What do Venezuela and Mexico have in common?

U.S. President Donald Trump, if he hasn’t already attacked Venezuela, has made up his mind to launch his lethal cruise missile and drone strikes against the deeply divided country.

But my guess is that you won’t see any large-scale ground invasion to topple the beleaguered government of Nicolás Maduro.

Still, all of these recent developments — including the multitude of unilateral missile attacks against suspected drug smuggling fast boats in the Caribbean Sea and off of Mexico’s Pacific Coast — have got me thinking about Venezuela and Mexico. Both of these countries actually share a number of similarities and a few key differences, as well.

First off, they both have a serious Trump problem that isn’t going away soon. Specifically, Trump’s insistence on justifying the use of military force against noted drug cartels, alleged “narco-terrorists” and those ruthless drug traffickers (sorry, “unlawful combatants”) engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” with the U.S. This clearly puts Venezuela’s Maduro and Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum in Trump’s crosshairs.

Of course, both Mexico and Venezuela are viewed as major oil producers and countries with substantial petroleum reserves. It is also true that the U.S. wants to enlarge its investment and corporate footprint in the oil sector of both countries.

Even on the thorny immigration file, Sheinbaum — like Maduro — has been working closely with the U.S. on border security and deterring potential asylum seekers from travelling through Mexico. Similarly, Venezuela has been accepting two or more deportation flights from the U.S. every month, though the Trump White House would obviously like Caracas to take more.

When it comes to nettlesome Cuba, official Washington would dearly love to see the Cuban government completely isolated. Indeed, one of the core objectives of Trump’s Venezuelan missile strikes is to ultimately sever the fraternal relationship between Maduro’s government and Havana. With Maduro gone, so the thinking goes, the Venezuelan oil tap would be shut off entirely when it comes to Cuba.

As for Mexico-Cuba relations, which have strengthened under Sheinbaum, I’m sure that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is not amused. And you can bet that recent reports that Mexico is sending billions of dollars in oil to the island is already popping up on Trump’s radar screen. This, in turn, could easily unravel a heretofore cordial and respectful relationship between Trump and Sheinbaum.

Additionally, the two leaders are in a position to utilize Trump’s authoritarian and aggressive impulses to strengthen their own respective domestic standing with their people. Sheinbaum will waste little time in stressing one of Mexico’s cardinal foreign policy principles — namely, the sanctity of non-intervention in the internal affairs of another country. And Maduro will use the military attacks on Venezuela as a way of rallying Venezuelans around the government, deflecting attention away from a deteriorating economic situation and neutralizing the voice of Nobel Prize laureate María Machado as a leading opposition figure.

Where they do differ most, however, is in terms of their diplomatic relations with the Trump Administration. Mexico’s Sheinbaum, known as the “Trump whisperer,” has somehow figured out how to build a fairly strong personal relationship with him. Venezuela’s Maduro, despite efforts to court the “mad king,” finds himself on Trump’s proverbial nasty list.

There is also another sharp difference between the two governments and the nature of their governing structures. Maduro, through various means of coercion and co-option, clings to power unconstitutionally because he fixed the final tally of the July 2024 presidential election in his favour. Sheinbaum, for her part, heads a democracy (though Mexico has shown some signs of democratic backsliding recently), and was democratically elected in June of 2024.

So far, Sheinbaum has been able to handle Trump with her deft manoeuvring on bilateral issues involving trade, China and migration. But how long will that productive U.S.-Mexico relationship last? There are potentially choppy waters ahead with the recalcitrant drug cartels inside of Mexico, the July 2026 USMCA review and the November 2026 U.S. midterms.

It is also worth pointing out that most of the illegal drugs entering the U.S. are largely coming across the U.S.-Mexican border. More to the point, the Trump White House has already singled out the Sinaloa Cartel as a major problem and a “specifically designated global terrorist organization” — just like Cartel of the Suns in Venezuela.

Does that mean that Trump will use this designation as a pretext to launch military operations inside Mexico to decapitate its illicit drug networks? It may seem far-fetched. But I honestly don’t know for sure.

What I do know is that any ill-considered Trump missile strikes against Venezuela (or Mexico) will only enhance the similarities and reduce the differences between Venezuela and Mexico (and with other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean). That’s what happens when you have an occupant of the Oval Office who makes major foreign policy decisions without a comprehensive strategic plan and fails to include the sensibilities of other countries in the Americas.

Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.