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U.S. military intervention south of the border is as American as baseball and apple pie. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to occupy the town of Veracruz, Mexico, to protect U.S. economic interests. During the Cold War, the United States engaged in a variety of overt and covert regime change operations, from Cuba to Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Panama. As recently as 1994, the Clinton administration engaged in an invasion of Haiti to reinstall deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

It was nonetheless shocking to see a U.S. administration openly and proudly engage in the kind of leadership change—effectively an armed kidnapping—that we saw over the weekend. There was little artifice in official explanations for why these actions were taken and no real attempt to finesse the attack into some form of international law. Rather, the Trump administration effectively asserted the primacy of U.S. interests: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro stood in the way of stemming migration, preventing the flow of drugs, and allowing access for U.S. oil companies to Venezuela’s rich oil fields.

U.S. military intervention south of the border is as American as baseball and apple pie. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to occupy the town of Veracruz, Mexico, to protect U.S. economic interests. During the Cold War, the United States engaged in a variety of overt and covert regime change operations, from Cuba to Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Panama. As recently as 1994, the Clinton administration engaged in an invasion of Haiti to reinstall deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

It was nonetheless shocking to see a U.S. administration openly and proudly engage in the kind of leadership change—effectively an armed kidnapping—that we saw over the weekend. There was little artifice in official explanations for why these actions were taken and no real attempt to........

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