We look at the history of our hemisphere, here in the Western Hemisphere, and we see that up until about 25 years ago, most of the nations in the Western Hemisphere were governed by dictators and strongmen on both the left and the right, and few, if any, people in our hemisphere had a role to play in choosing their leaders.
Today, but for the exception of a handful of places–predominantly, Cuba and the Caribbean and some others–almost all of the people of the region get to choose their leaders, and that has been the story of Venezuela up until very recently.
Sometimes they choose leaders who agree with America, and sometimes they do not. But they choose their leaders.
In the end, we know that democracies very rarely start wars because their peoples do not tolerate it.