Joshua Zeitz has taught American history and politics at Cambridge University and Princeton University and is the author of Lincoln’s Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay, and the War for Lincoln's Image. He is currently writing a book on the making of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Follow him @joshuamzeitz.

In an extraordinary telephone conversation this week, President Donald Trump purportedly scolded Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto for his failure to rein in his country’s criminal gangs and drug lords. According to The Associated Press, which claims to be in possession of a partial transcript of the conversation, Trump accused Peña Nieto of harboring “a bunch of bad hombres down there” and warned: “You aren’t doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn’t, so I just might send them down to take care of it.”

It’s hard to know really where to begin—or whether to take the president’s bluster at face value. (The White House insists he was joking.) Mexico is an ally, a neighbor and a key trading partner. An invasion would constitute a declaration of war (what’s more, it would complicate spring break plans for any number of college sophomores with pre-booked flights to Cancun).


If Trump really wants to meddle in Mexico’s affairs, he might think back 100 years, when another United States president, Woodrow Wilson, sent the Army across the Rio Grande to hunt down another group of “bad hombres.” The excursion was a disaster and an embarrassment, cut short only by America’s entry into World War I.

The takeaway for Trump: Don’t start a land war with an ally and neighbor that you can’t likely win.

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When Wilson took office in 1913, he inherited a chaotic diplomatic relationship with Mexico. Two years earlier, the country’s longtime head of state, Porfirio Díaz, had been deposed. Over three decades in power, Díaz had been strongly aligned with American economic interests, which came to control 90 percent of Mexico’s mineral resources, its national railroad, its oil industry and, increasingly, its land. Resentful of the “peaceful invasion” from their northern neighbors, in 1911 middle-class and landless Mexicans overthrew Díaz and installed a noted public intellectual and reform champion, Francisco Madero, in the presidency. Not long after, the military, under the leadership of General Victoriano Huerta, deposed and executed Madero.

Displaying his deep piety and moral conviction, Wilson declared that he would never “recognize a government of butchers” and declared his intent to “teach” Mexico “a lesson by insisting on the removal of Huerta.” To that end, he sent two personal envoys to Mexico City to instruct the country’s political leaders—“for her own good”—to insist on Huerta’s resignation. The mission fared poorly. For one, the envoys—William Bayard Hale, a journalist, and John Lind, a local politician from Minnesota—spoke not a word of Spanish. Lind privately regarded Mexicans as “more like children than men” and conducted himself accordingly, to the detriment of the mission.

Having failed at diplomacy, in 1914 Wilson seized upon a minor diplomatic scuffle (Mexican authorities had briefly detained U.S. sailors who had debarked their ship) as a “psychological moment” that justified sending a small invasion force to “help” Mexico “adjust her unruly house,” as the president’s chief aide explained. Unsurprisingly, the local populace was less than appreciative of the gesture. Crying “Vengeance! Vengeance! Vengeance!” Mexican civilians attacked several U.S. consulates and exchanged blows with the “pigs of Yanquilandia.” Nineteen Americans and 200 Mexicans died before the invading Army finally gained control of the city of Veracruz.

With Americans planted firmly on Mexican soil, Venustiano Carranza, a constitutionalist who was nominally friendly toward the Wilson administration, replaced Huerta. (Wilson regarded Carranza as a “fool,” but he tolerated his regime.) But Carranza faced challenged in consolidating power. In the south, populist chieftain Emiliano Zapata effectively controlled local government and law enforcement; in the north, Francisco “Pancho” Villa, a former landowner-turned-military general with a flair for the dramatic, held sway.

At first, Villa sought to align himself with Wilson, but as his grasp on power became more tenuous, he sought to raise additional resources by taxing American corporations and through general banditry. He took matters a step too far when his forces confiscated the sprawling Mexican ranch of American publisher William Randolph Hearst and briefly invaded a New Mexico border town, crying “Viva Villa! Viva Mexico!”

Incensed, Wilson raised a “punitive expedition” of 10,000 soldiers under the direction of General John J. Pershing. Equipped with all the modern trappings of war—reconnaissance aircraft, Harley Davidson motorcycles—the invading army searched high and low for Villa. It was like finding “a needle in a haystack,” Pershing would soon complain. Though Villa’s forces continued to plunder and maraud, the Americans proved incapable of finding and capturing the rebel leader. When Villa surfaced briefly in Glenn Springs, Texas, with his troops, only to disappear soon thereafter, the Wilson administration was left mortified and bereft of an explanation.

American entry into the Great War allowed Wilson and Pershing to save face. In February 1917 the expedition returned to American soil. Within weeks, Pershing sailed for Europe to command the nation’s war effort.

One hundred years after the Americans limped back across the Texas-Mexican border, Trump has raised the possibility that the United States government will once again invade its neighbor.

For Trump, history offers certain lessons.

First, choose a personal representative to the Mexican government who can speak fluent Spanish—or, even better, who understands how to conduct diplomacy. In both regards, Jared Kushner is probably not the man for the mission.

Second, if he does launch an invasion, he should not expect to be met with roses. America’s military in 1917 was small and ill-equipped, but relative to Pancho Villa’s army, it was a formidable fighting machine. This advantage did little good in the face of widespread guerrilla resistance to American imperialism.

Whether one takes the president seriously or literally—or neither, or both—the very fact that he threatened to invade our neighbor to the south constitutes a stunning provocation. Time will only tell whether he finds it necessary to de-escalate tensions with Mexico, if only to focus on a new, more foreboding enemy: Australia.

