Trump Praised Putin's Ukraine Move. Now He Has Ousted Maduro.

Donald Trump once praised Vladimir Putin’s 2022 actions in Ukraine as “genius,” suggesting the U.S. could use similar tactics. Now, as president again, he has ordered military strikes to remove Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. This action throws a nation of 28 million people into uncertainty. It also ignores a clear lesson from recent U.S. history, experts say. Wars to change a foreign government are easy to start but very hard to win. Trump previously promised to annex Greenland and take control of the Panama Canal. His move against Maduro raises a pressing question: which country could be next? Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School.