When Humanitarian Aid Is Used as a Weapon to Bring Down Regimes

CÚCUTA, Colombia—Here at the Venezuelan border, American officials have addressed the press several times in recent days, touting a project meant to challenge the rule of Venezuela’s leadership. But it is one that has aid workers and international organizations worried.

First there was the United States’ ambassador to Colombia, Kevin Whitaker, who near a barricaded border bridge close to where the first shipments of American aid to Venezuela had arrived. Days later, Mark Green, the director of USAID, journalists from a podium on the tarmac at the airport here as forklifts behind him unloaded pallets of humanitarian supplies from military cargo planes. Then Senator Marco Rubio, a leading critic of the government in Caracas, the Venezuelan managers of the plan to carry these 200 tons of aid into their country on Saturday morning.