What drives a country to the point where many of its citizens “fantasize about a Trump-led military intervention”? That’s the question Moisés Naím and Francisco Toro took on in a sweeping 2018 essay that I’ve returned to again and again over the years. Naím and Toro trace Venezuela’s descent from a prosperous, democratic, U.S.-aligned country in the 1970s to an impoverished dictatorship a few decades later—and conclude with a warning that is newly pertinent as the United States builds up its military forces in the Caribbean. A potential U.S. invasion, they write, “amounts to an ill-advised revenge fantasy, not a serious strategy.”
Until next week, |
