according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, although no Colombian authority has commented on that permission or its details. Strengthening military cooperation between Bogot\u00e1 and Washington is moving at full speed, with a joint agenda to combat drug trafficking. During his recent visit to Colombia, General Francis L. Donovan, head of U.S. Southern Command, met with Defense Minister retired General Jorge Mora and set as priorities operations on the border with Ecuador, surveillance of the Pacific \u2014the main drug route to U.S. cities\u2014, and the rehabilitation of the air fleet.<\/p>\n

In another diplomatic milestone, also announced by a U.S. official, Trump\u2019s nominee for ambassador to Bogot\u00e1 said Colombia would withdraw from the Belt and Road Initiative, despite Petro having committed to join that megaproject of Chinese investments and infrastructure. The Foreign Ministry, led by Germ\u00e1n Bula, who has declared himself a defender of Western values, has not issued any official announcement on the matter. The Asian giant is an indispensable trading partner, with stakes in key projects such as Bogot\u00e1\u2019s metro.<\/p>\n

The new administration aims for close rapport with almost all its nearest neighbors, including those who had irreconcilable differences with Petro. A clear affinity<\/a> has been evident with Panama\u2019s Jos\u00e9 Ra\u00fal Mulino, Ecuador\u2019s Daniel Noboa and Peru\u2019s Keiko Fujimori, in marked contrast to the distance with Brazil\u2019s Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva. Relations with Venezuela, with which Colombia shares a porous border of more than 2,200 kilometers, also pass through Washington. Both De la Espriella and his vice president, Jos\u00e9 Manuel Restrepo, have repeatedly said those ties will be channeled through the State Department, a stance that prompted a mild protest from the interim government in Caracas, which in any case operates under Trump\u2019s tutelage.<\/p>\n

That closeness to Washington is no surprise. De la Espriella holds U.S. nationality \u2014in addition to Italian\u2014 and in the final stretch of the campaign, ahead of the runoff against left-wing Senator Iv\u00e1n Cepeda he secured Trump\u2019s endorsement, which he had sought throughout the electoral season. He also pledged to combat criminal groups with the help of the White House and to revive a Plan Colombia 2.0 of military cooperation<\/a>. He was highly critical of multilateralism, although that attitude will be tested this month at the first U.N. General Assembly session to be attended by a delegation led by the vice president, since De la Espriella has promised he will not leave the country during his four-year term.<\/p>\n

International relations specialist Sandra Borda calls De la Espriella\u2019s diplomatic start \u201coveracted,\u201d noting that some decisions were explicitly requested by the United States and others were not, yet the new government has acted instead of exercising caution. \u201cIt\u2019s a kind of preventive diplomacy to please,\u201d says the University of the Andes researcher. \u201cEnthusiastic alignments are a terrible idea in an international climate of uncertainty,\u201d she warns.<\/p>\n

Analyst Sergio Guzm\u00e1n, of Colombia Risk Analysis, agrees that the foreign policy is overly \u201canchored\u201d to the United States. \u201cIt is not a very sovereign strategy, because ultimately it is surrendering national interests to Washington,\u201d he says. \u201cDe la Espriella makes a strategic error by subordinating Colombia\u2019s interests to foreign interests, those of the United States or Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colombian president Abelardo de la Espriella has repeatedly shown he is more than willing to fulfill his promise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[16469],"tags":[51993,244,82134,14866,12,243],"class_list":["post-218261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-abelardo-de-la-espriella","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-bogota","tag-colombia","tag-donald-trump","tag-israel"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117228837505878453","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}