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Photo by Marcelo Garcia/Miraflores Presidential Press Office/AP

Good for Trudeau. The Cold War is long over, even if the afterburn of petro-communism has reduced Venezuelans to picking through garbage for food. What was fun for Trudeau père, to foster a bromance with Fidel in order to annoy the Americans, is passé. In the age of the Davos superelite, one goes instead to the Bahamas, lolling about on the private island of billionaire friends to discuss the middle class and those working hard to join it.

It is a credit to Trudeau that he did not indulge in any reflexive anti-Americanism by refusing to recognize Gaidó just because the Americans did. Of course it is not just the Americans. The world’s patience with what 20 former Latin American presidents have called a “military narco-dictatorship” has long run out, even as millions of Venezuelans are literally running out of their country, causing a massive refugee crisis in Colombia and Brazil.

It is a credit to Trudeau that he did not indulge in any reflexive anti-Americanism

In addition to Canada and the United States, Gaidó has been recognized by Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras. France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom demanded that Maduro call for fresh elections this week, pledging to otherwise recognize Gaidó as president. The European Union joined in that same ultimatum.

Maduro has the support, critically, of the Cuban-backed military, which are keeping him in power. Internationally, he is backed by Russia, Iran and Turkey.

And Canada’s New Democrats. Demonstrating that his up-to-date fashion sense does not preclude holding onto the worst of retro anti-American Cold War thinking, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh backed Maduro, a throwback to the days of the fellow travellers on the left. They weren’t communists, but they were certainly against the anti-communists. Anti-anti-communism was rarely about the suffering people of the country in question; it was usually about the United States.