The U.S. has carried out scores of covert and overt regime-change operations since the last century. Scholarly consensus is clear: such interventions rarely advance U.S. interests and usually produce unintended consequences that recoil on America itself.

Yet President Trump’s administration is engaged in a barely disguised effort to topple President Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela.

The dissonance between Trump’s rhetoric and policy could not be starker. He has repeatedly denounced decades of U.S. intervention abroad, especially military-backed attempts at regime change and “nation-building.” After his 2016 victory, he declared: “We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with.”

But in contrast to this “America First” non-interventionist pose, Trump’s approach to Venezuela has been one of the most sustained U.S. campaigns for regime overthrow in recent memory. His strategy has included crippling sanctions, narcoterrorism indictments against Maduro and his associates, and naval deployments under the fig leaf of an anti-narcotics operation.

In recent weeks, after ordering strikes on Venezuelan boats that killed at least 21 people, Trump dispatched warships, surveillance planes and even an attack submarine — a show of force

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