relationship with Latin America

In response, the Soviet Union installed nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting much of the US from launching pads in Cuba, an action aimed at altering the strategic balance between the two nuclear superpowers and thus a shield for the Castro regime.

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Captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, arrive at the Wall Street Heliport during their transport to the federal courthouse for their arraignment in New York City on 5 January.

(Photo: Stringer/EPA)

The resulting crisis became a hinge moment of the nuclear age.

America’s discovery of those missiles in October 1962 set off a major great power standoff until the Russians withdrew their missiles in the face of a US naval quarantine around the island and the possibility that the tension could lead to a nuclear war.

Returning to the end of the 19th century, as yet another sign of America’s growing presence and impact in the region, President Grover Cleveland elected to intervene in a dispute between Venezuela and Britain over Venezuela's border with British Guiana.

This effort was the US's first engagement with Venezuela a century before today’s crisis over Nicolás Maduro.

Cleveland's engagement came three decades before the start of Venezuela's oil boom, but the disputed territory was thought to be a major source of gold. Although his decision largely supported the British claim, it did guarantee Venezuela's clear access to the mouth of the Orinoco River.

This opened up a vast hinterland for economic exploitation and eventually became the location of Venezuela's oil boom.

Cleveland's engagement underscored a sense that anything in the western hemisphere was a wide-open door for American involvement. Such a position should be finding an echo right about now.

Meanwhile, growing commercial shipping and a strong belief that America needed to be able to operate its navy globally without needing to sail around South America renewed interest in building a canal across Central America. President Theodore Roosevelt was determined to build such a canal as part of a declaration of America’s arrival on the global scene.