FOREIGN POLICY/MILITARY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/VENEZUELA: “President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela had become a pariah among fellow Latin American leaders as his beleaguered country staggered toward dictatorship. But a threat by President Trump to use the American military against Mr. Maduro’s government has united those leaders in a different direction: demanding that the United States keep out of the region’s affairs…
Mr. Santos’s response to Mr. Trump’s remarks — echoed by many other Latin American leaders in recent days — could endanger a fragile alliance against what many fear is the first dictatorship to emerge in the region in decades, analysts say.
‘Threatening military action undermines the strongest Latin American consensus in support of democracy that I have seen since the end of the Pinochet regime,’ said Mark L. Schneider, an adviser at the Americas program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, referring to the Chilean military dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet.
Maintaining that alliance will be a difficult balancing act for Mr. Pence as he tours Latin America this week, with stops in Chile, Panama and Argentina.”
-Nicholas Casey, “Trump’s Threat Against Maduro Unites Latin America, Against U.S.,” The New York Times online, Aug. 14, 2017