So hypothetically speaking if Trump were to follow through his “intervention joke”/ threat with Mexico what would happen?
If we (United States) invaded Mexico how would it look/ go down? Would Mexico put up much of a fight or would internal corruption/pressures cause them to fold quickly?
Would they become a state in the future?
How many troops would it take?
The terrain is rough, and not conducive to tank warfare. It’s fairly good terrain for hit-and-run guerilla resistance, and Mexico has a history of that against foreign invaders. Mexicans are fiercely proud, so there would be some form of resistance.
Somewhere between Panama and Vietnam. (Which is one hell of a wide spread.)
If Trump and his supporters are worried enough about Mexicans sneaking into the U.S. why in the world would they wish to annex it as a state and make the Mexicans citizens.
If it were annexed it would hardly become A state. It has 1/3 the population of the U.S. and 1/5 the size. There are 31 states in Mexico. The least populous state is Baja California Sur with a poupulation of just over 600,000 making it more populous than Wyoming and Vermont so logically they could all be admitted as states. I’m sure 62 new senators from Mexico would go over wonderfully with Trump.
That would certainly not be what many of his supporters thought they were voting for. Surprise!! on them I guess.
Especially with the element of surprise we could crush Mexico’s military very easily. You should expect it to be something similar to the invasion of Iraq.
The amount of troops it would take would be same as what was needed to take Iraq also.
But once you take the nation then what?
As a long time war history buff and history buff in general I can tell you only way to actually have this operation not boomerang and cost the USA a ton of expense and trouble would be to smash their military and then get out quick just like the first war against Iraq in 1991. You would want whole thing to be finished and over and our troops back home in less than three months.
I would expect president Trump to be impeached and convicted for having Mexico invaded.
The USA keeping Mexico as conquered territory and making part of the USA as territories or states or some other type of entity seems highly improbable. Not that we couldn’t do that, I’m saying that we wouldn’t do that. Trump might want it but he wouldn’t be supported by the other powerful people and organizations in the USA.
There’s something that most of the major powers figured out in the 20th century - wars to annex territory are often more trouble than they’re worth in the modern era. In the middle ages, wars of conquest were economically viable - you got more in return than it cost to prosecute a war. That’s no longer true.
We’ve figured out that it’s much better economically to build an economic dominion rather than a physical one. Hell, we had that figured out in the 19th century when we actually did invade and won a war over there but didn’t annex the entire damned country.
The basic thing is that we’d rather let somebody else have to deal with all the headaches of administration and governance and simply reap economic benefits of some type of trade agreement or other economic pact. Physical invasion is really bad for that purpose. These days, under a sane government, you really only want to invade a country if the moral repercussions of the human cost of inaction are beyond those any reasonable person would want to incur.
Hypothetical questions belong in IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Invading is easy. Occupying is hard. Unless you have significant local collaboration like Russia in Crimea, it is hard to hold any territory gained. And I don’t see the Mexicans collaborating.
Remember the Bush line? We have to fight them over there so we don’t fight them here.
The most recent pithy summary of international defence obligations I can find is this summary page based on [1990s vintage] CIA Fact Book. Mexico was working hard to keep itself non-aligned, and has subsequently withdrawn from the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, consistently with that stance. If that remains the same then no other countries will be obliged to join in.
Any serious planning for a surprise attack would need to factor in three biggies:
Every American and American business in Mexico would be a potential revenge target / hostage from the moment of invasion.
A lot of people within the US who were grateful to be there, and aspired to be good future citizens and were absolutely not in any way contemplating terrorism when they crossed the border would also be re-evaluating their stance.
Countries that have otherwise supported the US if it was attacked, such as Australia, would not likely back it invading a non-aligned peaceful country, and be under strong domestic pressure to impose their own trade sanctions and other embargoes. The resurgent US car industry would just be shot in the foot as we switch to even more Chinese and Korean cars
Militarily it would be like Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2003. Sweeping, swift, conventional military victory, followed by years of protracted insurgency.
Good point. Some 20-30-million pootential Mexican troops already on the ground in the USA, as an occupying force, many of them already armed, with a lot of logistical intel, and quite a few veterans with military training for US overseas wars, or in the Mexican military.
Don’t think for a minute that Mexicans are not proud of their country.
the way i understood the presidents remarks, was that he wasnt advocating invading mexico so much as sending in the army to help mexico fix their “bad hombre” problem. if the army was acting as a friendly police force, how would that interpretation change the scenario?
doesnt something similar exist when the national guard is sent into an area, against the governors wishes, to try and restore the peace when some situation gets outta hand? i know its a different country, but if we’re not there as invaders, what then?
i realize things can get sticky if mexico doesnt want or thinks it needs our help, but does it necessarily devolve into war?
mc
nb: i do not think we should meddle in the affairs of another country, and using the military to do the police’s job probably will end badly in the best of circumstances, but as long as we’re playing what if. . . ?
I assume he meant how it basically was with Columbia in the late 80’s/early 90’s, with American police agencies such as the DEA openly helping out the Columbian government against drug lords while also using American military forces (such as Delta Force) covertly as well.
Well, the Op was an invasion, so looking at that…
There has been some concern for a while about Mexico ending up as a failed nation, with its military not really managing the drug gangs. If you smash the states power apparatus, in particular the military, I can’t think of anything more certain to drop-kick it over the edge.
So you’ll end up with the options of a) trying to annex it Crimea-style, or b) Having a failed nation of 120 million people on the entire southern border. Option a) means, as OldGuy pointed out, 120 million new latino citizens looking for work, 62 new senators and a megaton of money needed to bring Mexico up to scratch.
Option b) is going to pretty much wreck whats left of trade and mean an influx of refugees and illegals unlike anything seen in US history. And will last for a very long time.
As much as we Mexicans have swallowed Coca-Cola, white bread, American film and music,
“I’ll give you my tortilla when you pry (or take) it from my cold, dead hands”,
We are not going down without a fight. And I mean until the last one of us.
We don’t need no education.
If [farting noise] wants to go to war to renegotiate the border with Mexico, I for one intend to join the Mexican side, and negotiate the extent of the USA back to the pre-Louisiana Purchase boundaries. [farting noise] wants a big thick border barrier, and I think the Mississippi River would make a fine moat.
I’m not actually kidding.
I expect it would culminate in either a failed state on the southern border, or the genocide of the Mexican people. And yes, I do think that genocide is a likely possibility given that we’ve put racist fascists into power; we know how such people act.
This. The drug cartels already have the social and military beginnings of insurgency rings in place. They’d lay low for the first month or so of the invasion because they can’t compete directly militarily, but their lives depend on staying powerful so they will do all they can to remain so. They’d probably find a lot more local recruits that are angry at the occupation.
Plus it’s not like the Mexican military would just fold. Doesn’t mean the US would take significant casualties, but enough blood would be shed that it would create a lot more angry hearts and minds.
Also in order to round up all the cartel members, we’d have to resort to the same tactics we did in Afghanistan, i.e. rely on local informants about who is in the gang, which is pretty much a roll of the dice as to whether you get actual information, or fake information derived from local grudges, and that’s assuming you don’t torture people into giving even more false information.
Their leaders would side with whatever superpower could offer them arms and protection in their protracted Guerrilla War to take back their country from the United States.
There would be murders, bombings, and attacks back and forth for years… until it was more shot up than Iraq but looking for an anti-US military strongman to take charge and to start to rebuild the basic infrastructure.
Eventually there would be an uneasy truce… one where artillery shells and rockets get lobbed over an Impossibly Long border that we’d try to defend with a Hugely Expensive missile defense ‘dome’.
Future generations would be dumbfounded at how STUPID we were to have needlessly forced a situation like this into being and how we dumped a nearly insolvable problem in their laps for all time.
“Red Dawn: Texas” becomes the new hit show on AMC.