Mexico has a tiny military for a country of its size and economic strength
(Meaning it could afford a much bigger military!)
In a nutshell, Mexico’s relative lack of military or diplomatic strength is a choice; they do have alternatives
And Farley points out that the US benefits, too:
So, getting back to the hypothetical - let’s not invade Mexico, okay? But if we do, I doubt the narcos are going to be the freedom fighters some have predicted; they’d rather buy protection from the corrupt US government. (Chapo’s blustering towards Trump notwithstanding.)
The US has never, in my lifetime, fought a war to win. The US sends in troops in order to keep the military industrial complex well fed, and fights only hard enough to reach a stalemate from which it can slip away claiming mission accomplished.
But those were sensible presidents who understood how things work. It’s a new ballgame. Trump used a nuclear option in his first few weeks in office. Wait till he finds out he has other nuclear options.
Mexico is four times bigger than Iraq in area and has four times the people. Unlike Iraq, it’s a real nation state, with a people who’re proud of their country and identify with it.
Mexico has a huge, easily defeated border with the USA; Iraq of course doesn’t.
Mexico does not bother to have a huge military but the occupation would be immensely costly and horribly bloody.
The statement by Trump IMO clearly hinted at the US military directly operating against criminal gangs in Mexico, with or without Mexican approval. A provocative statement to be sure, but invading Mexico to annex it makes no sense if your basic view is that contact between Mexico and the US, in flow of goods and people, is a net negative for the US, which is the view which perhaps more than any other single view fueled Trump’s candidacy.
The Iraq comparison might be partly useful in terms of an initial military campaign. Mexico’s military forces are not designed or equipped to defeat a US invasion. They have only nominal capability in ‘high intensity conflict’ even compared to Iraq’s. That and the much shorter US logistical pipeline to operate against Mexico v Iraq more than compensates the larger size and population of Mexico, again in terms of an initial invasion.
After that, IMO it’s obvious the US would create for itself more trouble that it solves. However the assumption the idea would be to make Mexico a US colony is really not parallel to Iraq, outside anti-US sloganeering. The US aim in Iraq was to establish representative govt, which it was assumed would be US-aligned by popular will. The basic problem was unwillingness to accept representative govt on the part of those with fewer votes who’d previously dominated (the Sunni’s generally and Saddamists in particular) as well as factions within the majority (Shiite militia’s). It’s hard to directly map that onto US military intervention in Mexico. It’s a relatively unified country compared to Iraq, as has been mentioned, and already has a reasonably functional democracy by world standards. So what does the intervention seek to accomplish? That would have a big impact IMO on how much of a clusterf*ck it would be, though hard to imagine it being a productive policy in any permutation.
It would be easy. Insurgency? Mexicans are proud and fiercely nationalistic, but they also are middle class and comfortable. You’ve got the campesinos, but their numbers are small and their hiding places are minimal.
After we pound their country into rubble, nuke some of their cities and kill off ten or twenty million of them they won’t be. They’ll be a nation of starving, desperate people with nothing left for them but hatred of the US.
IRL more likely than a proper set-piece invasion (which the Mexicans could see coming for weeks at least, it’s not like you can just launch out of Fort Hood tomorrow morning) a nonconsensual military intervention in Mexico would be an something involving repeated violations of sovereign space, as in SOF raids and drone strikes, over time, with “impunity” due to undisputed air superiority as far as fuel range allows from the border states. It would work more along the lines of Pakistan/Yemen, not Afghanistan/Iraq. And deal with strikes called on reported Drug Cartel summits “accidentally” wiping out weddings and quinceañeras.
With at least one difference: unlike in Afghanistan, the US forces could not credibly promise that if it became unsafe for a local because of their [del]collaboration with the occupying forces[/del] assistance, that the grateful US would guarantee them a visa and a safe haven in the United States.
Given that Columbia is in the US, I think I can safely say that the whole world agrees the US can police it. In fact, many of us consider it convenient if the US polices it.
Nuke? You do realize you’re one of their nearest neighbors, right?
As for an international reaction expect worldwide condemnation, ejection/withdrawal of ambassadors and sanctions.
Except from my dear old UK, which has grafted itself to Trump to avoid it’s ruination in Brexit, the government of which will likely keep quiet while two thirds of its people rage in disgust.
Most likely he meant the country Colombia. Nava’s point is that there is no country called Columbia (unless we count the poetic personification of the United States).
