Weeks of saber-rattling, dark threats and a US military buildup not seen in Latin America since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis led on 21 November, somewhat anticlimactically, to a telephone call, when Donald Trump rang the man he has cast as his arch-adversary, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.
By Trump’s own account, it was less an attempt at opening dialogue en route to a mutually beneficial compromise than a bid to up the ante by imparting an ultimatum.
