After Maduro capture, Trump’s tough talk evokes a return to the days of American imperialism

By AAMER MADHANI

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump hasn’t minced words about the larger message he’s trying to send the world with the U.S. military raid to capture Nicolás Maduro and spirit the deposed Venezuelan leader and his wife to the United States to face federal drug trafficking charges.

“American dominance in the Western Hemisphere,” Trump declared following Maduro’s capture, “will never be questioned again.”

In the days since the audacious raid, Trump and his team have doubled down on the notion that the new focus on American preeminence in the hemisphere is here to stay. He also held up Maduro’s capture to make the case to neighbors to get in line or potentially face consequences.

Trump’s rhetoric harkens back to the muscular talk of the late 19th and early 20th centuries when American presidents deployed the military for territorial and resource conquests, including to Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Honduras, Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

“There’s been periods, Vietnam and Iraq, which have evoked questions about a return to American imperialism, but the U.S. leaders’ messages in those periods were cloaked in talk of democracy. The w...