Another US Sponsored Coup in 3 ……… 2 ………

The new president of Columbia, Gustavo Petro is seriously considering decriminalizing cocaine.

He is also unabashedly left of center, and has promised to uphold ceasefire the deal with the FARC that most of his predecessors have tried to sabotage, and he has promised to negotiate with insurgent groups, primarily the ELN, still in the field in good faith.

He is promising to raise taxes on the wealthy, reduce Columbia's dependence on extractive industries, deprivatize things like healthcare and water, land reform, etc.

If you don't think that that there are folks in the US state security apparatus who are dusting off plans for a coup in Columbia at this very moment, then you have the political acumen of Little Orphan Annie.

It’s the largest producer of cocaine in the world, the source of more than 90 percent of the drug seized in the United States. It’s home to the largest Drug Enforcement Administration office overseas. And for decades, it’s been a key partner in Washington’s never-ending “war on drugs.”

Now, Colombia is calling for an end to that war. It wants instead to lead a global experiment: decriminalizing cocaine.

Two weeks after taking office, the country’s first leftist government is proposing an end to “prohibition” and the start of a government-regulated cocaine market. Through legislation and alliances with other leftist governments in the region, officials in this South American nation hope to turn their country into a laboratory for drug decriminalization.

“It is time for a new international convention that accepts that the war on drugs has failed,” President Gustavo Petro said in his inaugural address this month.

It’s a radical turn in this historically conservative country, one that could upend its long-standing — and lucrative — counternarcotics relationship with the United States. U.S. officials past and present are signaling concern; the drug was responsible for an estimated 25,000 overdose deaths in the United States last year.

Columbia is not, "Historically Conservative," it's dominated by a murderous right wing, with multiple assassinations of left wing politicians and massacres performed by right wing paramilitaries.\

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Domestically, Petro’s administration is planning to back legislation to decriminalize cocaine and marijuana. It plans to put an end to aerial spraying and the manual eradication of coca, which critics say unfairly targets poor rural farmers. By regulating the sale of cocaine, Tascón argued, the government would wrest the market from armed groups and cartels.

This is true, of course, but there are elements in the US and Columbia who are fine with a continued conflict and continued war on drugs, the people make money selling the weapons and training for the effort, the elements of the US state security apparatus whose careers are made on these efforts, and elites in Columbia who find the war on drugs a useful cover for terrorizing ordinary Colombians to maintain their privilege.

Given the actions of the US with regard to Bolivia and Venezuela over the past few years, I would be very surprised if attempts to destabilize his government were not already underway.