The concept of regime change, so sullied by the Iraq War and the U.S. overthrow of unfriendly Latin American governments during the Cold War, is suddenly back—this time with a mission of restoring democracy, a more multilateral bent, and for now, a less militaristic posture. Its comeback seems so complete that it is now spoken of casually. “I wish Nicolas Maduro and his top advisors a long, quiet retirement, living on a nice beach somewhere far from Venezuela,” Bolton tweeted on Thursday.

Read: How seriously should the world take Trump’s Venezuela threat?

The administration got to this point after two years of escalating pressure on Venezuela and deteriorating conditions within the country. Trump took a personal interest in the issue almost from the beginning. It started somewhat small in February 2017, with focused sanctions —followed that summer by Trump’s sudden, open speculation about a military option. It escalated sharply in 2018 with a call from Pence for Venezuela to return to democracy, and his suggestion that it could not do so with Maduro in charge. It culminated in the drama of this week, when over a period of about six days the Trump administration recognized a new Venezuelan president, slapped on crippling oil sanctions, and loudly called on Maduro to go.

If anyone in the administration knows what the consequences will be, that person isn’t saying so in public.

Within his first weeks in the White House, Trump designated Venezuela’s then–vice president a drug kingpin and called for the release of the prominent political prisoner Leopoldo López after meeting with his wife in the Oval Office. He’s frequently pointed to the country as a prime example of socialism’s failures and a cautionary tale of what will befall the United States if his opponents come to power (a popular talking point on the American right).

Fernando Cutz, who as director for South America on the National Security Council was summoned to brief Trump on the issue during the first days of his presidency, told The Atlantic that the president has, in private, focused on the humanitarian emergency in Venezuela. Maduro’s reign as Hugo Chávez’s anointed successor has brought severe political repression, hyperinflation, acute food and medicine shortages, and an exodus of millions of desperate Venezuelans—now the largest refugee and migrant crisis anywhere in the world outside Syria.

Trump “would ask, ‘Why are [the Venezuelan people] suffering so much? They’re all going hungry … They have everything to be a rich country. How is this happening?’” Cutz recalled.

Cutz, who left his post in April after Trump replaced then–National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster with Bolton, helped design a series of escalating measures to respond to various contingencies. The most severe step under discussion was an oil embargo rather like the sanctions that the United States finally imposed on Venezuela’s state-owned oil company this week. The administration nearly resorted to it in the summer of 2017, when Maduro moved to sideline the opposition-dominated—and democratically elected—National Assembly.