The USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group cruised the Caribbean last month as American forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. This month, America’s largest aircraft carrier is heading toward the Middle East as the long-running standoff between Iran and the U.S. enters a new and dangerous phase.
The Trump administration can be clownish, depraved and dysfunctional. It can also be stunningly effective. Caracas had been a headache for American presidents ever since Hugo Chávez put Venezuela on the road to ruin back in 1999 (to great applause from American leftists who hailed Chávismo as, finally, the Socialism That Works). Even as economic decline drove floods of refugees across its frontiers and the marriage of its government with drug cartels worsened the drug crisis, Venezuela subsidized late