A World Split in Two Is Just What China Wants

America says its actions in Venezuela are about restoring order in its own backyard. To Beijing, they look like confirmation that Washington is sliding toward a world divided into spheres of influence. This is precisely the kind of global order China wants.

Ousted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife appeared in a New York federal court Monday and pleaded not guilty to multiple narco-terrorism charges, after they were seized by US forces in Caracas on Saturday. Few in the country Maduro ruled with an iron first will mourn his removal. President Donald Trump can credibly claim, as my colleagues have written, that he’s brought down a blatantly illegitimate autocrat who stole an election, crushed dissent and ran an oil-rich economy into the ground, while trafficking in narcotics.