- FAFO vs TACO: How Latin America Is Reading (And Gaming) Trump’s Threats Since Venezuela - 9 March, 2026
- [REPORT] Hugs No More, Bullets Galore? Mexico’s Security Policy One Year Into Sheinbaum’s Presidency - 22 October, 2025
- A Coup Foretold: Brazil Confronts the Depths of a Plot to Kill Lula - 4 April, 2025
Introduction
On 3 January 2026, U.S. forces carried out an operation in Caracas that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores and transferred them into U.S. custody. In Venezuela, an interim leadership took over and began managing a transition under close American oversight, with early movement centred on oil-sector governance and limited political de-compression.
Since then, U.S. President Donald Trump’s escalation rhetoric has widened beyond Caracas, with explicit cues aimed at Mexico, Colombia and Cuba, alongside discourse framing the Western Hemisphere as a U.S.-managed home-space. With the ceiling on U.S. intervention still undefined, Latin American governments are modelling Washington’s next moves under uncertainty, weighing how much follow-through is implied by the Venezuela precedent, and how often Trump’s maximalist threats may translate into action versus leverage-generation.
The result is a split-screen reading in Latin America’s policy class, whereby each new threat is priced through the meme-lens of FAFO versus TACO.
- FAFO (“Fuck Around and Find Out”): punitive escalation frame, in which threats are followed by enforcement against “irritants” in the hemisphere, raising the perceived risk of kinetic spillover.
- TACO (“Trump Always Chickens Out”): rollback frame, in which maximalist cues are used to open leverage, then softened through domestic constraints or negotiated off-ramps.
On that balance, the open variable for 2026 is how far Washington can go in practice, and which states can raise the costs of escalation credibly enough to cap the ceiling.
The new threat map: “open season” rhetoric after Venezuela
Washington’s official rendition of 3 January framed the action as a narrowly scoped enforcement operation, rather than a war. In prepared testimony dated 28 January 2026, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described a “surgical operation” against two “indicted fugitives” and stressed that the United States Armed Forces were used to support law enforcement objectives, with “no U.S. troops on the ground.”
Parallely, said testimony broadened the policy logic beyond a Venezuela-only exception by tying the operation to a hemispheric security doctrine. Rubio framed the Western Hemisphere as a home-space in which the United States “will not tolerate criminality” that harms Americans or turns territory into platforms for adversaries, and he described a “stage-based plan” backed by an explicit willingness to use force if other methods fail. In such a telling, precedent and doctrine travel together, with a kinetic option depicted as legitimate when anchored to “mission” language at the hemisphere level.
U.S. President Donald Trump has accordingly pushed an overt hemisphere logic in public-facing terms, including explicit invocation of the Monroe (“Donroe”) Doctrine and language about U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere, alongside remarks leaving open a troop presence in Venezuela.
The post-raid “open season” signal emerges in the gap between the claim of narrow scope and the breadth of the organising frame. Rubio’s testimony linked the transition in Venezuela to economic and energy repositioning, including claims about a reorientation of the oil sector and Cuba-linked flows. Meanwhile, regional governments reacted as if the precedent could be portable, with condemnations emphasising sovereignty red lines and concerns over resource-control, whereas a smaller set of governments (primarily Argentina) endorsed the action.
Mexico: Claudia Sheinbaum’s dilemma
After the 3 January operation in Venezuela, Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement denouncing unilateral use of force as a breach of Article 2 of the U.N. Charter, while urging de-escalation. Within days, Mexico became a credibility test case for whether Venezuela was a one-off or a transferable template. Coverage after 7 January described a Mexico “on edge” as Trump’s Venezuela escalation overlapped with prior threats of direct action against cartels, driving President Claudia Sheinbaum towards the goal of strengthening coordination with Washington; behind the scenes, Mexican officials reportedly projected increased U.S.-Mexico rapport following the capture of Maduro. At the same time, Sheinbaum has cautiously reiterated interventionism as a “red-line”, nodding to Morena hardliners who “would love to really pick a fight with the United States” while avoiding, nonetheless, a rhetoric that could overly aggravate Donald Trump.
The coercive peak, in FAFO terms, came on 9 January 2026 with Trump declaring that he would begin “hitting land” against cartels and claiming they were “running Mexico”. Sheinbaum’s immediate response was to task Foreign Minister Juan Ramón de la Fuente to contact the United States Department of State to “strengthen coordination”, while reiterating that unilateral military action would violate sovereignty. Reacting to Donald Trump’s proposal, during a press conference in Mar-a-Lago, to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” Sheinbaum responded that North America should be renamed “América Mexicana.”
By 12 January 2026, the interaction moved into a more transactional register. Reporting on the Trump–Sheinbaum call described her line as non-negotiable on troops (“not under discussion”), paired with a willingness to keep collaborating “within sovereignty”, and she framed the exchange as respectful. The same sequence also showed an early TACO cue, insofar as Washington’s maximalist threat to open leverage was followed by direct leader-to-leader contact that de-intensified (if provisionally) the most escalatory option without conceding Mexico’s red line.
Late January then widened the leverage set from security to economic exposure, as Mexico’s oil relationship with Cuba became entangled with U.S. pressure. Reporting from 23 and 27 January described internal review and Sheinbaum’s insistence that shipment decisions were “sovereign”, even as scrutiny increased. After a 29 January Trump executive order authorising tariffs linked to oil supply to Cuba, Sheinbaum warned that tariff-triggered supply disruption could produce a humanitarian crisis on the island and directed engagement with the U.S. State Department to clarify scope and seek alternatives. For Mexico, that reinforces the working interpretation of deeming threats credible enough to justify increased coordination, while assuming the U.S. administration remains sensitive to bargaining and reputational costs that make walk-backs available (FAFO-fearful, TACO-expectant).
On 8 February 2026, Mexico widened its Cuba posture into material support. An official statement by the Mexican Foreign Ministry declared that, on Sheinbaum’s instruction, Mexico had sent “humanitarian aid to the Republic of Cuba” aboard two Mexican Navy vessels, carrying over 814 tonnes of food supplies for the civilian population, while noting that “more than 1,500 tonnes still [remained]” pending shipment. Again, this reads as a TACO-expectant move, with Mexico testing how much solidarity it can sustain in a humanitarian register while assuming the administration still leaves room for managed off-ramps. Sheinbaum’s decision to send aid to Cuba may now be generating its own FAFO vulnerability, insofar as Washington’s sudden elevation of cartel-drone incidents into a bilateral flashpoint can be read as a possible retaliatory pretext.
The narco-terror hook on Colombia’s Gustavo Petro
The escalation ladder in Colombia was already visible before Venezuela. On 22 October 2025, Colombia’s Foreign Ministry rejected the U.S. destruction of a vessel in the Pacific linked to alleged narcotics trafficking, calling on Washington to “cease these attacks” and to “comply with the rules laid down by international law.”
Two days later, in a press statement, the U.S. Department of State declared that Secretary Marco Rubio “would not certify” Colombia’s counter-narcotics efforts, citing President Trump’s determination that Colombia was “failing demonstrably” in this domain and framing Petro’s approach as “appeasement [of] narco-terrorists”. The same declaration attached the argument to sanctions tools, noting Treasury action and designations, and stated that the United States would “not turn a blind eye” to the problem.
By 2 December 2025, Bogotá was already responding to Trump’s Colombia-specific rhetoric as a live military risk. In an official communiqué, the Colombian Foreign Ministry said it received “with great concern” Trump’s recent statements suggesting “the possibility of taking military action against Colombia” under a counter-narcotics rationale.
After Venezuela, Petro’s posture became a more performative variant of Mexico’s. In public, he leaned into denouncement for domestic consumption. In practice, however, he moved quickly to de-intensify the FAFO risk through leader-level contact. The institutional bridge for that shift was visible in a readout dated 23 January 2026, which described Rubio’s call with Colombian Foreign Minister Rosa Yolanda Villavicencio covering commercial and regional security cooperation, explicitly in advance of the February presidential bilateral.
The bilateral meeting itself then served as a short-term FAFO-fearful closure. Reporting around 2–3 February 2026 described an abrupt tone change, with Donald Trump remarking that Petro had become “very nice” after Venezuela, and both leaders presenting the The White House encounter as cordial and productive. Petro publicly graded the meeting highly (“9 out of 10”), highlighting drugs as the central file; Colombia also extradited a wanted trafficker immediately prior to the meeting, as a gesture of goodwill within the narco-terror frame. That overtly concessionary shift from Colombia, mirrored in turn by Trump, signals a higher FAFO-fearful inflection than Mexico’s, sitting in tension with Petro’s prior remarks which, compared to Sheinbaum’s, had been more contentious as well. Still and all, though Colombia has swung to further extremes than Mexico, their pendula nonetheless work the same frame (FAFO-fearful, TACO-expectant).
Coercion in Cuba through energy lifelines
Cuba is structurally the most exposed target in the post-Venezuela set. Unlike Colombia and particularly Mexico, the baseline relationship with Washington has long been organised around an entrenched embargo, with thin institutional trust and few routine cooperation lanes that can be traded for de-escalation. That baseline has long shaped Havana’s operating assumptions; after all, when pressure is already persistent, a system-challenging posture can feel tolerable because the marginal cost of “more sanctions” appears limited.
The Venezuela operation revised that ceiling by showing that enforcement under Trump can move beyond economic pressure. The subsequent Cuba file then shifted rapidly from signalling to instrument design. On 29 January 2026, Donald Trump signed a White House executive order declaring a national emergency, describing the Government of Cuba as an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” as well as creating a tariff mechanism that can be applied to imports from any country that “directly or indirectly” provides oil to Cuba. The text frames Cuba as aligned with Russia and the PRC, with claims about foreign military and intelligence presence, and it also embeds a formal modification pathway if Cuba takes “significant steps” and “align[s] sufficiently” with U.S. priorities, which is effectively the deal-logic written into the coercion.
Energy is where that leverage bites hardest, insofar as the Maduro operation triggered an ongoing oil shortage with risk of destabilising blackouts if Havana cannot reach an accommodation with Trump. Importantly, the new tariff design targets third-country supply lines rather than Cuba alone, tightening the embargo’s practical reach by incentivising compliance abroad. Cuba’s public counter-signal has been conditional openness to talks, but explicitly “without pressure or preconditions.”
This is also the lane where external backstops matter most. On 5 February 2026, Russia’s ambassador in Havana stated that Russian oil deliveries should continue, directly challenging the tariff threat. China is the other plausible backstop in the short term, even as Washington’s own framing already treats PRC ties as part of the threat picture.
Net effect: Cuba’s posture trends towards a more fully FAFO-priced stance than Mexico’s and Colombia’s (both of which can cautiously afford to stay FAFO-fearful but TACO-expectant). The only short-term relief could come from Russia or China, while the medium-term ceiling-shaping option remains a cohesive globalist line that raises the political and commercial cost of isolating Cuba.
Conclusion: ceiling-shaping, or how far the pendulum can swing
Since Venezuela, the regional baseline has converged around a shared frame, whereby even governments that expect walk-backs still treat escalation as plausible. The result is a posture that reads as FAFO-fearful, TACO-expectant, combining accommodation with sovereignty language as a braking mechanism. The difference across cases sits in constraints, which define how far each actor can lean into bargaining rather than pure damage-limitation.
Mexico and Colombia have, so far, shown more room to trade cooperation for de-intensification, partly because both maintain active bilateral lanes that can be widened without collapsing into overt subordination. Cuba sits at the opposite end of the spectrum. Historical isolation narrows negotiating space, and the oil lever compresses decision-time. That is why, in practical terms, Cuba is pushed towards deal logic under stress, while Mexico and Colombia can still (albeit imperfectly) attempt calibrated pretext management.
Crucially, however, few governments now discount FAFO risk under Trump, particularly after Venezuela, whereby pre-emptive diplomacy aimed at appeasement has become the norm in most, if not all, cases across the region.
Where a hemispheric cap could still emerge is the Southern Cone, where costs can transmit back into U.S. domestic politics faster, and where alternative market access can dilute U.S. leverage. Brazil is the clearest proof of concept, in perhaps the closest move to FAFO risk tolerance in the hemisphere and across medium powers elsewhere. In July 2025, Trump escalated to a 50% tariff threat on Brazilian goods, with market actors warning that the burden could land inside the United States via consumer price pass-through on staples such as coffee, alongside sensitivity around beef prices. Brazil responded by preparing retaliation under its Economic Reciprocity framework while signalling openness to negotiation; by November 2025, Trump removed tariffs on Brazilian food products, including beef and coffee, which reads as a domestic-cost-driven rollback. Even with Lula continuing to half-mock the U.S. President’s sudden warmth as “love at first sight,” and then on 9 February 2026 quipping that if Trump understood the “bloodthirstiness” of Lampião (a notorious early-20th-century Brazilian outlaw) he would not “provoke” Brazil, Trump has kept an atypically lax line on Brazil, saying Lula can call him “anytime” and that he “liked Lula and [Lula] liked me.”
That is the strategic logic for Mercosur as a medium-term ceiling shaper, now reinforced by the EU–Mercosur agreement signed in January 2026, which adds credible rerouting/hedging capacity if Washington tries to isolate targets one-by-one. Beyond the hemisphere, BRICS alignment and explicit Russian or Chinese backstops can also reduce FAFO risk for individual states, at the cost of raising the probability that U.S. pressure spills into a broader great-power escalation dynamic.
Chinese or Russian presence in the hemisphere is not, in itself, FAFO-inducing. Brazil has deepened commercial interdependence with China to the point where Beijing is its principal trading partner, yet that reality has not, on its own, triggered escalation. In practice, “external adversary presence” functions more as a selectable justification than as a causal trigger, deployed when constraints make coercion cheaper. Cuba illustrates the point. It is already institutionally isolated and energy-fragile, embedded in an entrenched embargo environment, so the threshold for additional pressure is lower; in such a context, Washington can frame escalation as a response to hostile alignment, even though that framing mainly supplies legitimacy post-hoc, rather than explaining why escalation occurs in the first place.
Recommended Readings
Deare, Craig A. “Irregular Warfare in the Western Hemisphere under Trump II.” Small Wars & Insurgencies, published online January 2026. https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2026.2619639 
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McPherson, Alan. A Short History of U.S. Interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016.
Monnappa, K. C. “The ‘Donroe Doctrine’: Hegemonic Decline, Revisionism, and the Erosion of International Legal Norms.” Preprint, January 2026. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.15107.98087 . Accessed February 14, 2026.
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