Donald Trump has never been shy about endorsing candidates in foreign elections. In Latin America, which his administration has elevated as a top priority in its national security strategy, the President has backed the winning horse in countries as varied as Argentina, Honduras, and Chile. He can now add Colombia to the mix.

Last weekend, millions of Colombians went to the polls to choose between Trump-backed Right-wing populist Abelardo de la Espriella and the Left-wing Iván Cepeda. Yesterday, the latter conceded after a tight result, meaning that de la Espriella will be the country’s new leader.

For Trump, de la Espriella’s biggest appeal is how he plans to tackle Colombia’s criminal groups. On this specific issue, de la Espriella has presented a hard line: no negotiations and no concessions. The previous administration, led by Gustavo Petro, had a “total peace” strategy, which sought to negotiate de-escalation agreements with several criminal organizations. Colombia’s next president is primed to return to a war footing by launching an air campaign against the National Liberation Army (ELN) — a Marxist guerrilla group — and building mega-prisons in the Colombian countryside.

This will be music to Trump’s ears, who has institutionalized a military-led counternarcotics policy, partly by conducting strikes on boats in Latin American waters allegedly ferrying drugs to the US. Washington is also leaning on the region’s governments to militarize their own security strategies. Some, like Ecuador, have not only agreed to buy into Washington’s approach but have wholeheartedly embraced the US military as a critical partner in their own fights against the drug gangs.

With de la Espriella scheduled to take the oath of office in August, US-Colombia relations are set to improve. The incoming Colombian president has already vowed to join Trump’s “Shield of the Americas” program, which aims to use transnational corporations for military strikes against drug gangs. Still, the United States and Colombia have their work cut out for them. The security situation in Latin America’s third-largest country has deteriorated for years. And far from curbing the trend, further militarizing the so-called war on drugs will merely exacerbate it.

Despite this, the Petro administration is set to leave office with the country more violent than when it came in. Last summer, a Colombian intelligence report assessed that the ranks of armed groups had increased by 45% since 2022, the year Petro assumed the presidency. In April, Colombia registered the most violent quarter in a decade, with 35 massacres committed during the first three months of 2026. More than 70,000 Colombians were internally displaced in 2025, double the figure from the year before.

Yet as bad as the metrics are today, they could always get worse if the strategy is wrong. Trump and de la Espriella would be wise to keep that fact under consideration as they contemplate unleashing a full-scale war to neutralize these groups into submission. History shows that militarizing counter-narcotics policies is not a panacea for success. Politically, it’s tempting to fall back on military force because it provides politicians with an easy way to brag about progress.

But tactical wins don’t equate to strategic victories. Just like the boat strikes have failed to diminish the flow of cocaine into the US, waging war on cartels and criminal factions in Colombia is highly unlikely to stem the cocaine trade. We can say this with confidence because Washington and Bogotá already have first-hand experience. Despite $10 billion of US military and security-sector support to the Colombian army under its “Plan Colombia”, the South American country remained the most prolific source of cocaine destined for US markets. Today, the high demand for cocaine is fueling record-breaking cocaine production levels.

Nor is military force going to pacify Colombia. If anything, a war paradigm could result in the opposite of what the US wants: larger criminal organizations like the National Liberation Army or the Clan de Golfo fracturing into smaller outfits, which then battle each other, strain the resources of the state and increase civilian fatalities. Even though there has been success in El Salvador with this approach, it is exactly what has occurred in Mexico over the last two decades and has failed.

This isn’t to suggest that military pressure should be discarded entirely. There are circumstances, particularly if a government is in negotiations with armed groups, where airstrikes can serve as an effective pressure tactic to keep them at the table. But if Colombia’s next president truly believes he can bomb and arrest his way out of the crisis, he will be roundly disappointed. And the US, which enabled a strategy that failed to work in other countries, will hold much of the blame.

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Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

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