As Washington descends into ever-shrinking fractals of outrage over Russiagate (first over an alleged conspiracy, then over alleged obstruction of the investigation of the conspiracy, then over alleged misrepresentation in the summary of the findings of non-conspiracy, then over the attorney general’s alleged misrepresentation of the interactions following the summary of the findings of non-conspiracy), you would almost think we were losing sight of more important things. For instance, are we about to send U.S. soldiers into armed conflict in a new part of the world—this time, Venezuela? That is what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has suggested in an interview with Fox Business Network. “Military action is possible,” Pompeo said. “If that’s what’s required, that’s what the United States will do.”

And no one cares. All right: I exaggerate. The New York Times has granted the Venezuela crisis two off-lead slots in the paper this week, which is something. But it’s marginal enough to be a reminder of one of the problems with having the United States in the empire business. You’re only going to be good at doing a job if you can be bothered to pay attention to it. If your mind is elsewhere, maybe it’s time to find a different job. But Washington is hard to fire.

So let’s look at the latest in Donald Trump’s foreign-policy mischief, which is proving to be far more consequential than anything Trump has come up with at home. This January, Trump decided to recognize Venezuela’s opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, as the true president of Venezuela, declaring President Nicolás Maduro to be an illegitimate dictator. Aside from being a dicey proclamation in moral and legal terms alone, such a move was also bound to invite further conflict, since Maduro was as unwilling as any other leader to go away when ordered by Washington to do so. Trump has now imposed sanctions on Venezuela, a move that Fernando Cutz, Trump’s first director for South America on the National Security Council, had discouraged, citing the “chaos we’d be unleashing, the humanitarian consequences.” This has had the usual effect of sanctions on hostile regimes, which is to cement them in while the population suffers even more. This week, Guaidó took a gamble and decided to call on Venezuela’s military to throw its allegiance to him instead of Maduro. This, too, failed. Military force by the United States is once again on the table, therefore, lest Trump look like an empty blusterer.

No one, at this point, is surprised. Those who once hoped Trump might prove to be a non-interventionist have long since laid such dreams aside. Prescience belonged to foreign-policy bad-news bears like The American Conservative’s Daniel Larison, who is cursed with being reliably correct but depressing, when he warned, from the start, that Trump was a militarist. If anything, Trump has been restraining his impulses toward muscle-flexing, since he has wished to oust Maduro almost from the start of his time in office. Now we are poised to escalate things into conflict with Cuba, and even Russia, over the internal affairs of a country that poses no credible threat to the United States. And yet many of us, myself included, are more preoccupied with the cold civil war here at home.