Nathalie Kittroweth

But despite the fact that intervention doesn't necessarily have broad-based support in Venezuela, we are at what feels like the precipice of something.

And I'm just wondering if you can lay out what the paths forward are now.

Is the diplomatic route that leaves Maduro in power still even an option?

Have we moved so far in the other direction that it's just not on the table anymore?

On the side of those who are advocating intervention, it does seem as though a lot of people in that camp may be hoping for, fantasizing about a kind of painless surgical extraction of Maduro from Venezuela, you know, by Marines or whoever.

And then the arrival of a new government led by Machado that everybody wants that functions smoothly.

But, Anatoly, you know this better than me.

The U.S.

has a long history of this kind of intervention in Latin America.

Has it ever worked that way?

Seamless, smooth?

Yeah, and one of those outcomes, right, is that you could end up destabilizing this country and potentially spurring a new wave of migration, which is exactly what this administration wants to avoid.

I mean, if you end up creating all this instability that could potentially spread to neighboring countries, that's obviously not in the U.S.

interest either.

And it's also, by the way, the opposite of the America First agenda that Trump campaigned on.

Just to pull back, to take a longer view of all of this, if the Trump administration goes through with this, it wouldn't just be, right, a return to an older, more aggressive approach to the Americas, a more aggressive foreign policy.

In many ways, it would be a test of how far the U.S.

can push the limits of

of that policy in 2025.

The latest phase of all of this started, as you said, with bombing boats in international waters and treating alleged criminals as if they're enemy combatants in a war, which many experts see is a complete violation of international law.