In an explosive escalation of South American tensions, Colombian President Gustavo Petro declared today, Monday, 5 January 2026, that he is prepared to “take up arms” to defend his country’s sovereignty. The statement follows a series of direct military threats from U.S. President Donald Trump in the wake of the weekend’s high-stakes capture of Nicolás Maduro.
Petro, a former guerrilla who had famously laid down his weapons decades ago, took to the social media platform X to issue a defiant warning, signalling that Colombia will not become the next target of Washington’s “surgical” interventionism.
The friction reached a boiling point after President Trump, speaking from Air Force One on Sunday, explicitly floated the idea of military action against Colombia, describing it as a “very sick” country.
Trump accused Petro of overseeing “cocaine mills and factories” and warned that he is “not going to be doing it very long.”4 When asked if a Venezuela-style raid was possible for Colombia, Trump replied: “It sounds good to me… because they kill a lot of people.”
Trump told reporters that Petro should “watch his a,”** citing the flow of drugs into the United States as a justification for potential “decapitation” strikes against the Colombian leadership.
Petro, who has been a vocal critic of the U.S. “abduction” of Maduro, framed his response as a matter of national survival.
“I swore not to touch a weapon again… but for the homeland, I will take up arms again. Stop slandering me, Mr. Trump. That’s not how you threaten a Latin American president who emerged from the armed struggle and then from the people’s fight for Peace.” – President Gustavo Petro.
While the rhetoric intensifies, the situation on the ground is already militarizing. Petro has ordered the immediate deployment of Colombian security forces to the 2,200km border with Venezuela.
The Colombian Red Cross is preparing for a “worst-case scenario” of 120,000 refugees fleeing the U.S.-occupied Caracas in the coming days.
Colombia’s Defense Minister, Pedro Sánchez, confirmed that the President’s personal security detail has been significantly reinforced following the U.S. threats.
The threat to Colombia marks a radical shift in U.S. foreign policy. Unlike Venezuela, Colombia has been Washington’s key security ally in the region for decades.
Colombia’s Foreign Ministry has officially labeled Trump’s remarks as “unacceptable interference” and has requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council (where Colombia currently holds a seat) to establish the legality of the U.S. aggression in Venezuela.
