What unfolded overnight in Venezuela will cause immediate anxiety to governments like Iran and Denmark, against whom Trump has expressed enthusiasm for taking radical action.

In recent days, Trump has said the US would come to the defence of Iranian anti-government protesters, and his officials have kept up a drumbeat of threats to take control of Greenland by any necessary means. Last month, the Danish Defence Intelligence Service labelled the US as a security risk, a declaration that would have been unthinkable just a short time ago for a Nato ally.

It accelerates the slide from a mostly rules-based world to one of competing spheres of influence, to be determined by armed might and the readiness to use it. One American commentator, David Rothkopf, called it the “Putinization of US foreign policy”.

Russian commentators have frequently suggested that Latin America lies in America’s domain just as Ukraine was under the Russian shadow. Vladimir Putin thinks the same of much of eastern Europe.