WHATEVER TRUMP WANTS

In the President's second turn, U.S. foreign policy is personal

- BY BRIAN BENNETT AND NIK POPLI

FOUR WEEKS BEFORE THE BEGINNING of his second term as President, Donald Trump abruptly floated the idea of taking back the Panama Canal. It had been a quarter-century since the U.S. formally ceded to Panama ownership of the channel connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. With one social media post, Trump threw a seemingly stable relationship off-kilter, accusing Panama of overcharging U.S. ships for passage and recklessly permitting China too much influence in the canal's operations.

Looking back, it was an early sign of how America's relationship with the rest of the world was about to be shaken to its core. Trump's maximalist threat sent his foreign policy advisers scrambling. Within days of his Inauguration, military planners started work on options for taking the canal by force, according to a former Trump Administration official. “We're going to take it back, or something very powerful is going to happen,” Trump warned. Ultimately, no military operation was necessary. Panama's President José Raúl Mulino quickly and quietly agreed to a number of concessions, including reexamining Chinese investment in the country.

But 800 miles east, Trump's threats of force were not merely a negotiating tactic. Nearly a year later, following months of escalating pressure on Nicolás Maduro's regime, Trump in early January authorized a daring military operation to capture the Venezuelan strongman, a move Trump cast as both a blow against drug trafficking and a grab for Venezuela's huge oil reserves. The operation marked the most consequential use of U.S. military power in the western hemisphere in decades, and a striking demonstration of Trump's readiness to act unilaterally, without the painstaking coalition-building that once defined American intervention abroad.