With President Donald Trump announcing a “total and complete” oil blockade of Venezuela this week, the noose around dictator Nicolas Maduro’s neck is tightening.

A massive US Navy strike group was already sitting off the Venezuelan coast.

Trump called it “the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America.”

The president has also reportedly given the green light for covert operations against the regime.

Yet while Maduro’s days may be numbered, it’s not clear that a lasting democracy will follow after him.

Venezuelans have repeatedly voted for democracy.

They deserve to have one. America’s military action can topple a government, but it cannot provide the economic stability necessary for a democracy to survive.

What’s needed is an American rapid-deployment economic team ready to shore up new or fragile democracies — a US economic strike force.

If Maduro falls, a new Venezuelan government will inherit huge problems.

Broken infrastructure, over $150 billion in debt, hyperinflation, mass migration and a bad investment climate will make it incredibly difficult to get the country back on track.

Rebuilding a failed state like Venezuela without money, expertise, institutions or partners is an impossible task.

And economic chaos would put a democratic government in Caracas on a........

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