Venezuela was the stage. China was the target.

Last weekend’s Caribbean live-fire exercise in and around the suburbs of Caracas delivered a steady stream of tactical messages to the Western Hemisphere. We don’t like narco-terrorists, wannabe communists, bloated dictators, or people who supply oil to our adversaries.

But that wasn’t the real message.

Message to Xi: There’s a new sheriff in town. He isn’t ‘Sleepy Joe.’ And his call sign is FAFO.

The love note was addressed to China, and it read: We are awake now. Our game is FAFO.

America’s 36-year slumber on the Monroe Doctrine — “Stay out of the Western Hemisphere or else” — began after Panama in 1990. The Gulf War and the Global War on Terrorism followed, and Washington became dangerously myopic about threats in America’s own backyard.

Then came the turning point. When Bill Clinton signed off on communist China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2000, Beijing rapidly surged into a world-class economic power. Along with that rise came a succession of Chinese leaders who openly advanced the idea of global Chinese hegemony.

Oddly enough, many of those ideas came from an American — my late friend Alvin Toffler.

Toffler’s book “The Third Wave” so impressed Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang in 1984 that millions of bootleg Chinese translations were distributed — without royalties — throughout the People’s Liberation Army. The same thing happened after Toffler published “War and Anti-War.” Once again, millions of pirated copies circulated, and Beijing began integrating his ideas into military doctrine.

In the late 1990s, PLA Major General Qiao Liang and Colonel Wang Xiangsui wrote “Unrestricted Warfare,” borrowing heavily from Toffler while laying out a strategy to defeat the United States.

In hindsight, it should have been titled “Slow Motion War.”

The book focuses on perceived weaknesses in American character and American war-making. The United States remains a nation of quarterly earnings reports and election cycles. We change political leadership every two or four years. The Chinese think in generational time frames.

From their perspective, Americans only go to war when facing a “clear and present danger.”

The genius of “Unrestricted Warfare” lies in exploiting what happens when a threat is clear but not present — like cancer from long-term smoking — or present but not clear, like the slow poisons Lucrezia Borgia allegedly used on her enemies.

Qiao and Wang proposed a slow, steady pressure campaign against the four pillars of American national power: diplomatic, information, military, and economic — the DIME.

Examples abound. Diplomatic and economic leverage through the Belt and Road Initiative. Tight control of information inside China paired with aggressive information warfare abroad through platforms such as TikTok. A decades-long military buildup aimed at surpassing U.S. power. And a long trail of currency manipulation.

(And then there’s this gem from page 191 of “Unrestricted Warfare”: “Can special funds be set up to exert greater influence on another country’s government and legislature through lobbying?” Eric Swalwell might find that line interesting.)

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Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

While America fixated on the Middle East, China quietly embedded itself throughout Latin America. In Panama, Beijing gained control of port management at both ends of the Panama Canal and began upgrading the system. In Costa Rica — which has no army — China donated 3,500 police cars and built a national stadium in San José, free of charge. It also cut sweetheart deals involving hundreds of Chinese fishing trawlers. Colombia saw similar treatment.

Then came Orange Man Bad.

Donald Trump is the first president to grasp that China isn’t a Red Godzilla stomping cities with napalm breath and a scything tail. China is more like the Blob — and Trump is Steve McQueen.

Venezuela, Maduro, oil, and narco-terrorism were all subsets.

China was the target. Xi Jinping was the bullseye.

Zero hour wasn’t set by the weather. It was set by the departure of Chinese envoy Qiu Xiaoqi, who had just wrapped up discussions on future ties with Venezuela. Unfortunately for Beijing, Delta Force snagged and bagged Nicolás Maduro and his wife and had them sitting in a Brooklyn jail before the envoy even made it home.

Message to Xi: There’s a new sheriff in town. He isn’t “Sleepy Joe.” And his call sign is FAFO.

Any questions?