President Donald Trump’s operation in Venezuela rightly captured global attention and sent a clear message to America’s adversaries: Peace through strength is once again a governing principle, not just a slogan.

But Venezuela needs to be more than just a strong, salutary message to the world — we need to treat it as a lesson. Africa will be the test of whether we learned that lesson, and President Trump’s America First Global Health Strategy is a critical, proactive step toward ensuring that we don’t allow a problem to metastasize into an emergency once again.

President Trump has successfully restored a form of deterrence that too many adversaries had begun to treat as a relic. When the White House says it will enforce red lines, it now has a record of acting — that’s not an appetite for war, it’s an insistence that bad actors should expect consequences, not press releases.

Yet Venezuela is not only a warning to those working against American interests but also a cautionary tale of what happens when Washington allows a manageable challenge to harden into a full-blown crisis.

A common mistake in conservative foreign policy debates is to treat strength and “soft power” as substitutes: choose toughness or choose engagement. That’s a........

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