Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

A massive military buildup in the Caribbean has sparked speculation that the U.S. is now engaged in its latest chapter of direct intervention in Latin America.

For now, at least, President Donald Trump has walked back suggestions that Washington is eyeing strikes inside Venezuela, seemingly content with attacking numerous naval vessels under the guise of a counter-narcotics operation. But nonetheless, U.S. presence in the region will enlarge further in the coming weeks with the arrival of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford.

As a scholar of U.S.-Latin American relations, I know the actions of the current U.S. administration smack of a long history of interventions in the region. Should escalation develop from attacks on ships into direct military confrontation with Venezuela, such aggression would appear to be par for the course in inter-American relations.

And certainly, governments across Latin America – in and out of Venezuela – will place it in this historical context.

But while it does hearken back to some quasi-piratical practices of the U.S. Navy, the military buildup now is in key respects both unprecedented and shocking. It could also damage U.S. relations with the rest of the hemisphere for a generation to come.

A history of intervention

In the most obvious way, deploying a flotilla of warships to the southern Caribbean evokes dark echoes of “gunboat diplomacy” – the unilateral dispatch of marines or soldiers to strong-arm foreign governments that was especially prevalent in Latin America. One reliable account tallies 41 of these in the region from 1898 to 1994.

Of these, 17 were direct U.S. cases of aggression against sovereign nations and 24 were U.S. forces supporting Latin American dictators or military regimes. Many ended in the overthrow of democratic governments and the deaths of thousands. From 1915 to 1934, for example, the

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