At first glance, President Donald Trumps decision to recognize an upstart opposition leader as president of Venezuela looks like an abrupt and risky break from diplomatic norms vintage Trump, in other words.
But it may be the most traditional foreign policy move this president has ever made.
Not merely because Trump is seeking regime change in a Latin American country; the United States has done that for more than a century.
And not because the intervention was aimed at a leftist government allied with Cuba, long a target of hawkish Republicans.
The surprisingly normal thing was how downright multilateral the Trump administration was acting as if the president hadnt spent two years denouncing alliances as obstacles to his doctrine of America First.
Before the United States declared Venezuelas President Nicolas Maduro illegitimate, State Department diplomats carefully marshaled support from other governments in Latin America and beyond.
They allowed the 14-nation Lima Group, which doesnt include the United States, to take the lead in building the case against Maduros regime.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went to the Organization of American States, the Western Hemispheres hoary multilateral talk shop, to ask for a resolution of support. He didnt get a majority, but at least he tried.
Pompeo asked the United Nations Security Council for support, too. A White House official even praised the European Union for helping. That would be the same EU Trump has repeatedly denounced as a plot against the U.S. economy.
This could actually be a case where the administration has gotten something right, said John D. Feeley, a former U.S. ambassador to Panama who has been an acerbic critic of Trumps diplomacy. It hurts to say that, but its true.
The main reason our instinctively unilateral president has suddenly resorted to traditional diplomacy is simple. Few other options are available.
From his first days in office, Trump and his aides identified Venezuelas leftist regime as a threat to U.S. interests. Maduro is allied closely with Cuba, Russia and China. His government controls the worlds largest proven oil reserves, bigger even than Saudi Arabias.
Yet economic mismanagement, corruption and skyrocketing crime under Maduro have brought the country to its knees. Millions of Venezuelans have fled to neighboring countries, creating a genuine refugee crisis.
When Trump got his first White House briefings on Venezuela, he asked whether U.S. military intervention would solve the problem. Worried aides told him an invasion would be disastrous.
DOD (the Defense Department) said they were fighting enough wars already, one told me.
