A US Stand-Down Over Venezuela Is Still Possible

Say that Donald Trump has by now realized that attacking, or even invading, Venezuela might turn into a disaster. He wants to back down and redeploy the mighty American armada in the Caribbean to do something more useful elsewhere in the world. Could he?

Of course he could, technically. As president and commander-in-chief, he ordered those 15,000-odd troops and all that hardware, including the most sophisticated aircraft carrier in the world, to the region without even asking Congress. So he could issue another order to pull them out again, and send that aircraft carrier back to the Mediterranean, whence it came — or, better yet, to the Indo-Pacific, where it could signal to China that the US intends to remain a major power even outside the western hemisphere.