Venezuela border tensions will test Jair Bolsonaro’s diplomacy

Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has closed his country’s border with Brazil in an effort to prevent opposition-sponsored humanitarian aid from reaching Venezuela. The Brazilian government, however, has decided not to pull the plug on its plan to get food and medicine across the border. An Air Force plane is taking 22.8 tons of powdered milk and 500 first-aid kits to the city of Boa Vista, in northern Brazil. But in order to get the aid, Venezuelans will have to enter Brazil, pick up the goods, and try to cross the border again.

The standoff comes as part of a large effort from the Venezuelan opposition to bring humanitarian aid into the country, a move sponsored by the U.S. government and backed by Brazil and Colombia. Opposition leader Juan Guaidó, recognized as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state by the aforementioned three countries, has promised to bring the aid into Venezuela “at all costs” on Saturday.

Still in power and backed by the local military, Nicolás Maduro is staunchly against the arrival of aid—despite his country’s full-scale crisis, with food shortages and inflation rates reaching 1,370,000 percent. The Venezuelan president sees the efforts as a Trojan horse...