Some People Will Never Learn
Bret Stephens wants to oust Maduro in Venezuela.
I understand, in the abstract, the allure of using US military power to oust an authoritarian regime that is immiserating its population. It is a powerful fantasy that can seduce the mind, but it is a reality that almost never works. Nonetheless, NYT columnist Bret Stephens is huffing the fumes of potential regime change in Venezuela in his latest column, The Case for Overthrowing Maduro.
I would try to deal with Stephen’s substantive arguments in favor of regime change, but he really doesn’t make one save to note that Maduro is an awful leader and that the Venezuelan people are suffering because of it. He also notes that Maduro is enmeshed in the drug trade and that he is friendly with US adversaries Russia, China, and Iran.
Ok, no argument there, but none of that is a compelling reason to unleash death and destruction on the Venezuelan population in the hopes that violence will lead to regime change and renewal. The notion that the removal of a dictator automatically results in the emergence of good governance is just a false notion. See, e.g., Libya.
As a general matter, the success rate of “regime change” is pretty terrible. People make too much of the post-WWII transformation of Japan and Germany. Those are exceptional cases in the context of a global war and massive invasions of countries with a competent, long-term process of rebuilding states (not to mention substantial expenditures by the United States).
What are the “good” examples of US military action leading to democratization? There aren’t many. Panama gets cited in terms of the ouster of Manuel Noriega in 1989, but that was in response to a coup, and I would hasten to note that the US had troops in the country to begin with and that it was not analogous to overthrowing a multi-decade regime in the hopes of magically creating democracy via strategic bombing.
In recent history, I would note that a multi-decade occupation of Afghanistan did not bear democratic fruit. The invasion and occupation of Iraq were not worth the costs (in every sense of the word), and while there is a marginally better regime in place, it isn’t exactly the shining example of democratic governance its architects promised. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but hundreds of thousands, and maybe over a million, Iraqis died as a result of the US invasion. The disruption of countless families was not worth Saddam’s ouster, no matter how much of a tyrant he was.
How about the invasion of Vietnam? That’s a symbol of failed American power.
Yes, South Korea is democratic now, but please note we didn’t engage in the Korean War to restructure the South; it was about the North, and how did that turn out?
As a general matter, whether by military action or not, the exit of dictators does not mean that the next regime will be an improvement.
Anastasio Somoza fled Nicaragua, and that led to the Sandinistas taking over (and after a democratic phase, the leader of the revolution, Daniel Ortega, rules as an authoritarian).
When Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba, the Castro regime came to power, and the basics of which remain in control of the island.
When the Shah fled Iran, the Islamic Republic was installed and continues to govern Iran.
US interventions in Latin America have never gone especially well.
These are just a variety of examples that come to mind. I can attest that, as a general matter, US interventions into governance in Latin America are not a series of pleasant tales.
But, nonetheless, Stephens persists.
Two direct observations about the column.
First,
But the larger challenge posed by Maduro’s regime is that it is both an importer and exporter of instability.
Ok, so again agreeing that if I could wish the world to be different, I would wish Maduro away (indeed, I would wish that Venezuela’s once stable democracy had not collapsed in the 1990s). But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, as the saying goes.
But the notion that overthrowing the regime would be stabilizing is absurd. Did overthrowing Saddam lead to more stability? Am I misremembering Mosul and ISIS, and all that?
Even if we accept that Venezuela is the source of some amount of instabilty, it is a contained instability. Regime change would unleash a far less contained or predictable instability in the region. How is that a good trade?
Did Qaddafi’s ouster make Libya more stable?
I can’t say it is a bad thing that Assad is gone from Syria, but did his exit increase the stability of the region?
I guess the aforementioned fumes in Stephens’ office are quite strong.
Back to the column. Stop me if you have heard this one before.
But there are also important differences between Venezuela and Iraq or Libya. These include a democratically elected leader, Edmundo González, who could govern with immediate legitimacy and broad public support.
Every time people argue for these kinds of regime interventions, they point to some opposition leader who is ready to step in. Stephens seems to have forgotten there were such promises about Iraq that did not pan out (granted, not democratically elected ones, but the argument that there was practically a government in waiting was made at the time). The notion that in the middle of the chaos of regime collapse, an individual is capable of stepping in with “immediate legitimacy” is absurd (especially when brought to power by Yanqui invaders).
Above all else, who in their right mind would think that the Trump administration, with key actors like SecDef Pete Hegseth and ODNI Tulsi Gabbard, is prepared to guide a regime change policy?
There really should be fixed terms for NYT columnists.
In the aftermath of the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, is there anybody on the left or right who thinks a single American death in service to such an adventure would be acceptable? MAGA is already making noise about staying out of such adventures.
Democratic success in Latin America has come when the dictators voluntarily step down and set up elections right away. See Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and until recently Mexico (we’re backsliding to His Majesty’s PRI system by another name).
What positive economic development comes with democracy is highly variable, too.
Amen to that. OK, I understand Ross Douthat. When Bill Kristol lied too much for even the editorial page NYT did an extensive search for an acceptable replacement conservative and Douthat was the poor best they could find. I read Douthat occasionally, but only to join the chorus of commenters pointing and laughing. I feel sorry for print subscribers who don’t get the fact checking and feedback in comments. David Brooks must have blackmail on the Sulzbergers or something, he’s clearly past his Best By date. Trapped between his undying loyalty to the Republican Party of his dreams and Trump, he’s reverted to pop sociology and hasn’t said anything interesting in years. And what has Stevens ever produced to justify his slot?
Bouie and Gessen are always worth reading, as was Krugman. French, Collins, Klein (except on Kirk), Goldberg, even French and Friedman, are occasionally worth reading. The field of good liberal writers with useful insights is crowded with talent. Conservatives, not so much. If NYT can’t find conservative pundits who meet what they claim as their standards, maybe they should just say so.
The Germany analogy fails because the Allies and the German people – as opposed to the guy who gave his bride a cyanide capsule and blew his own brains out – shared a common enemy: the USSR. The Japan analogy is better, and it was on the assumption that Dick Cheney could not possibly be so clueless he thought he could do Iraq on the cheap that I thought it was a 51/49 situation. IOW, had Cheney been as smart as the MacArthur occupation was, it might possibly have worked.
I assumed the talk of going in with a limited commitment was a smokescreen and we intended to do Japan 2.0. And then it slowly dawned on me – around the time we admitted we lacked the forces to protect the national museum – that no, Cheney was absolutely stupid enough to half-ass the war. If Cheney was that dumb, what are we to expect from Hegseth and his band of clowns?
(I don’t mention George W. above because no one thought he was smart. But compared to Trump, W was Bismarck).
The cover story being put out is that this is a Monroe Doctrine play, keeping the Russians and Chinese out. But that’s bullshit. Trump has long complained that we should have seized Iraq’s oil for ourselves, and I suspect that’s the real reason. Venezuela has a metric fukton of oil, any number of companies would like to bid for rights, and Trump assumes a good piece of that would end up in his pocket. There is no universe in the multiverse where Trump would spend the money or put in the effort to help Venezuela get back on its feet.
I think he’s hoping to bully Maduro into fleeing, and the Gerald Ford is certainly intimidating. Failing that I can’t imagine what target set he’s contemplating. Venezuela’s military is a joke, blow them up and all you’ll get is civil war. What else are our bombers going to hit?
You are wrong Taylor. They will greet us as liberators.
https://www.leadingtowar.com/war_rosecolored.php
Steve
People make too much of the post-WWII transformation of Japan and Germany. Those are exceptional cases in the context of a global war and massive invasions of countries with a competent, long-term process of rebuilding states (not to mention substantial expenditures by the United States).
Both countries started a global war. The damage and death they inflicted exceeded what they suffered. Americans have wiped the slate clean on how many civilians died due to their actions, especially with Japan. 15 million people died in China due to the Japanese invasion, but we’re so proud about how many Japanese we massacred (800K civilian deaths plus another 2M military) that we’ve taken this operation and universalized it as an example of how things should be done to countries or peoples who did not start a global war.
For example, by the WW2 math, every bloodlusting WW2-touting fanatic should have been happy with around 200 people dead in a place like Gaza. Oddly, that wasn’t the case.
@Modulo Myself: As I have argued before, I think that too many people see WWII as the model through which to view warfare/military action (see here), but as you note, just the global war of it all makes it a very poor example.
@Michael Reynolds:
Cheney was far from clueless. The democracy in Iraq thing was obvious bullshit, Republicans don’t even want democracy here. Cheney wanted an end to HW’s oil embargo. Iraq started shipping oil.
Too many fans of regime change look back to the cold war and how there were “successful” changes in governments. What they neglect to acknowledge is that the new dictator was no better for the people than the old one, he was just our guy and not Moscow’s.
It interesting that even the neocons over at the Bulwark have not been beating the oust Maduro drum, it seems that they have learned something, that replacing a dictator with a dictator is different than replacing a dictator with a somewhat representative government. Overthrowing Maduro is more likely to produce another Haiti than representative government in Venezuela.
Isn’t all the activity around Venezuela and the Caribbean a massive distraction from El Taco’s failure to take the Panama canal? not to mention that Canada remains independent and Greenland unconquered.
@Steven L. Taylor:
It’s a kind of fantasy stemming from the American defeats after WW2 and the sense that these were lost because of a lack of will. Men were men back then, and they didn’t flinch at killing 90,000 while firebombing Tokyo, whereas in Vietnam they were squeamish, a bit feminine and corrupt. People like Cheney after 9/11 were going on about the Church Commission, like if the CIA had been able to torture a bunch of guys we would have stopped the attacks.
The real common denominator is that men who haven’t been in combat really believe in the WW2 fantasy.
WTF?
Warning signs appear on Mexican beach declaring area restricted by U.S. as Mexico rejects Trump offer to strike cartels
Some speculation that SpaceX was involved. Or it was something that Kathy wrote.
Not a way to win friends and influence people.
@gVOR10:
That field for conservatives died with Krauthammer. Although National Review has some decent writers who haven’t ceded their all of their braincells to Trump.
I’m skeptical that Bret Stephens desires US entanglement in a quagmire-sudamericano. Seems more like deliberately provocative clickbait, fishing in the attention economy. In that task, Stephens succeeded. I imagine him giggling somewhere rn.
@Scott:
I just live here.
It sounds like they might have misread their GPS and planted their signs in the wrong country. Or someone at the War dept. decided they could just seize foreign land, as the constitution says nothing about that.
@DK:
I only read Krauthammer occasionally, but it was always fun. Guys like, say, Brooks or George Will, made rather sloppy arguments. Krauthammer was a polished professional. It was always a fun game to spot where a conclusion sounded right, but didn’t really follow logically*, or where a word or phrase subtly changed definition, or where a “fact” was artfully phrased, or some other little trick.
* What I call the College Football Championship fallacy should be in Wikipedia. It’s a statement that sounds right, “There has to be a game to decide the college football champion.” It sounds like it’s true, unless you stop to think there wasn’t one for decades and no one died.
@gVOR10: My take on Cheney (and W) was that they were facing a domestic political crisis because of 9/11 and the reports that they had been warned.
So all the adventurism and aggression that followed was meant to foreclose any criticism of negligence. Ron Susskind’s book, “The One Percent Doctrine” quotes Cheney:
I read that as highly reactionary to how they responded (ahem, didn’t respond) to warnings about 9/11. It was a change of mindset for them.
@Jay L. Gischer: I enjoy applying the One Percent Doctrine to other issues.
Like, if there’s a one percent chance that ai is going to destroy humanity, we should….
@becca: HA! Love it.
(Even though I am decidedly non-binary on AI. Lots of bad, also good, it will find roles, and some of those roles will be very good for us, and some will suck eggs like the weasels who fund ai.)
@Jay L. Gischer:
It’s an extreme example of the Stephen Dubner Principle: People don’t correct problems, they overcorrect problems.
If applied consistently, we’d be at war and/or shooting at each other all the time.
I too would like to see the Trump regime fall, but would be wary of a coup. There’s a point where it may be the least worst option, but we’re not there yet.
Would it be better or worse than England deposing the leader of its wayward colony, and installing a new king (not the Andrew formerly known as Prince!)? I can see an argument either way. Don’t we have one of their non-disgraced princes over here already? Can we get him to start saying that America is a republic, not a democracy?
Is Cuba that bad? It certainly seems more stable than a lot of Latin America, and Haiti is right there showing how much worse things could be. Maybe I’m a lefty leftist swimming in leftist propaganda, but I don’t hear about death squads and I do hear about universal healthcare at a quality that’s at least as good as my cat’s vet — a pretty decent standard, from the big picture, which a lot of people globally (and in the US) don’t get.
Philippines seems to be doing relatively ok. And other than the Islamic Dictatorship Shouting “Death To America”, Iran doesn’t seem awful. (Iran definitely looks better in comparison to its neighbors — no ISIS period, no Taliban — than it does in general)
Perhaps the best way of getting rid of Maduro is to support him and wait for the revolution. It hasn’t worked great, but I think it’s the best we’ve managed. Offer him a nice exile when the time comes. Also, Bolisano should just move into the guest suite at Mara Lago — just help Brazil clear the slate.
May I suggest a military intervention?
@Kathy:
There is a pretty good book about this kind of thing.
Cheney fooled himself. I strongly suspect Putin made the same error.
I’m going to quibble about the mention of Libya in the OP. A completely different situation. The Brits and the French were begging us to get involved, and the situation when we finally did was Qadaffi’s son leading a force to slaughter people in Benghazi, and it was nearly there. The record of what that guy and his dad did to people who pissed them off was clear. It was an intervention to prevent a slaughter. Nothing at all like what is going down with Venezuela right now.
I am for such interventions. I think we should’ve gone into Rwanda in 93. I approved of the op to stop the deliberate genocide being attempted in Somalia in 92.
Here is the fallacy we must reject though, the one that leads to endless mission creep: If we intervene to prevent a slaughter we become responsible for everything that happens after in that place. It’s bullpoop. It can be simply a matter of helping some helpless people out.
@becca: If there’s a one percent chance Trump could become a dictator…
@dazedandconfused: I recall at the time some discussion that our NATO allies had committed to intervening, and if we wanted to maintain leadership, we’d have to get ahead of them and lead. Also, we had all the good command and control planes.
On my understanding, Edmundo González was a proxy for Machado in the last presidential election in Venezuela after Maduro banned the latter from running. Backing him to lead a replacement government could well trigger infighting within the current opposition coalition.
@gVOR10:
Problem for the Brits and French was they were out of ammo, they had only a few dozen of the expensive missiles in stock. “Our unique abilities”, as Obama put it.
The Euros had learned the financial benefits of relying on the US for everything military. Ironically, about three decades in the future, the Russians would teach the Euros the problem with a Potemkin village military.
@dazedandconfused:
Ironically, part of the problem was that, due to US urging, the Europeans had been reconfiguring forces to foucus on “out of area” operations based on special forces, airmobile units, etc at the expense of the Europe-centric “heavy metal boys”.
In retrospect, that was a massive error on our part.
Hopefully the Russian revanche has put the “Special Forces mafia” back in their box.
@JohnSF:
The sheer scope of the continental US and the enormous buffers provided by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, Canada, and Mexico, warps US thinking about lots of things. The US could sell a huge volume of weapons that delivered what the Russian S-300 and S-400 are supposed to (one of the Ukraine lessons is that those systems are not nearly what the Russians promised). Such systems are valuable to almost everyone else, but there’s no reason to ever deploy them domestically.
@Kathy:
I have always worried that the old saying “Peace is a condition we hypothesize because there are occasionally gaps between the wars” is accurate.
@Kathy:
Take a long view of how the US acquired its current territory. If we’re generous, we pay something after the fact for land that we seize.
@Kathy:
He seems to have been distracted by the idea of declaring martial law and deploying the military in-country first.
@Michael Cain:
It depends on the levels of violence within a country, too. While the Us has fought a lot of wars, arguably the continental US has been at peace since the end of the civil war. And the two other states, Alaska and Hawaii, plus all possessions and former possessions, since WWII.
@Michael Cain:
Oh, that’s “training.” He said so himself.