A New Paradigm for an Old Conflict: The Mexico-United States War

The 1846–48 conflict between the United States and Mexico was the first U.S. war in which military victory over the foe’s conventional army and successful resistance to partisan attacks failed to produce the desired political outcome. Only by subsequently providing assistance to the dominant political and socio-economic groups of Mexico could the United States obtain a peace treaty legitimizing the conquest of Mexican territory. In this regard, the war stands as a precursor to challenges the United States would encounter in subsequent conflicts of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.