Is the US back in the businss of regime change?

As the Trump administration continues to blow up fishing vessels in the Caribbean (at least ten so far), vessels that it maintains, without much evidence, are Venezuelan drug traffickers bound for America, and as the US continues to build up planes, warships, aircraft carriers and troops off the Venezuelan coast, the likelihood increases that President Trump intends to launch a full-scake invasion of the South American country, with intent to remove President Nicolás Maduro, who Trump bramds as a narco-trafficker, drug kingpin and terrorist.

The 60 Minutes video does a good job of encapsualting the basket-case that is today's Venezuela. and the enormities carried out by Maduro's security forces against its people. Hunger, power blackouts and a scarcity of medicines are now a way of life there. Triple-digit inflation and years of government mismanagement has meant  that over 70% of the population now lives in poverty, in what was once one of the wealthiest countries in the world. A fifth of the country's population has fled the scary police state that Venezuela has become over the last decade or two.

Elections last year were marred by violence and, although an estimated 70% voted for opposition leader María Corina Machado.(recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize), Maduro clung to power anyway, setting off a brutal crackdown on political opposition, involving arrests, torture, even murder. Machado is now in hiding, although there are reports that she is planning some kind of "peaceful transition" with US help, although it is hard to envisage a scenario that doesn't involve American boots on the ground.

As reports are leaked of American forces massing offshore, the Venezuela people clearly feel like something big is about to happen. Government troops are actively mobilizing in large numbers, and they are urging civilians to prepare for combat. A $50 million reward for Maduro's arrest shows how serious the US is. 

Despite Maduro's combative recent public appearances and his stridently anti-American rhetoric, Trump maintains that there have been private negotiations with Maduro, who has offered the US a stake in Venezuela's huge oil reserves in return for security guarantees. He is also happily accepting Venezuelan deportees from the USA.

Meanwhle, American F35s continue to pick off Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean, a tactic that many argue amounts of extra-juducial killings (court cases are pending in the US). The American admiral in charge of Caribbean operations mysteriously quit his job two years ahead of schedule, almost certainly as a result of this (and possibly future US plans).

I lived in Venezuala about 30 years, and it was a mess then. It's much more of a mess now. But is the US really going back into the business of regime change - think Iran, Cuba, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua - after all these years?