The dramatic intervention in Venezuela by President Trump, his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and national security adviser John Bolton challenges every critical assumption about this administration’s conduct of foreign policy.
In reversing former President Barack Obama’s indifference toward the socialism destroying our southern neighbor, Trump took a new tough line toward Cuba, put Russia and China on notice that Washington will push back against their maneuvers in America’s backyard, signaling a new era of exerting greater U.S. influence throughout the Western Hemisphere. The president’s team took steps that were subtle, carefully prepared over time, multilateral, and, if effective, will oust a tyrannical populist and replace him with a democratically elected opponent.
Our cover headline this week, “Uncle Sam Puts His Foot Down,” begins a package of three articles examining how this remarkable international effort, led by Washington, came about, and what its implications are. We have a first-person account of fear and loathing in the streets of Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. And the Washington Examiner‘s editorial board adds commentary about how socialism always and everywhere destroys freedom and prosperity — a lesson for the 40 percent of Democrats who espouse that baneful philosophy — and eventually, in its worst form, produces the sort of collapse afflicting what should be Latin America’s richest nation.
The second main feature in the magazine is a scoop by reporter Alana Goodman exposing former Vice President Joe Biden’s support for racial segregation in the mid-1970s. Biden claims always to have supported racial integration, but in taped interviews in 1975, he explicitly says, apparently for electoral reasons, that African-Americans prefer segregation and he argues that busing is a “rejection of the whole movement of black pride.” Biden’s views will draw close attention if he dives into the 2020 presidential race, in which his rivals for the Democratic nomination would include minority candidates such as Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii.
Life & Arts leads with Traveling Life and examines the probability that there will be 400 million Chinese tourists traveling the world by 2030 and how Beijing is using them to apply pressure to other countries in service of its geostrategic plans.
A final word — le mot juste — about Venzuela. Was it a “coup” led by a right-wing American president? I raise this ridiculous question because that was how Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., described it. Under the headline “War of words,” Nicholas Clairmont discusses the way gross overuse of such warlike vocabulary by left-wingers not only changes rhetoric but fosters false narratives about events of vital national importance.
If all that sounds rather gloomy, here is balm for your soul: Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening” has just emerged from copyright protection, so we have taken advantage and reprinted this great American poem.
