In March, the United States and more than a dozen other nations publicly urged the country to release political prisoners and hold new elections. But Mr. Trump’s White House was pursuing a more aggressive path on its own. On Friday came Mr. Trump’s military threat. While few expected Mr. Trump to actually order an attack, much of the damage was already done for American diplomacy, analysts said. “Trump’s comments appeared to be, as usual, a sudden outburst that was not thought through,” said Riordan Roett, who heads the Latin American studies program at Johns Hopkins University.

Source: New York Times August 14, 2017 23:48 UTC