One nail drives out another. This popular saying fits perfectly to understand what we are witnessing in Venezuela and across the Western Hemisphere. It would also be appropriate to invoke Newton’s second law, which states that only a greater force can stop a lesser one.

For nearly three decades, radical left forces—transformed into corrupt and criminal autocracies—took control of Venezuela, strengthened the Ortega dictatorship in Nicaragua, and attempted to establish similar regimes in Bolivia and Ecuador. In addition, there are the forces of drug trafficking and subversion entrenched in Mexico and Colombia, which continue to operate with a certain degree of impunity, even after the incomplete Colombian peace process and the failed Mexican war against drug cartels.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the Donald Trump administration has decided to impose its hegemony in the Western Hemisphere by force, with the demonstrative effect it delivered in Venezuela on January 3 with the military attack and extraction of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores. Given the ineffectiveness of the multilateral system (OAS, UN) and the brutality of regimes such as the “Fidelista” one in Cuba, the “Orteguista” in Nicaragua, and the “Chavista” in Venezuela—which close every door to peaceful democratic transitions—the big stick of the United States has arrived to shake the foundations of these dictatorships. No one can claim that Trump’s strategy will succeed. What we do know is that the well-meaning rhetoric........

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