Trump Threatens Military Action Against Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico: A Guide to His Regional Warnings

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On January 4, 2026, aboard Air Force One, Donald Trump told reporters that military strikes against Colombia “sounds good to me.” He’d captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro the day before. Now he was eyeing three more countries.

Cuba would “fall” on its own, he predicted. Colombia was “sick,” run by a president who “likes making cocaine.” And Mexico? He’d been asking President Claudia Sheinbaum whether he could send troops to eliminate drug cartels. According to Trump, she kept saying “No, no no, Mr., no no, please.”

These weren’t vague warnings about potential consequences. Trump was describing operations he wanted to conduct against three sovereign nations—none of which had attacked the United States.

The Maduro Operation: A New Template

The January 3 raid on Venezuela established a template. U.S. forces struck targets in Caracas, killing at least forty people, then extracted Maduro and his wife for prosecution in an American court. The administration called it Operation Absolute Resolve.

Trump had assembled what he described as “the largest Armada ever assembled in the history of South America” over the preceding months. Thirty-two vessels had been attacked since September 2025. The buildup was supposedly about drug trafficking. Then it became about regime change.

Within hours of Maduro’s capture, Trump said the United States would “run” Venezuela. Administration officials tried walking that back. They couldn’t walk back the operation itself.

What they did instead was expand the target list.

Cuba: Economic Collapse or Regime Change

Trump’s assessment of Cuba rested on a simple economic calculation: Venezuela had been propping up the Cuban government with oil and financial support. No more Maduro meant no more Venezuelan support. Therefore, Cuba’s government would collapse without American intervention being necessary.

“Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “I don’t know if they’re going to hold out.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio—whose family fled Cuba and who has spent decades advocating for regime change there—added his own warning. “If I were in Havana and part of the government, I’d be concerned—at least a little bit.”

That phrasing matters. Rubio wasn’t predicting economic hardship or political instability. He was suggesting Cuban officials should worry about what the United States might do to them. The implicit threat: if Cuba’s government doesn’t fall on its own, we’ll help it along.

Cuba responded by posting on social media that “Our #ZoneOfPeace is being brutally assaulted.” Cuban officials acknowledged that at least 32 Cuban personnel had been killed during the Venezuelan operation—they’d been deployed to protect Maduro.

Senator Lindsey Graham was more direct than Rubio: Cuban leaders should be “worried.”

Colombia: From Partner to Target

Trump’s language about Colombia crossed from implication into explicit threat. He called Colombian President Gustavo Petro “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.” Then he added: “He’s not going to be doing it long, let me tell you.”

When reporters asked whether the U.S. would pursue an operation similar to the Venezuela raid, Trump answered: “It sounds good to me.”

That’s the U.S. president saying he’d welcome an operation targeting a country that hasn’t attacked us. Colombia isn’t Venezuela—it’s been a U.S. security partner for decades, receiving billions in American aid for counter-narcotics operations. The relationship has been complicated, sometimes contentious, but fundamentally cooperative.

Petro responded with defiance. He rejected Trump’s accusations in posts on X: “I deeply reject Trump speaking without knowing; my name does not appear in the judicial files on drug trafficking over 50 years.” Then he went further: “Stop slandering me, Mr. Trump. That’s not how you threaten a Latin American president who emerged from the armed struggle.”

Petro had been a guerrilla fighter before entering politics. His suggestion that he would “take up arms again” if Trump attacked his country wasn’t empty rhetoric—it was a reminder that operations there wouldn’t be unopposed.

The U.S. had already revoked Petro’s visa in December 2025, citing his “reckless and incendiary actions.” Now Trump was threatening to invade his country.

Mexico: The Cartel Question

Trump’s threats took a different form with Mexico. He wasn’t talking about regime change. He was talking about deploying American troops to conduct operations on Mexican soil—without Mexican permission.

During a Fox News interview on January 4, Trump said he’d repeatedly asked President Sheinbaum whether the U.S. could send troops to eliminate Mexican cartels. According to Trump, she kept refusing: “No, no no, Mr., no no, please.”

The administration had designated eight major Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations—the Sinaloa Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and others. That designation created a legal framework that could potentially support military strikes. Trump had also threatened 25 percent tariffs on Mexican imports over immigration and drug trafficking issues, with those tariffs set to take effect in March 2026.

Mexico is America’s third-largest trading partner. Forty million Americans have Mexican heritage. The USMCA trade agreement, covering trillions in annual commerce, is up for renegotiation in 2026. Military strikes would fracture all of that.

President Sheinbaum tried to downplay the threats. “I don’t see risks (of that),” she said on January 6. “There is coordination, there is collaboration with the United States government.” She added: “I don’t believe in (the possibility of) invasion, I don’t believe even that it’s something they are taking seriously.”

But then she said something more revealing: “Organized crime is not taken care with (foreign military) intervention.”

The “Donroe Doctrine“

Trump didn’t invent these threats in a vacuum. They emerge from what his administration calls the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine—or, as Trump himself branded it, the “Donroe Doctrine.” (Donald + Monroe. Subtle.)

At his January 3 press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump explained: “The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we’ve superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the Donroe Doctrine.”

The administration’s December 2025 National Security Strategy made this doctrine explicit. The document states that “after years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.”

The strategy commits the U.S. to denying “non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically important assets, in our Hemisphere.” Translation: China and Russia need to get out.

But the doctrine goes further. It encompasses preventing mass migration to the United States, combating “narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations,” ensuring the region remains “reasonably stable and well-governed,” and maintaining exclusive American dominance throughout the hemisphere.

Secretary of State Rubio put it bluntly: “This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live—and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States.”

The State Department posted on social media: “This is OUR Hemisphere, and President Trump will not allow our security to be threatened.”

That’s the framework. The Western Hemisphere belongs to the United States. Any government that doesn’t cooperate with American interests—on drugs, immigration, geopolitical alignment, resource access—becomes a potential target.

Congress and War Powers

The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. Article I, Section 8. The president commands the armed forces once Congress authorizes their use. Article II, Section 2.

The Supreme Court said in 1801 that Congress holds “the whole powers of war”—the sole authority to decide when, where, and whom to fight.

Trump didn’t ask Congress before attacking Venezuela. He’s not asking Congress about Cuba, Colombia, or Mexico.

Constitutional scholars at the Brennan Center called the Venezuela operation “a blatant violation of the constitutional order.” There was “no declaration of war, no attacks on American troops, not even threats” preceding the operation.

Senator Tim Kaine announced he’d introduce a war powers resolution requiring congressional approval for any future strikes in Venezuela or elsewhere in the region. He characterized Trump’s operations as “an illegal war” lacking any justification “in the Constitution, in the history of the Constitution, or an American law.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer condemned the operation as reckless. The administration had assured Congress it wouldn’t pursue regime change in Venezuela. Then it did exactly that.

But here’s the thing: previous war powers resolutions failed on party-line votes. Republicans control both chambers. Even if a resolution passed, Trump would veto it. Overriding a veto requires two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate—politically impossible.

Congress can no longer stop the president from starting wars. Trump planned the Venezuela operation for months and kept it secret from Congress until execution. He could do the same with Cuba, Colombia, or Mexico.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said he didn’t think military strikes to annex Greenland would be “appropriate”—suggesting some theoretical limits to Republican support for executive power. But those limits haven’t materialized in Latin America.

International Law Without Enforcement

The United Nations Charter, which the U.S. has ratified, prohibits member states from threatening or using force to take over another country or undermine the right to control their own country and make their own decisions. Article 2(4). Exceptions: only if another country attacks first, or if the UN approves it.

The Venezuela operation violated that prohibition. Legal scholars at Chatham House concluded that “the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife by US forces operating in Venezuela, and his forced transfer to the US for trial, breaks international law” and constitutes “clearly a significant violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and the UN Charter.”

The U.S. had no UN Security Council authorization. Venezuela didn’t attack us. Venezuela didn’t consent to the operation. No humanitarian catastrophe required immediate intervention.

The UN Secretary General stated: “I am deeply concerned that rules of international law have not been respected with regard to the 3 January military action.”

The New York Bar Association argued that the operation “brazenly violate[s] the United Nations Charter, a binding treaty which the U.S. has ratified and which prohibits the threat or use of military force except in self-defense or as authorized by the Security Council.”

Military strikes on Cuba, Colombia, or Mexico would face identical international law constraints. The U.S. would lack any credible self-defense justification absent an armed attack. No UN authorization. No consent from target nations. No humanitarian emergency.

But international law has no enforcement mechanism targeting the United States. The International Court of Justice can’t make the U.S. show up or follow its rulings—the U.S. withdrew from the International Court of Justice in 1985. The International Criminal Court can’t prosecute Americans who aren’t nationals of ICC member states. We’re not a member state.

There’s no court that can punish Trump for breaking international law. The only constraints are political and strategic—and those constraints weakened after Venezuela.

Regional Responses: Fear and Defiance

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva issued the strongest regional condemnation. “This operation crossed an unacceptable line and that this was another extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community.”

Brazil is the region’s largest economy and most populous country. Lula’s willingness to formally condemn the operation signals that Trump has destroyed any agreement that the U.S. should lead the region.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric echoed the concern: “Today, it’s Venezuela, tomorrow, it can be anyone.”

President Petro called on Latin America to unite, warning that the region risked being “treated as a servant and slave.”

Mexico’s Sheinbaum tried a different approach—downplaying the threats while emphasizing cooperation. But even Mexican analysts acknowledged privately that Trump might follow through, particularly after the Venezuela operation’s success.

David Saucedo, a Mexican security analyst, characterized Trump’s threats as “negotiation weapons” designed to extract “commercial, diplomatic and political advantages.” That framing suggests Trump might be maintaining deliberate ambiguity—preserving the option of either negotiating from strength or executing threatened strikes if negotiations fail.

The Organization of American States, the primary regional multilateral organization, issued no formal statement condemning the Maduro operation or Trump’s subsequent threats. That silence itself reveals deep divisions within the organization about how to respond when the hemisphere’s most powerful nation acts unilaterally.

Will He Follow Through?

Foreign policy experts are divided. Some argue Trump’s threats are primarily tactical—designed to extract concessions on trade, drug cooperation, and other issues without requiring military strikes.

Sources close to the Trump national security team say there’s presently “no plan” for immediate operations targeting other Latin American nations. The administration is focused on managing the Venezuelan transition and extracting Venezuelan oil resources.

Military strikes on Mexico would face serious obstacles. Mexico is America’s third-largest trading partner. The USMCA is up for renegotiation. Forty million Americans have Mexican heritage. The political costs would be enormous.

Military strikes on Colombia would fracture decades of bilateral security cooperation. The country remains dependent on American aid. The Colombian armed forces’ fragmentation and focus on counter-insurgency might impede effective support for American operations.

But Trump executed the Maduro operation. He demonstrated concrete willingness to deploy military power to achieve hemispheric objectives. The administration’s National Security Strategy explicitly authorizes American strikes throughout the Western Hemisphere. Trump’s political base prioritizes border security and counter-narcotics issues—demonstrating resolve through military power might appeal to them.

The Maduro operation was executed with minimal American casualties and substantial success. That might embolden Trump to pursue additional regional operations.

And Trump’s rhetoric itself serves as strategic communication. Explicit threats extract concessions from regional governments without necessarily requiring military strikes. But Trump needs countries to believe he might do it.

He proved he would.

Global Implications

Trump’s operation targeting Venezuela and his threats carry implications extending far beyond Latin America.

China and Russia are watching. Expert analysis suggests that Trump’s strikes might encourage China to use military force toward Taiwan. If the United States is willing to violate international law and disregard sovereignty to achieve its objectives in the Western Hemisphere, why shouldn’t China do the same in the Indo-Pacific?

The precedent of American unilateralism creates a world where powerful countries think it’s okay to use military power to achieve strategic objectives.

American diplomatic standing in Latin America is collapsing. Even traditionally pro-American governments are increasingly uncomfortable with American operations in the region. That discomfort threatens traditional American alliances and pushes Latin American countries to rely less on the U.S.

China has used its Belt and Road Initiative to gain economic power throughout Latin America. Growing anxiety about American intervention creates opportunities for China to deepen relationships with regional governments increasingly wary of American intentions.

Weakening the international rules that limit what countries can do carries implications extending beyond Latin America. If America says it doesn’t have to follow international law as a binding constraint on state behavior, it sets dangerous precedents that other great powers will inevitably replicate in their respective regions of influence.

A Transformed Hemisphere

Trump’s statements on January 4 weren’t isolated outbursts. They expressed a reimagining of American foreign policy toward the Western Hemisphere—one based on the idea that America should control the hemisphere, minimal regard for international law, and willingness to employ military power to enforce American preferences.

Whether Trump invades Cuba, Colombia, or Mexico remains contested. Some analysts characterize his threats as negotiating tactics. Others note that he successfully executed an operation targeting Venezuela that everyone said he wouldn’t do.

But there’s a bigger point here. The fact that these threats can even be articulated by an American leader represents itself a significant development. Trump has transformed the strategic environment of the Western Hemisphere. He’s generated the fear and chaos that usually come before big wars.

Congress can no longer stop the president from starting wars. International law provides no enforceable constraints on American behavior. Regional governments are fracturing between defiance and accommodation.

And Trump has three more years in office.

The question isn’t whether he’ll follow through on these specific threats. The question is what happens when a leader demonstrates that he can conduct operations targeting sovereign nations without congressional authorization, without international legal justification, and without meaningful political consequences.

Trump answered that question on January 3 when he captured Maduro. On January 4, he started asking it again about three more countries.

The Western Hemisphere is watching. So is everyone else.

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