Opinion

Trump threats to Venezuela evoke history of U.S. intervention in Latin America

venezuela crisis trump maduro
Protester throws tear gas bomb at members of the national guard. Photo: Reynaldo Riobueno/Shutterstock

Violence erupted at Venezuela’s borders with Colombia and Brazil over the delivery of humanitarian aid to Venezuela, killing four people and injuring 24 on February 22. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro that his “days are numbered,” and Trump officials reiterated that the U.S. is considering all alternatives, including military action, to address Venezuela’s crisis.

Almost 80 percent of Venezuelans disapprove of Mr. Maduro, who was reinstated for a second six-year term in January after an election widely seen as fraudulent. Since taking power in 2013, he has led Venezuela into a deep economic crisis.

In late January, opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared Mr. Maduro a “usurper” and swore himself in as the country’s rightful president. More than 50 countries—including the United States, Europe and most of Latin America—want to replace Mr. Maduro’s regime with a Guaidó-led government.

Despite the broad condemnation of Mr. Maduro, any U.S. intervention in Venezuela would be controversial. The United States’ long history of interfering in Latin American politics suggests that its military operations generally usher in dictatorship and civil war, instead of democracy.

The Cuban-U.S. Cold War

Cuba, the focus of my history research, is a prime example of this pattern.

U.S.-Cuban relations have never recovered from President William McKinley’s intervention in Cuba’s war of independence over a century ago.

Before waging what Americans call the Spanish-American War in 1898, Mr. McKinley promised that “the people of the island of Cuba” would be “free and independent” from Spain and that his government had no “intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over said island.”

In the end, however, Cuba’s independence from Spain meant domination by the United...

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