Recent reports suggest that the Trump administration is considering attacks on Venezuelan military targets that abet the drug trade. Such reports signal a diplomatic crisis that has brought the two countries to the brink of war. Yet such behavior is hardly without precedent in the history of America’s relations with Latin American states.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump administration is considering whether to strike at military facilities inside Venezuela, such as ports and airports, which are used for smuggling drugs. However, they note that “the president hasn’t made a final decision on ordering land strikes.”

The Miami Herald goes further, declaring on the authority of anonymous sources that “the Trump Administration has made the decision to attack military installations inside Venezuela and the strikes could come at any moment … in a matter of days or even hours.”

When asked, the White House denied the rumors. “Unnamed sources don’t know what they’re talking about,” insisted White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly. “Any announcements regarding Venezuela policy would come directly from the President.” President Donald Trump himself denied making a decision when asked Friday aboard Air Force One.

It isn’t clear what Trump administration officials have discussed or decided behind closed doors.

What is obvious, however, is the major pressure campaign Trump has constructed against Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. After labeling the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a narco-terrorist outfit earlier this year, the administration in July also designated the “Cartel de los Soles (a.k.a. Cartel of the Suns)” as a sanctioned terrorist outfit “headed by Nicolas Maduro Moros and other high-ranking Venezuelan individuals in the Maduro regime.” Trump doubled the bounty for Maduro’s capture to a record-setting $50 million and greenlit CIA operations against drug activities inside Venezuela.

Alongside these moves, Trump has amassed a sizable American fleet off of Venezuelan shores, which has attacked boats suspected of carrying drugs and flown planes near Venezuelan shores, leading some to speculate that Trump aims to remove Maduro from power. “This is an operation against narcoterrorists, the al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere. … And they need to be dealt with,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared.

Whatever the president’s intentions with regard to the Maduro regime, what is certain is that Trump has brought back the tactic known to American history as “gunboat diplomacy.” It began in 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry sailed a squadron of U.S. warships into Tokyo Bay, forcing Japan to end nearly four centuries of isolationism.

Fifty years later, President Theodore Roosevelt exercised the muscular tactic in Latin America to establish the “Roosevelt Corollary.” Ever since America’s fifth president, James Monroe, America had opposed the presence of European powers in the Western hemisphere as a potential threat to American interests. In the Roosevelt Corollary to the “Monroe Doctrine,” the hero of San Juan Hill argued that the U.S. must act, if necessary, as an international policeman of bad actors in the Western hemisphere.

The impetus for this new doctrine came from an incident involving none other than Venezuela. In 1902, the U.K., Italy, and Germany established a coastal blockade of Venezuela to force that country to pay its debts; Roosevelt intervened with a show of naval force in the region and insisted on U.S. mediation. (European presence in the region really did threaten American interests, as the U.S. had only just pushed Spain out of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and its other colonies four years earlier.) After European powers attempted another debt-collection blockade in the Caribbean in 1904 (this time of the Dominican Republic), Roosevelt formally proposed his corollary in an address to Congress.

But Roosevelt’s gunboat diplomacy was not confined to keeping European powers out of the Caribbean. Also in 1902, Roosevelt deployed American naval power to the Pacific and Caribbean shores of Colombia (which still owned Panama at that time) after the Colombian Congress rejected a treaty for the U.S. to build what would become the Panama Canal. Roosevelt’s navy supported Panama in gaining independence from Colombia, thereby winning for America the right to dig the canal.

In other instances of Caribbean gunboat diplomacy, the U.S. occupied Cuba in 1906, Nicaragua in 1912, Veracruz, Mexico in 1914, and Haiti from 1915 to 1934.

Thus, Trump’s major show of force in the Caribbean is not without precedent. The question is what, exactly Trump hopes to accomplish. “There isn’t enough combat power for an invasion,” said retired Marine colonel Mark Cancian, “but there is plenty for air or missile strikes against the cartels or the Maduro regime.”

Some analysts believe that simply a show of force might push Maduro out of power. “This is the U.S. really putting to the test the claim that Maduro is weak and the military will flip with just a gentle push,” suggested Atlantic Council analyst Geoff Ramsey. “So far, we haven’t seen any evidence of major defections in the country, but I think if the U.S. carries out the military strikes on the Venezuelan armed forces, that equation might change. However … there’s a chance that this leads to a rally-around-the-flag effect.”

Yet Venezuela would be within its rights to interpret U.S. military strikes on Venezuelan military targets as acts of war, escalating the situation beyond what the Trump administration bargained for. Venezuela operates sophisticated, Russian-made air defense systems, and Russia could send Maduro further support in the event of war.

If it comes to war, let us pray, for the sake of the Constitution, that President Trump appeals to Congress for war authorization, since the Constitution explicitly invests Congress with the power “to declare war.”