The New Yorker:

After his assault on Venezuela, the President is turning his attention to the rest of the Western Hemisphere.

By Robin Wright

The U.S. Institute of Peace, a monumental white building across from the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, has an undulating glass roof in the shape of a dove, with wings that appear to be flying high above and beyond the exterior walls. The institute was founded by Congress during the Cold War to be an independent think tank dedicated to resolving international conflicts. Last spring, it was seized by the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, with the help of the D.C. police, even though the building isn’t government-owned. The staff—including hundreds of leading specialists on global crises, who advised all branches of government—were fired. The takeover coincided with the startling decision to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development and downsize the State Department. Just a few days before Christmas, about thirty ambassadors were recalled from their posts over vague accusations of insufficient loyalty to President Trump’s “America First” priorities. Keith Mines, a career diplomat and former vice-president for Latin America at U.S.I.P., told me that “pulling out our whole diplomatic architecture” was a “stunning” change and would severely limit American capabilities during instability abroad. (In full disclosure, I was a senior fellow at U.S.I.P. for fifteen years, but left to join another think tank months before it was taken over.)

Now, in just the first week of the New Year, both allies and adversaries have expressed increasing alarm over Trump’s bellicose bravado and mercurial threats after the shocking U.S. military operation to extract Nicolás Maduro, the former Venezuelan leader, and his wife from Caracas. The leaders of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, and Spain jointly denounced the U.S. intervention as a violation of international law. “Such actions set an extremely dangerous precedent for regional peace and security and for the rules-based international order,” they wrote in a statement, while Europeans publicly fretted about Trump going rogue and no longer being bound by convention.

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