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It Worked.
Congratulations to Javier Milei and, just as importantly from some vantage points, Scott Bessent: Ar
I think encouraging Argentina to stick with reform and undermining Venezuela’s illegitimate government are worthy goals, even if the means being used are somewhat between puzzling and reckless.
Undermining Saddam was a “worthy goal” too on many vectors. Same thing with Gaddafi. And all else equal, it’s a good idea to encourage people to stick with reforms when the alternative’s hyper-inflation. But at the end of the day, it’s none of our business. We just can’t get that through our heads, even when we have a president who ran on a non-interventionist platform: It’s none of our business. And when we make it our business, stuff tends to go wrong.
I mean, look: Some people would argue our government’s “illegitimate” and if the standard’s fiscal rectitude, we’re lacking severely. Should a foreign country intervene?
I think there are some experiments under way already. China is working on this approach, at least from some POVs.
I think what is and isn’t sensible to do is more grayscale than bright-line. US actions vs Venezuela are clearly over the line – gunboat diplomacy is a bad idea, I suppose we’ll be okay with China acting similarly in SE Asia now? US actions in Argentina are maybe on the grayscale – will probably lose some $BNs but not a lot.
+1.
There’s a universal problem that happens in decision situations. One makes a choice to achieve a specific objective and in the end the objective is met. From the point of view of the decision maker, the conclusion is that the choice made was correct one. However, often if the DM obtains the originally desired result that outcome may not actually represent a “win.” One never actually knows if a given decision was or was not the correct/optimal one. Even worse, one can’t go back and check the alternative. Conditions will have changed and new outcomes will arise. Regardless of what happens when one makes a given choice, we can never know if the outcome was optimal.