Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado greets supporters in Maturin, Venezuela, in July, 2024.Matias Delacroix/The Associated Press

One thing almost everyone agrees on: The world would be much better off if Nicolás Maduro and his regime were driven out of office.

The Venezuelan President, whose 12-year rule has become a corrupt military-backed dictatorship after his refusal to accept the loss of two elections, has destroyed and plundered Venezuela’s once-prosperous economy, plunging an estimated 20 million people – more than two-thirds of the population – into “multidimensional poverty” and 14 million into serious malnourishment.

He has effectively forced more than 8 million to flee and often live terrible, stateless lives on the road or in hiding, a flood of human misery that has created political crises up and down the Americas. He has murdered and tortured thousands in death-squad attacks. He has permitted, and perhaps assisted in, the spread of terrifying organized-crime cartels across the region.

In short, Mr. Maduro is this hemisphere’s biggest problem. On that, there is agreement. The question is whether Venezuelans and their allies should persuade Donald Trump and the U.S. military to do the job for them – or whether getting Washington involved would permanently end the possibility of a democratic transition in Caracas, and plunge the country into a generation of even deeper polarization and misery.

U.S. aircraft........

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