The world’s largest warship has steamed into the Caribbean and, with it, an old American question dressed up in new hardware. The USS Gerald R. Ford strike group—dispatched by President Donald Trump— has entered the region to combat what the Pentagon frames as a counternarcotics surge that threatens national security; Caracas calls it a prelude to regime change and has placed its forces on heightened alert.

But the Ford ’s 100,000 tons isn’t the only displacement that matters. Roughly eight million Venezuelans now live abroad, most of them elsewhere in Latin America. That outward tide, proportionally, now rivals—and by some measures exceeds—Syria’s peak refugee flight during the European migrant crisis. The current standoff, if it escalates , risks creating shock waves that will b

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