Photo by Andreas Lehner/Flickr

In his very public campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize, US President Donald Trump has frequently boasted, not only that he has ended so many “un-endable wars,” but that he is “the first President in decades who has started no new wars.” True or false, that may be about to change.

While the United States has been bombing small boats off the coast of Venezuela under the pretext of disrupting the flow of drugs into the country by drug cartels, US Special Envoy Richard Grenell said that he was continuing to talk to the administration of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. But on October 2, Trump called Grenell and ordered him to stop all diplomatic outreach to Caracas.

The end of diplomatic efforts, combined with Trump’s notification to Congress that the US is now in formal “armed conflict” with the cartels, and his insistence that Maduro is the head of the “Cartel of the Suns” (Cártel de los Soles) crime organization, seems to indicate that war and regime change in Venezuela are possibilities on the planning horizon.

The New York Times reports that the termination of diplomacy was partially motivated by the fact that “Mr. Trump has grown frustrated with Mr. Maduro’s failure to accede to American demands to give up power voluntarily.” American officials say that, as a result, “the Trump administration has........

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