Four days since US President Donald Trump’s most strident military move yet, the gulf grows between his claim that the United States will “run” Venezuela and the reality of a continued dictatorship on the ground.
In the weeks to come, there is a risk for the White House that its brutal flourish of US power in the early hours of Saturday is undermined by a failure to follow through – a potential strategic defeat snatched from the jaws of a spectacular but short-lived win.
In a matter of minutes during Saturday’s press conference, Trump’s flex of American might flip-flopped from asserting US control over Caracas to moments later conceding that the vehicle for this was the presumed cooperation of…