Venezuela was supposed to be easy.

In the distant past of several months ago, toppling the government of Nicolas Maduro was not just another of the Trump administration’s cocktail napkin sketches of a foreign policy goal. The cause of saving Venezuela from the evils of Bolivarian socialism should instead have been a project that would unite Democrats and Republicans, #Resistance fighters and Trumpian courtiers, teary-eyed Obama liberals and unreconstructed post-9/11 neocons — though the last two had never been as distant from one another as some half-heartedly pretend.

By the Broadway musical logic of this motley assembly, rallying behind a soon-to-be-reborn Venezuelan democracy (so self-evident that no one need actually vote for it) should have been so obvious, so pressing, so overriding, that the only ones who could oppose such a noble design would be contrarian outliers beyond the pale — people who could and must be safely ignored.

Meanwhile, within the padded cells of respectable opinion, old but never abandoned dreams of regime change stirred, made all the more feverish by the hope that this time, it could be achieved without expensive and unpopular military commitments. This time, little more than the public endorsement of a friendly new stooge delivered by central casting and some diplomatic theatrics would be all that was necessary to secure total victory.

Again, Venezuela was supposed to be easy.

The roots of such hubris were manifold. They began with a quasi-socialist state ravaged by economic crisis — the reasons for which do not, for many, bear close examination — seemingly on the brink of collapse and led by an unfashionable and belligerent premier. Poised against this apparent fish in a barrel was Juan Guaidó, a media-friendly “interim” president — albeit one whose authority lay in a constitution that, until five minutes ago, had been widely dismissed as a tool for dictatorship — whose little-known profile could be made to signify whatever circumstances required.

Add to the mix a large and increasingly desperate opposition, so eager for US support a cynic might almost suppose they could not exist without it; a national military that, the new would-be president assured his eager State-side backers, was ready to turn upon the corrupt and unreliable state apparatus that sustained it; and broad(ish) international consensus willing to share a cause with a Brazilian neofascist and a game show host in the White House. What could go wrong?

As it turned out, a great many things. Despite the self-coronation of his supposed successor, Maduro stubbornly remained, entrenched and unbowed. Furthermore, his government was evidently too smart to make a martyr of Guaidó, who remained free to travel internationally and talk to fawning media. The grim possibility began to emerge that the Venezuelan opposition leader would be just one more Venezuelan opposition leader.

The fact that Maduro not only remained in power, but that his government appeared little more troubled than it already was throughout the economic calamities, escalating sanctions, civil strife, hoarding of goods by private businesses, and regional diplomatic conflict that have marked recent years surprised and baffled those who sought a Venezuela more palatable to Western interests.

Once this became impossible to ignore — several embarrassing months after the United States’ hasty recognition of Guaidó’s presidency — reports emerged that US officials were privately expressing their frustration. Though it was initially predicted that Venezuela’s military would “flip en masse,” the vast majority remained loyal to the sitting government, while a mere 1,500 Venezuelan soldiers defected and were left sitting glumly in Colombia, “waiting for something to happen.”

Elsewhere, Elliot Abrams, the Trump administration’s special envoy for Venezuela — whose record as a full-time Cold War monster on behalf of the Reagan White House and supporting character in the Iran-Contra scandal complicated the arguments of those pretending that there are no echoes of the United States’ blood-drenched past in its current shenanigans — lobbied with little success to expand the shaky coalition dedicated to removing Maduro. Similar failure followed the three separate meetings of the United Nations Security Council convened by the US in its efforts to secure recognition of Guaidó’s shadow government.

“Why hasn’t it broken open yet? Good question,” Abrams commented with piercing insight last month, falling back on an old standard: “I’ll give you part of the answer, and it’s the Cubans.” Yet while Cuba has been a steadfast ally of Venezuela since the election of Hugo Chavez, it has not militarily engaged in foreign struggles since Abrams was first making his name as an apologist for anti-communist death squads. The idea that the nation-state that preceded Venezuela as the United States’ Caribbean socialist boogieman du jour might be frustrating efforts to unseat Maduro is either fanciful or deeply humiliating for Abrams and his cronies.

By April, those who believed the fate of yet another Latin American nation rested upon the US intervening in its once-and-future backyard were growing increasingly anxious. The cracks in their earlier certainty were painfully illustrated by the anti-Chavista comedian Joanna Hausmann in a bite-sized video generously hosted by the New York Times. The illustriously named Hausmann, disturbed by growing protests against US intervention, explained why she felt her “fellow liberals” were making a catastrophic mistake in promoting “inaction” in Venezuela, offering the risible argument: “’Hands off’ can actually mean blood on your hands.”

Hausmann’s evident nerves — along with the hysterical reaction among both Republicans and mainstream Democrats to even marginal opposition to the US foreign policy consensus — should remind oft-frustrated American anti-imperialists that their exploits can sometimes yield results.

The international movement against Venezuelan regime change — which few commentators and fewer coup-plotters saw coming — grew primarily and organically from grassroots activism, rather than being inspired by those rare public figures who have spoken out against US intervention. For that, such protests remain all the more impressive.