The future of Venezuela after the capture of Nicolás Maduro remains uncertain, but one thing that’s clear is that U.S. President Donald Trump is hesitant to put boots on the ground. A special forces raid to capture Maduro is one thing. But Trump seems to know that a full invasion and occupation of Venezuela for an extended regime change would be too costly for American voters to stomach. It’s why he hasn’t done it already.
The Trump administration’s plainly stated hope now is that the new acting Venezuelan leader, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, will meet U.S. demands. Extreme versions of these demands—such as transferring ownership of Venezuelan oil, nationalized democratically decades ago, to U.S. ownership—would be plainly illegal under Venezuelan law. What the Trump administration is prepared to do should Rodríguez refuse or fail to deliver is unknown. But perhaps the more important question is this: Can any Venezuelan leader cave to Trump without risking overthrow from within?
The future of Venezuela after the capture of Nicolás Maduro remains uncertain, but one thing that’s clear is that U.S. President Donald Trump is hesitant to put boots on the ground. A special forces raid to capture Maduro is one thing. But Trump seems to know that a full invasion and occupation of Venezuela for an extended regime change would be too costly for American voters to stomach. It’s why he hasn’t done it already.
The Trump administration’s plainly stated hope now is that the new acting Venezuelan leader, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, will meet U.S. demands. Extreme versions of these demands—such as transferring ownership of Venezuelan oil, nationalized democratically decades ago, to U.S. ownership—would be plainly illegal under Venezuelan law. What the Trump administration is prepared to do should Rodríguez refuse or fail to deliver is unknown. But perhaps the more important question is this: Can any Venezuelan leader cave to Trump without risking overthrow from within?
The situation that Venezuela and the United States now find themselves in is remarkably similar to that which confronted U.S. President James K. Polk and ultimately led to the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. Much like Trump today, Polk didn’t originally want a full-scale war with Mexico. He just wanted Mexican territory, and he hoped for a deal with Mexico whereby the United States could obtain vast swaths of Mexican territory through coercive diplomacy and a cash payment.
The threat of war was supposed to be sufficient to convince Mexico to recognize the U.S. annexation of Texas and part willingly with California and New Mexico. This is what U.S. envoys such as Louisiana Rep. John Slidell were sent by Polk to Mexico to negotiate even as U.S. troops under Gen. Zachary Taylor were ordered to move into the disputed territory north of the Rio Grande, which Mexico still considered its own. Not unlike today, the United States believed that its clear superiority in military technology, industrial capacity, and demographic size would allow it to simply dictate terms to its weaker neighbors with a credible threat of force.
For their part, the Mexicans knew they couldn’t win a war, yet they also could not afford to make a deal. Anytime a Mexican leader tried, he’d get overthrown by someone else accusing him of betraying the country. Such was the fate of Mexican President José Joaquín de Herrera, a moderate liberal who sought to ease tensions with the United States. Accused of conspiring with the Americans to sell Mexican territory, Herrera was overthrown in 1845 by the conservative Gen. Mariano Paredes, who used the very troops he was supposed to lead to the border with Texas to strengthen Mexico’s defense.
Once in office, Paredes himself also sought to avoid war with the United States. But backing down in the face of U.S. threats proved impossible. Even as Polk’s envoy Slidell continued to seek a meeting with the Mexican leadership, Polk ordered the U.S. Navy to deploy off Veracruz in the Gulf and Mazatlán in the Pacific. These deployments were in turn the reason that Mexico gave for refusing to meet with Slidell, citing them as proof of bad faith.
Soon thereafter, clashes broke out between U.S. and Mexican forces in the disputed territory. Claiming that U.S. blood had been shed on U.S. soil—a lie that would prompt the young Illinois Rep. Abraham Lincoln’s famous “spot” resolution—Polk asked Congress for a declaration of war.
So began the Mexican-American War, which proved to be far longer and bloodier than Polk had hoped. Even in the midst of the conflict, the United States believed that regime change could lead to a deal with Mexico to obtain territory without more bloodshed.
Yet again, Mexican decision-makers found themselves more constrained by their domestic political realities than the violent power of the United States. The infamous general and former President Antonio López de Santa Anna, then in exile in Spanish Cuba, was helped to return to Mexico at Polk’s orders, being allowed to slip through the U.S. blockade of Veracruz in the middle of the war.
This was done on the understanding that Santa Anna would take power and then make a deal with Polk to give up the territory. Instead, once in Mexico, Santa Anna ended up fighting against the United States, leading Mexican troops and inflicting heavy U.S. casualties at the Battle of Buena Vista.
In the end, Polk still got most of what he wanted. The military conquest of California, along with Polk’s more successful diplomacy with Britain to acquire what is now Oregon and Washington, gave the United States its Pacific coast, setting the foundations for its global power. Still, it took far longer and far more American blood than Polk had hoped, with U.S. troops suffering nearly 20,000 casualties. Among them were not just regular soldiers and volunteers, but also U.S. elites, such as the son of former House Speaker and Secretary of State Henry Clay. The intensity of Mexican resistance even helped ensure that some of Polk’s more expansive territorial goals, such as annexing Baja California, would not come to pass.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo itself, which gave the United States much of the territory that it wanted but fell short of Polk’s full territorial ambitions, was negotiated and signed in part to get U.S. troops out of Mexico quickly. Though personally unhappy with the treaty terms, Polk rushed it through the Senate anyway both in the face of growing domestic anti-war sentiment as expressed by the likes of Lincoln, Clay, John Quincy Adams, and a growing Mexican insurgency that threatened any continued U.S. occupation of Mexico.
A Mexican insurgency of this kind would indeed consume the French military occupation of Mexico not even 20 years later, with the French effort at regime change in Mexico ending with the French-backed Emperor Maximilian and many Mexican conservative leaders facing a firing squad.
There is a lesson here for Trump. Mexican leaders never expected to actually win a war, just as Venezuelan leaders today know that they cannot defeat the U.S. military in a conflict. But the same Mexican leaders couldn’t afford to cave without a fight.
This is similar to the situation that Venezuela is in now. It is clear that Maduro’s successor, Rodríguez, is hoping to avoid further confrontation. Yet there are likely internal domestic limitations that she is facing, which would preclude her from meeting the most maximalist U.S. demands. These constraints could be hard for U.S. policymakers to understand or even see. But, as with Mexican leaders in the 19th century, there may come a point where the risk of offending internal constituencies and nationalist sentiment is greater even than the risk of a confrontation with a superior U.S. military.
Even Venezuelan leaders who appear to reach an understanding with the United States may find that their incentives change once in power, as did Gen. Santa Ana. These dynamics are all the more true in the other Latin American countries that Trump has threatened with military force over unreasonable or even impossible demands, such as Panama, Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico itself.
Of course, there are many differences between the Mexican-American War and the situation in Venezuela today. As mismatched as U.S. and Mexican forces were in the 19th century, the U.S. and Venezuelan militaries are even more mismatched today.
Yet not every difference breaks in Trump’s favor. During the Mexican-American War, a U.S. population that had largely internalized the values of Manifest Destiny ultimately tolerated high casualties despite strong anti-war feelings and abolitionist suspicions that the war would serve to extend slavery. Even before the discovery of gold near Sacramento made the true value of California clear, for most ordinary Americans, the prospect of opening up the West to pioneers was clearly enticing. After all, this was to become effectively public land that all Americans could get in on—the rights of existing Mexican landowners and the Indigenous populations swept aside—provided that one had the will and the wagon to get there.
Americans in the 21st century are far less tolerant of military casualties. The profits of private oil companies or grievances of Venezuelan exiles are much less relevant to an average U.S. voter today than free land in the West was in the 1840s. And no officer children of political elites will be dying alongside the volunteer infantry this time, nor will members of Congress resign their seats and accept a commission to personally lead their state militias into battle, as some did in 1846. Should Trump find himself suffering anywhere near 20,000 casualties, as Polk did, Americans will be far less kind to him than they were to Polk—and Trump knows it.
For now, it seems that the Trump administration can live with a Maduro government minus Maduro himself. The Maduro allies who remain in charge in Venezuela do appear to be more interested in reaching an accommodation with Trump than fighting him.
Then again, so did Maduro himself. Every political system will reach a point where the internal risk of caving to foreign pressure is greater than the foreign pressure itself. Mexico fought a war it could not win for this very reason, inflicting a far higher cost in blood for its territory than the United States had ever offered to pay in treasure. The Mexican-American War created tension between the two North American states that lasts to this day. Trump should learn this history and avoid repeating Polk-style tactics of coercive diplomacy that ultimately provoke a war.
