Nicaragua Officially Becomes a Family Dictatorship

By Elliott Abrams

Wednesday, July 29, 2026

 

Even the most repressive dictatorships hold some kind of elections — the tribute vice pays to virtue, as the old definition of hypocrisy goes. That’s why communist regimes always called themselves the “People’s Republic.” In March of this year, North Korea held parliamentary elections, and Kim Jong-un’s Workers’ Party announced that it had won 99.93 percent of the vote. There’s a long tradition here; in 1937, Stalin awarded himself and the Bolshevik Party 99.3 percent of the vote for the Supreme Soviet.

 

But Nicaragua’s dictator Daniel Ortega is now dispensing even with these electoral frauds. On July 19, the anniversary of the Sandinista takeover in 1979, Ortega announced that elections in Nicaragua are coming to an end. “There won’t be any more elections here for them to try to seize the government and seize power,” Ortega said. “The days when parties backed by the Yankees (United States) and the Somocistas would return to power are over — never again!” The next formal step will be taken when his puppet parliament cancels the scheduled November 2027 elections entirely.

 

Nicaragua is now a family dictatorship just like that of the Kims in North Korea — or the Somoza family that the Sandinistas displaced in 1979. Nicaragua today has two “co-presidents,” Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo. Ortega is 80 and in poor health, so he and his wife changed the constitution last year to assure that Murillo takes sole power when he dies. And in the wings are their sons: Laureano, a “presidential adviser,” Rafael, who heads the national oil company, Maurice, and Daniel, all under U.S. sanctions for money laundering, each waiting for his turn. The only difference between the Ortega family tyranny and that of the Kims in North Korea or the Somozas is that they had phony elections and Ortega is dispensing with that formality.

 

The overall human rights situation in Nicaragua is awful. As Freedom House details in its latest (2025) report:

 

The 2006 election of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega began a period of democratic deterioration marked by the consolidation of all branches of government under his party’s control, the limitation of fundamental freedoms, and unchecked corruption in government. In 2018, state forces, with the aid of informally allied armed groups, responded to a mass antigovernment movement with violence and repression. The rule of law collapsed as the government moved to put down the movement, with rights monitors reporting killings, extrajudicial detentions, disappearances, and torture. Since then, Ortega’s regime has consolidated its power by engaging in surveillance, curtailing press freedoms, arresting political opponents, sending opposing voices into exile, and stripping away their citizenship.

 

The regime has jailed or expelled bishops and priests as part of its repression of the Roman Catholic Church. As the Catholic news site Zenit put it,

 

The scale of the phenomenon is striking. . . . 309 priests and religious sisters have been exiled, expelled, or denied entry into Nicaragua in recent years; more than 95 percent of them are Nicaraguan nationals. . . . The repression has also hollowed out diocesan leadership. Four dioceses — Jinotega, Matagalpa, Estelí and Siuna — are currently without their bishops in residence. . . . Carlos Herrera, Bishop of Jinotega and president of the episcopal conference, was expelled in November 2024 after criticizing a local mayor aligned with the government who had disrupted a Mass with loud music.

 

In 2024, the regime started banning public assemblies celebrating Good Friday, Easter, and Lent.

 

The extremes of repression have soured even top Sandinista leaders — including the longtime minister of defense, Daniel Ortega’s brother Humberto. In May 2024, Humberto Ortega was arrested by security forces and placed under house arrest after criticizing the regime in an interview with a foreign press outlet. He died while under house arrest in September 2024.

 

Venezuela and Cuba have gotten considerable attention from the Trump administration, but Nicaragua much less so despite the deepening dictatorship. These three countries represented the last leftist, anti-American regimes in this hemisphere. With Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in jail and his regime either kowtowing to Trump’s instructions or (one hopes) moving toward free elections, there are two to go.

 

Nicaragua should present an easier case than Cuba. Cuba has not had multiparty elections since 1952, while Violeta Chamorro beat the Sandinistas in a free election in Nicaragua in 1990. Nicaragua has not experienced a Cuban-style regime until the last decade, making it easier to restore both free elections and democratic institutions of government. The state and Communist Party bureaucracies built by Fidel and Raúl Castro since 1959 do not exist in Nicaragua. Banned in Nicaragua but possible to restore are the political parties and their leaders, plus journalists who worked in free newspapers and TV stations. And the hundreds of opposition political leaders expelled in the last decade can return home and take up their work again.

 

The moment for change may be approaching. Murillo (sanctioned by the United States in 2018 for human rights abuses and corruption) has been purging many of her husband’s closest advisers as well as former Sandinista militants and public officials, part of her preparation to rule alone. But that will leave her with a narrow base of support. When Daniel dies or becomes incapacitated, it remains to be seen if she can seize all the reins of power — becoming president and perhaps naming her sons as vice presidents — and whether the military will go along with a family dictatorship.

 

The attention being given to Venezuela and Cuba is warranted, but Nicaragua’s future deserves the Trump administration’s attention too — and merits a serious program to bring down the Ortega-Murillo regime and restore legitimate, competitive democracy. This can be the hemisphere of freedom and one where oppression does not create massive refugee flows. Nicaraguans need U.S. encouragement and help to rid themselves of a vicious, corrupt, and brutal regime, and U.S. policy for this hemisphere should include another chance at freedom for Nicaragua.

The Real Bernie Sanders Always Stands Up for What’s Wrong

By John Fund

Friday, July 24, 2026

 

There are very few politicians who are poorer judges of character than Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator ignored warnings and defended fellow socialist and sex pest Graham Platner through multiple scandals for almost a year. Platner withdrew from the Senate race only after a serious sexual assault allegation.

 

This week, video surfaced that Bernie’s blindness has a long history. His old communist ally, 80-year-old Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, announced there would no longer be any elections in his country — no doubt to ensure he would be succeeded in office by his 75-year-old vice president and wife and eventually his son.

 

Ortega has ruthlessly run Nicaragua for 19 years, having returned to power in 2007 after his Sandinista regime was ejected by voters in 1990. He has since jailed almost all of his political opponents. Over 300 people were killed by his security forces during protests in 2018, and the left-wing Human Rights Watch concluded, “High-level Nicaraguan officials bear responsibility for grave, pervasive abuses.”

 

At the time, Sanders did express concern over the “anti-democratic” drift of Nicaragua. But he has been almost completely silent since then. That’s because back in 1985, he traveled to Nicaragua at Ortega’s invitation to celebrate his regime. While there, he called Ortega “an impressive guy” and said that, while Fidel Castro wasn’t “perfect,” Americans shouldn’t forget that “just because Ronald Reagan dislikes these people, doesn’t mean that people in their own nations feel the same way.”

 

Amazingly, Sanders acknowledged that his views could lead to him being “attacked by every editorial writer in the free press for being a ‘dumb dupe.’” He then proceeded to prove that this was exactly what he was doing: he said that Cubans appreciated Castro’s rule because he “educated their kids, gave their kids health care, totally transformed the society.”

 

Now, 40 years later, Bernie has become the Pied Piper for the Democratic Socialists of America, whose adherents range from Zohran Mamdani to AOC and are pledging a “total transformation” of American society.

 

One thing is clear: Bernie is always certain of his moral superiority and always wrong as to what it leads to.

Who Is the U.S. Actually at War With Right Now?

By Conor Friedersdorf

Thursday, March 05, 2026

 

Donald Trump campaigned on the idea that electing him was the best way to avoid wars. He has referred to himself as the “peace president,” going so far as to complain that he hadn’t won a Nobel Peace Prize.

 

Yet Trump has governed as a hawkish interventionist whose approach better aligns with his neoconservative secretary of state, Marco Rubio, than with the anti-interventionists in his administration, such as J. D. Vance and Tulsi Gabbard. The United States is now enmeshed in so many conflicts that its foreign policy is closer to “world police” than “America First.”

 

The newly launched war against Iran is the most significant. Operation Epic Fury begins less than a year after the United States and Israel partnered to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. At the time, Trump declared that operation a success, and Vance defended it by stating, “I certainly empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements … But the difference is that back then, we had dumb presidents and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America’s national-security objectives. So this is not gonna be some long, drawn-out thing.”

 

The Trump administration has now launched a “long, drawn-out thing” in Iran with no end in sight. U.S. military personnel have already been imperiled at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait, Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, a U.S. Navy headquarters in Bahrain, and facilities in Iraq. American interests around the world are at risk of Iranian retaliation.

 

All alone, this war would make a mockery of MAGA claims that Trump is an anti-interventionist. But it is one in an extensive list of Trump-era entanglements.

 

Even as America’s military expands its focus in Iran, it launched a new operation this week against drug cartels in Ecuador. “Together, we are taking decisive action to confront narco-terrorists who have long inflicted terror, violence, and corruption on citizens throughout the hemisphere,” U.S. Southern Command announced in a press release.

 

U.S. forces in Africa have been carrying out air strikes over Somalia against the Sunni Islamist terrorist organization al-Shabaab. As recently as last month, U.S. forces carried out multiple strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria, according to U.S. Central Command.

 

Earlier this year, the United States launched Operation Absolute Resolve, a military campaign that successfully removed the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from power. After the operation, Trump said that the U.S. would run Venezuela at least temporarily. This week, Reuters reported that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum traveled to Venezuela and met with its acting president, Delcy Rodríguez.The United States is both negotiating contracts with Rodríguez and threatening to indict her.

 

The Trump administration concluded last year with a Christmas Day attack on Islamist militants in Nigeria. Earlier in 2025, the United States carried out air strikes in Iraq, waged a roughly seven-week offensive against Houthi rebels in Yemen, and carried out the aforementioned attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. This year and last, the Trump administration has been blowing up boats in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, many off the coast of Venezuela, that it suspects of drug smuggling. The boat strikes have killed at least 150 people.

 

Ukraine is the one place where the Trump administration appears to be trying to draw down U.S. involvement, though the United States has supplied the country with intelligence as it resists Russian aggression.

 

During the run-up to the 2016 election, I wrote that “if you’re a voter who believes that Donald Trump is against foreign wars and regime change, unlike the globalist elites in Washington, D.C., you have been misled.” At the time, I noted that Trump released a video in 2011 that sought to pressure President Obama to invade Libya. Trump also argued that George H. W. Bush should have ousted Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and wrote in his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, “We still don’t know what Iraq is up to or whether it has the material to build nuclear weapons.” He added, “Am I being contradictory here, by presenting myself as a deal-maker and then recommending preemptive strikes? I don’t think so.” In 2011, he urged the Navy to wage war on Somali pirates.

 

Now Trump has proved his proclivity for interventionism, without congressional approval or the support of the public. And there’s no evidence to suggest that he will stop here. If Congress continues allowing him to deploy force unilaterally, he may pursue land strikes on drug cartels in Mexico, a prospect that he raised early this year in an interview with Fox News; regime change in Cuba, a longtime dream of Rubio’s; and God knows what else. He is an impulsive man who gambles, especially when the most significant risks are borne by others. There is no way to know how exactly he will surprise Americans next.

 

Trump could even make the United States a pariah among its Western allies by revisiting his on-again, off-again threats to take Greenland by force, a move that parts of his base have been urging ever since Trump first raised the possibility, or by seizing the Panama Canal, as he has also threatened to do.

 

Had Americans known that Trump was going to undertake wars of choice and assorted military strikes all around the world, they may not have elected him. At this point, with a majority of voters opposed to Trump’s interventions, congressional action is the only way to disentangle the country from these conflicts. Until then, the list is likely to only grow longer.re

Latin America Is Shifting Right and Toward the U.S.

By John Fund

Monday, February 02, 2026

 

Sunday’s landslide victory of Laura Fernández, the 39-year-old conservative candidate for president of Costa Rica, is welcome news. But it’s part of a clear trend sweeping Latin America: Conservative parties are winning elections and then pursuing closer ties with the U.S.

 

The pattern has been consistent and clear. It began in late 2023 with the election of libertarian Javier Milei — an ally of Donald Trump’s — in Argentina. Since then, Milei’s free-market approach has paid huge dividends. Inflation has declined from 300 percent a year to just 30 percent, the budget deficit is now zero, and the poverty rate has plunged from 52 percent to 31 percent.

 

As both Argentina and the U.S. turned toward conservatism in the past year, country after country in Latin America has followed suit, moving to the right.

 

Ecuador: Daniel Noboa, the incumbent conservative president, won reelection in April of last year, defeating leftist Luisa González with 56 percent of the vote. Two years earlier, he had beaten González with only 52 percent.

 

Bolivia: In August, with the victory of conservative Rodrigo Paz, the Andean nation repudiated the socialist MAS party that had dominated its politics for 20 years. MAS’s economic incompetence and corruption led to it losing all but two of its seats in Congress.

 

Argentina: Midterm elections in October ratified the public’s confidence in Javier Milei’s policies. His coalition won majorities in both houses of Argentina’s congress and will now have the votes to pursue even more-vigorous reforms.

 

Honduras: Conservative Nasry Asfura won November’s election in part because of an explicit endorsement from President Trump.

 

Chile: December’s election saw free-market candidate José Antonio Kast win in a landslide, with 58 percent. He will oversee a huge policy shift from the left-wing administration of Gabriel Boric.

 

Even Britain’s left-wing newspaper The Guardian acknowledges the trend, conceding that Laura Fernández’s victory “confirms a rightward lurch in Latin America, where conservatives have ridden anger towards corruption and crime to win power.”

 

Security issues have soared to the top of voters’ priority list all over the region, as migration and the stepped-up activity of drug gangs has heightened fears about crime.

 

In El Salvador, populist President Nayib Bukele has built maximum-security prisons where gang members are treated harshly. This has led to calls in other countries to emulate his security policies, though none have militarized their country to the same extent as El Salvador or ignored the term limits as Bukele has.

 

In Costa Rica’s elections, security was a huge issue. But so, too, was the economy. Fernández, a former minister of economic policy, built on her record in office, which saw growth of 4 percent to 5 percent a year, an unemployment rate of just 7 percent, low inflation, debt reduction, and investments in education. She promised to continue to “fight tirelessly” to promote economic growth, saying it was a necessity to diversify the country’s tourist-driven economy and lift people out of poverty. Bloomberg News reports that she campaigned on an ambitious agenda:
“Fernández has called for closer economic ties with the US, says she opposes all new taxes and wants to ‘cut the fat’ off the state.” She also supported selling two state-owned banks and placing term limits on judges, who, she said, were too often lenient with criminals.

 

Of course, there is no assurance that the winning streak of conservative parties in Latin America will continue. Three major countries will vote later this year: Peru in April, Colombia in May, and Brazil in October. The most recent polls show that a conservative candidate is likely to be competitive or an even bet to win in each country. In Brazil, the biggest country in Latin America, with 213 million people, leftist President Lula da Silva is promising to run even though he will turn 81 just two days after any runoff election. The latest poll shows him with 45 percent, trailing the combined total of the four conservative challengers, who are likely to force him into a runoff.

 

If the conservative trend continues, it will vindicate the belief of President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Latin America has spent too long in the backwaters of U.S. foreign policy.

 

Recent elections are a clear gauge of success for America’s reengaged Latin policy. But even more impressive results may come if nations that haven’t had free elections in decades — Cuba and Venezuela come to mind — start changing the course of their foreign policy under the influence of either gentle or sharp elbow jabs from the United States.

Welcome Back, Chile

By John Fund

Monday, December 15, 2025

 

The news that José Antonio Kast, a longtime free-market and anti-communist figure in Chile, won that country’s presidency in a landslide on Sunday was met with some interesting international reactions.

 

Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s dictator, had no official comment, though his diplomats privately scoffed that Chile was now back in the grip of “the United States empire” and would do its bidding.

 

Javier Milei, Argentina’s libertarian president, posted his enthusiastic support on social media: “One more step for our region in defence of life, liberty, and private property. I am sure we will work together so that the Americas embrace the ideas of freedom and we can free ourselves from the oppressive yoke of 21st-century socialism.”

 

Since his election in 2023, Milei has accomplished a renaissance of Argentina’s economy, and he can be pleased that his success inspired Chileans to move in his direction. So much so that Kast’s victory margin of 58 percent over left-winger Jeannette Jara’s 42 percent exceeded the twelve-point margin by which Milei beat the left-wing Peronists in 2023.

 

Chile and Argentina are but the latest examples of Latin American nations swinging to the right in the past two years. Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Honduras have also seen the electoral defeat of left-wing administrations — although foreign observers note that Venezuela’s Maduro has remained in power only through massive voter fraud.

 

Kast’s victory hinged on three key issues that angered a majority of Chilean voters and on which he offered specific solutions.

 

Crime

 

In a 2025 Gallup survey on global safety, less than 40 percent of Chileans feel safe walking alone at night where they live.

 

As the New York Times has reported, Chile’s violent-crime rate grew during Covid and has remained high. The increase has been fueled in part by violent gangs and international criminal organizations that have infiltrated the country.

 

Immigration

 

Chile is a nation of 20 million people, of which at least 2 million are recent immigrants — of which a large chunk are illegal, putting a strain on social services. Criminal gangs recruit members from the ranks of illegals and also prey on Venezuelan immigrants crossing into Chile over its borders with Peru and Bolivia.

 

Economic Growth

 

From 1980 to 2020, Chile experienced an economic miracle. It peacefully emerged from a dictatorship and implemented free market policies that made it the richest country on the continent. Poverty fell from 45 percent to 6 percent of the population. Per capita income since 1990 tripled, to $24,000 a year.

 

That miracle was created by Chilean students of Milton Friedman. They created the freest economy in the developing world, built on a foundation of property rights, free trade, a low flat tax, private personal retirement accounts replacing the social-security system, and the deregulation of key industries.

 

But over those four decades, the left steadily infiltrated the nation’s cultural institutions: schools, universities, churches, and media. The result of this indoctrination, combined with growing concerns about inequality and hikes in tuition fees, led to the 2021 victory of 35-year-old former student-protester Gabriel Boric as the new president of Chile. The Communist Party became a part of his governing coalition.

 

Boric tried to implement his vision of “social justice.” But a constitutional rewrite he supported crashed and burned, 62 to 38 percent in a 2022 referendum. Boric’s economic policy saw an expansion of regulations and taxes. As a result, Chile’s economy stagnated, with today’s unemployment at 9 percent and economic growth at just over 2 percent.

 

Boric’s approval rating fell to below 30 percent. That gave José Antonio Kast, whose family played a role in shaping Chile’s economic reforms in the 1980s, an opening to run for president on a promise to return to Chile’s free market model. He proposed to trim regulations, cut corporate taxes, and slash public spending by 7 percent in just over one year. Kast has predicted the his program will increase growth to 4 percent a year.

 

Kast called his platform — crime, immigration, and economic growth — a three-legged stool that would “make Chile great again.”

 

He also loosened up his style from his two previous failed presidential races. Gone were endless speeches; in were short TikTok videos showing him actively campaigning. The playing of patriotic music at rallies was downplayed in favor of a Spotify “Disco Kast” called “la Fuerza del Cambio” — the Force of Change. It featured hard rock, K-pop, reggae, and reggaeton, and it won the top spot on Spotify’s Chile list.

 

Kast’s campaign did more than borrow from U.S. political tactics. Bloomberg reports that his landslide win “propels Chile into a U.S.-Led Conservative Orbit” that will find a friendly welcome in Donald Trump’s White House.

 

The Wall Street Journal editorial page agrees and suggests that Trump should help Kast by “reducing tariffs on Chile and making it a trade and economic partner.” Latin American voters who are embracing conservative policies and values deserve that helping hand. If their countries become strong and free, it will only help the U.S.’s security and economy.

Caracas’s Crime Hub

By Michael Baumgartner

Saturday, November 08, 2025

 

Long before I became a member of Congress, I frequently traveled to and advised international mining companies in Venezuela. I saw the country’s potential: blessed with the world’s largest oil reserves, talent, and the rule-of-law foundations to turn natural wealth into broad prosperity.

 

I saw how socialist thugs Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro brutalized its people and impoverished a nation that once led Latin America in living standards. Their predatory policies now export disorder beyond Venezuela’s borders.

 

We have to ask: Is Venezuela today a threat to international peace and security — and a direct threat to the United States? Yes, on both counts.

 

More than 7 million Venezuelans have fled a collapsing economy and an abusive security state, stressing every country between the Orinoco and our southern border. These migration routes also carry contraband, weapons, and cash, where a new generation of gangs has flourished — most notoriously, Tren de Aragua.

 

A normal country suppresses organized crime. In Venezuela, the state is the business partner: senior officials sanctioned or indicted abroad; intelligence services repurposed to protect rackets; ports and papers “taxed” to move illicit oil, gold, drugs, and people. In the Orinoco mining arc, toxic illegal mining finances armed groups and poisons rivers. This is a system that monetizes sovereignty and sells it to America’s enemies.

 

Caracas is not a Hollywood “ops center” where our adversaries plot around a shared table. It’s something more practical, and more dangerous: a permissive hub where state power, transnational crime, and extra-hemispheric rivals intersect. Marxist terrorists find sanctuary. Hezbollah-linked facilitators use regional finance and trade channels. Russia gets an arms market. China provides surveillance tech to enable the regime to police dissent.

 

Maduro’s narco-governance model risks spreading across the region to Mexico and beyond. U.S. personnel and facilities in the region face elevated risk from regime-enabled armed groups. Maritime and air interdiction are strained by dark-fleet oil movements and drug routes radiating from Venezuelan territory and waters. Our financial system is exploited to launder illicit oil, gold, and narcotics revenues.

 

When hostile networks enjoy access, safe passage, and state protection in our hemisphere, American neighborhoods absorb the downstream effects. If “direct threat” means predictable harm to American families and government interests, the Maduro regime and its proxies qualify.

 

The previous administration foolishly thought it could entice the Maduro regime to hold free elections in exchange for increased oil production. The predictable result was funneling money into regime coffers while the election was rigged.

 

It’s time to end appeasement and apply maximum pressure.

 

America has used force in the hemisphere many times before. In 1989, Panamanian strongman Noriega posed an acute, localized danger: U.S. personnel were attacked, and our canal obligations were at risk. The trigger was clear and the remedy quick.

 

Venezuela’s threat is broader and more durable. It’s a chronic, multi-vector threat — crime, migration pressure, terrorist finance, foreign adversaries, and digital repression tools. That makes today’s problem more consequential for peace and security than smaller, bounded crises like Panama. Here’s a clear-eyed game plan for Congress and the president to discipline the use of force:

 

·        Lead with moral clarity. The Venezuelan people aren’t the enemy; the regime is. Opposition figures such as Nobel Peace laureate María Corina Machado show the country’s potential.

 

·        Follow the money. Squeeze oil-for-cash brokers, illicit-gold buyers, dark-fleet shippers, and shell/free-trade-zone laundries. Treat Tren de Aragua and allies as hemispheric crime and terrorist syndicates: Disrupt their logistics, finance, and communications.

 

·        Cut off foreign patrons. Russia, Cuba, Iran, and China enable Caracas with weapons, advisers, surveillance tech, and cover. Build a coalition to choke financing, parts, and political shelter.

 

·        Use the right tools. Keep lawful military force on the table and use it with precision. Run a sustained campaign to degrade the Caracas hub: smarter maritime interdiction, tighter sanctions, aggressive anti–money laundering, and visa/asset bans on profiteering security officials — backed by partners willing to share risk.

 

·        Stay the course. This is an endurance fight; letting a criminalized state entrench as a hemispheric staging ground will cost far more later.

 

After my time in Venezuela, I worked in counterinsurgency in Iraq and counternarcotics in Afghanistan. The threats festering in Venezuela risk spreading into the sort of problematic challenges America faced in both of those countries. The difference, of course, is Venezuela is in our own backyard and its disease risks infecting our direct neighbors.

 

Calling Venezuela a threat to international peace and security isn’t chest-thumping; it’s clarity. And clarity is where sound policy starts.

The Strangest War

By Nick Catoggio

Thursday, October 30, 2025

 

The most dystopian developments of the second Trump presidency weren’t merely predictable, they were predicted. Exasperated doomsayers like me have spent the last nine months and will spend the next 39 repeatedly asking variations of the same question: What did you think would happen?

 

Well, I sure didn’t think a war with Venezuela would happen.

 

Our looming adventure in South America is shaping up to be the strangest U.S. military conflict of my lifetime. Every other major war we’ve fought had some plausible-ish casus belli—containing communism in the Far East, destroying the terrorist outfit that perpetrated 9/11, preventing Saddam Hussein from gobbling up parts of the Middle East, and later, from building nuclear weapons. Bombing campaigns in Serbia and Libya were also supported by credible humanitarian rationales.

 

An attack on Venezuela would be the first time in my memory that the U.S. government hasn’t at least tried to make a compelling case for war before moving forward.

 

The ostensible reason for targeting Nicolás Maduro’s regime is to halt drug trafficking into the United States, but numerous media outlets, including The Dispatch, have already debunked that. Venezuela just isn’t much of a player in the international drug trade and has nothing to do with the plague of fentanyl overdoses that’s killed so many Americans over the past decade.

 

There isn’t some hot dispute here à la Iraq over whether the government’s argument for military intervention is backed by the evidence. “Drug trafficking” is obviously a pretext and the White House isn’t aggressively insisting otherwise. When Maduro accuses it of “fabricating a new war,” he has a point.

 

The other strange aspect of this exceedingly strange war is how sharply it contradicts the foreign policy of the administration that’s preparing to wage it. Not since George W. Bush went from opposing nation-building in 2000 to invading Iraq three years later has a president betrayed his own vision of foreign relations as completely as Donald Trump seems poised to, and Dubya had the excuse that the war on terror required a more proactive approach to threats from the Middle East.

 

Trump’s excuse for trying to take out Maduro is … what, exactly?

 

His “America First” foreign policy is a rebuke to Bush’s, as he reminded his buddies in Saudi Arabia a few months ago. He gained traction as a Republican candidate in 2015 by criticizing the Iraq war and eventually spun that into an indictment of both parties’ utopian fantasies about exporting democracy at gunpoint. No longer would the United States spend blood and treasure on trying to improve sh-thole countries by forcibly removing their leaders, he vowed. Instead he would make America great again by “ending endless wars” and improving our own people’s lives.

 

If doing so required him to partner with cretins like Vladimir Putin or Nayib Bukele or, say, Nicolás Maduro, he’d do so unapologetically. America first.

 

Now here he is, less than a year into his second term, about to out-Bush Bush by bombing his way to regime change in Venezuela for reasons no one can convincingly articulate. Surreally, Donald “Peace Prize” Trump seems set on waging a war that plainly wouldn’t have happened had the supposedly warmongering Kamala Harris been elected president instead.

 

Although maybe that shouldn’t feel as surprising as it does. Trump spent the campaign screeching about socialism before turning around and governing like a socialist. Why wouldn’t he pull the same trick with neoconservatism?

 

Even so, I can’t understand what he thinks he’s going to accomplish. For the president and his most ambitious deputies, there’s far more potential downside than upside in attacking Venezuela.

 

Owning it.

 

Start here: What would a good outcome in this standoff with Maduro look like? Gil Guerra tried to answer that question elsewhere on the site today and came away stumped.

 

The best-case scenario would involve Maduro fleeing in terror of Uncle Sam or being deposed by his own terrified henchmen, clearing the way for opposition leader Maria Corina Machado or president-in-exile Edmundo González to take power. The country would then come together peacefully in a big kumbaya moment behind its new leader, who would herald Trump as the savior of Latin American democracy and strike a big, beautiful deal with the White House granting the United States a share of the country’s natural resources.

 

In fairness to the president, he does appear to be trying to engineer that outcome. His military build-up in the Caribbean feels like a smokescreen for more clandestine efforts to target Maduro (and perhaps a few top flunkies) specifically. The plan, I think, is to remove the Venezuelan leader with little bloodshed except his own and hope that the show of force at sea convinces Maduro loyalists in the government to embrace the new political reality—or else.

 

But it probably won’t work. Per Guerra, Maduro’s anti-American patrons in Cuba, Russia, and China won’t want him to hand Trump an easy win by leaving without a fuss. And removing him forcibly is apt to create “a power vacuum where various armed factions—regime remnants, criminal networks, potentially even external actors through proxies—compete for control while the opposition leadership remains vulnerable and reliant on the U.S. for military support and security.” The country’s disintegration could plausibly create a massive refugee crisis that reaches America’s southern border, upending the argument that removing Maduro might make would-be Venezuelan migrants to the U.S. feel more comfortable staying put.

 

If chaos ensues, Trump would be forced to choose between pulling back and letting Venezuela collapse or sending in the troops to try to restore order, which means putting U.S. servicemen in harm’s way. The first option would make him responsible for creating a destabilizing humanitarian mess in South America; the second would leave him on the hook for sacrificing American soldiers’ lives in another inscrutable “war of choice.” Not great, either way.

 

And unlike Bush after the Iraq war went south, there’ll be no one to share blame with. Not only has he not sought Congress’ approval for war with Venezuela, he hasn’t even included the opposition party in classified briefings on one of the pretexts for the mission. This is all Trump. He’ll own it entirely.

 

Bamboozled.

 

It’s the rare sort of major mistake that might realistically crack his base of support.

 

After all, plenty of moderates voted for him last year believing that his political instincts were closer to their own than Harris’ were. He wanted to deport illegal immigrants en masse but he also wanted to prioritize targeting the violent criminals among them. He promised “strength” abroad but he also chastised his predecessors for being too willing to put troops at risk in missions that weren’t clearly in the national interest.

 

He misled those moderates on immigration and soon, it appears, he’ll have misled them on his views of war. At some point they’re going to realize they’ve been bamboozled. And they’re going to be mad about it.

 

Although not as mad as “America First”-ers will be.

 

One can take the Steve Bannons and Tucker Carlsons of the right only so seriously after they warned Trump not to attack Iran, were ignored, and then clammed up in short order afterward so as not to antagonize their audiences. They had good reason to do so: Most Republicans might nod along to jeremiads about “endless wars” but they instinctively relish seeing their favorite president bomb a longtime nemesis into nuclear disarmament. Ditto for their views on aiding Ukraine, which shifted in a blink from skepticism to support once Trump finally gave up on trying to negotiate with Putin.

 

The Lindberghian isolationists of right-wing infotainment realize that they won’t win a battle against the president for the loyalty of their audiences. All they can do when he starts acting like Lindsey Graham is grumble a little and move on.

 

But a war of choice with Maduro will test their restraint, especially after the New York Times revealed earlier this month that the Venezuelan strongman was willing to ransom his country’s wealth to America in return for Trump’s support for his regime—only to be rebuffed. A deal like that would have been a crowning achievement of MAGA realpolitik, proof that the U.S. government can materially improve the lives of its people if only it stops turning its nose up at corrupt, tyrannical scumbags and starts working with them.

 

Instead, the Bannons and Carlsons are watching a Dick Cheney-esque regime-change fantasy play out in real time under the Trumpian banner. If war erupts, they’ll be privately incensed—at their own lack of influence over the president, at the way he’s re-normalizing interventionism on the right, and at the fact that an election-stealing authoritarian has been cast as the villain in America’s latest drama abroad. The point of postliberal foreign policy is to convince Americans to stop hating guys like Maduro and Putin and to start wanting their leaders to act like them. So why is Donald Trump, a would-be election-stealing authoritarian himself, backing Machado and Volodymyr Zelensky?

 

They’ll never admit it but the “America First” faction will be rooting quietly for an unholy military fiasco to unfold in Venezuela, a debacle that will supposedly disabuse the modern right once and for all of the idea that foreign despots are natural enemies instead of friends we haven’t made yet. If the mission goes badly, the right’s doves will turn it into a major front in the Republican civil war of 2028. Only by nominating a stridently dogmatic isolationist, they’ll say, can the GOP avoid being seduced into another foolish war of choice like the one against Maduro.

 

But they won’t be able to blame Trump publicly for that choice. So whom will they blame?

 

Scapegoats.

 

They’ll blame Marco Rubio, of course—and maybe, if he isn’t careful, J.D. Vance.

 

Various reports have alleged that the secretary of state is the driving force behind the effort to oust Maduro, undoing the détente brokered earlier this year by O.G. Trumpist Ric Grenell. Grenell coveted Rubio’s job after Trump was reelected but was named a special presidential envoy instead, and wasted no time making his mark in the role: He visited Maduro in January of this year and struck a handshake deal in which the two countries agreed to swap detainees.

 

That put the U.S. and Venezuela on track for better relations and portended the same sort of amoral transactional arrangement with Caracas that the White House has cultivated with banana-republic dictators like Bukele. But Rubio wasn’t having it. As an old-school Reaganite hawk, the son of refugees from Castro’s Cuba, and a native of South Florida, despising left-wing Latin American tyrants is in his marrow. He wanted Maduro out and set about convincing the president of his position.

 

He couldn’t make the argument forthrightly, however, as liberating people from oppression is not a MAGA priority, to put it mildly. So he cleverly and disingenuously made an “America First” case for regime change instead. Maduro is flooding our country with drugs. (Again, not true.) He’s directing a vicious gang of illegal immigrants, Tren de Aragua, to terrorize our cities. (Also not true.) His downfall would ease immigration from Venezuela and install a friendly government that’s willing to accept more deportees from the United States

.

That last one might be true, assuming Maduro’s ouster doesn’t lead to the sort of refugee supernova that I mentioned earlier. But if the White House wants an agreeable government in Venezuela, it doesn’t need to go to the trouble of a war; it could simply choose to work with the very agreeable Nicolás Maduro. I bet Grenell could have him on the phone in five minutes—maybe sooner, given those U.S. warships off the country’s coast.

 

It’s hard to arrive at any conclusion other than that Rubio wants Maduro out because it offends him ideologically to have Castroist socialist dictators in Latin America still pushing people around in 2025. It’s a noble impulse, but it’s also about as far from “America First” as a member of this administration can be. And the Bannons and Carlsons of the world are going to crucify him for it if the war goes sideways.

 

All of the goodwill that Rubio has carefully cultivated among MAGA populists will go up in flames unless the Venezuela adventure ends up a cakewalk. Postliberals have never fully trusted him, remembering his one-time support for comprehensive immigration reform, his criticism of Trumpism in 2016, and his history of foreign-policy hawkishness as a senator. His ethnicity also surely does him no favors among the least savory elements of the right’s current coalition. The likelier it becomes that he’ll be on the Republican ticket in 2028, the more eager “America First”-ers will be to find grievances against him to keep him off of it.

 

They’re about to be handed a big opportunity. The worse the war goes, the more intensely aggrieved at him they’ll be.

 

Which brings us to the vice president, who’s in no-man’s land here—and not for the first time.

 

J.D. Vance is the purest “America First”-er in the White House, a guy who said during his campaign for Senate in 2022 on the eve of Russia’s invasion that he frankly didn’t care what happened to Ukraine. That kind of talk made him the “it girl” of authoritarianism for figures like Bannon and Carlson, which in turn made him a senator, which in turn made him vice president, and which in turn has made him acceptable as a potential 2028 nominee to the nationalist chuds of the new right.

 

But Vance has a problem. As Trump’s No. 2, knowing that his chances at the nomination depend on keeping the president happy, he’s been stuck defending one foreign intervention after another this year.

 

He went to bat for Trump’s missile strikes against the Houthis, then for the bombing run on Iran’s nuclear program, then for continuing to sell arms to Europe for use by those Ukrainians he doesn’t care about. Very soon he’ll be forced to go to bat for attacking Venezuela on pretexts so flimsy that he and the MAGA right would have dined out on them for months had any other administration, Democratic or Republican, dared use them to justify a war of choice.

 

Maybe it won’t be held against him. The “America First” wing understands the political predicament Vance is in, after all, and can tell themselves that he’ll act differently as president once he’s no longer beholden to Trump. But certain elements of the new right bear Vance a grudge and doubtless suspect that, once safely elected, he won’t be the strident postliberal warrior in office that he seems to be. Can a guy who once worried that Trump might become “America’s Hitler” really be trusted to stand up to the hawkish foreign-policy “blob” that rules Washington, especially after getting so much practice defending its interventionist preferences since January?

 

If Vance faces an insurgent primary challenger in 2028 from the far right (or “even further right,” I guess), the fact that he was only rolling over on war with Venezuela because Trump told him to will not absolve him.

 

Motives.

 

And so we’re left with the question we began with: What does Trump hope to accomplish by ousting Maduro? Assuming he hasn’t taken Rubio’s “something something drugs” rationale to heart, what’s the strategic benefit of this war in his mind?

 

My best guess is that he’s executing on his “spheres of influence” view of foreign policy by picking a comparatively soft target in America’s backyard and sending a message by threatening to rough him up. Ousting Maduro is a matter of unfinished business for Trump, remember: His first administration recognized then-opposition leader Juan Guaido as the rightful leader of Venezuela in 2019, but Maduro resisted that effort to depose him and outlasted Trump’s own presidency.

 

Coming back for round two might be the president’s way of showing other nations in America’s “sphere” that if you don’t do what he wants, he’ll punish you for it eventually. No matter how long it takes.

 

Beating up Maduro serves another purpose: scaring actual drug traffickers around the region about what might await them if they don’t cut their operations in the United States. Attacking fentanyl cartels in Mexico would be fraught for all sorts of reasons, from poisoning relations with the Mexican government to risking a swell of migrants at the southern border who are desperate to escape the line of fire. One way to scare the cartels straight, potentially, without actually laying a glove on them is to make an example of Maduro instead.

 

Which makes sense—unless war with Venezuela proves more challenging than expected. If that happens, the conflict might have the opposite effect by turning American public opinion decidedly against using the military to fight drug trafficking. Mexican cartels currently wondering whether Trump might target them will gain confidence that he won’t: Why, he wouldn’t dare after instigating a public backlash to his presidency by attacking Caracas.

 

Simply put, the odds of things going wrong here are greater than the odds of things going right. With war, as with Trump, they usually are.

Milei’s Triumph

National Review Online

Tuesday, October 28, 2025

 

The impressive showing by Javier Milei’s LLA in Argentina’s midterm elections is a refreshing reminder that the country’s eccentric “anarcho-capitalist” president has not lost his ability to surprise. The LLA won just under 41 percent of the vote, some six percentage points above (diminished) expectations and far ahead of Milei’s principal opposition, the Peronist Fuerza Patria, which only scored 23–24 percent. Milei will have a substantial base of support in the legislature. something he has lacked up until now — and in the nick of time.

 

Much of what Milei has achieved has been through the exercise of emergency powers. These have now expired and, depending on whether recent legislation survives, could be difficult to repeat on the same scale. This will now matter less as Milei will have enough support in congress to buttress his veto power, although passing legislation will depend on partnerships with other center-right parties — not Milei’s greatest strength.

 

Milei has promised that his reforms will continue, as they should, and the voters have given him valuable backing to persevere with a task that will take time and will frequently hurt. Repairing the damage inflicted by decades of misgovernment is hard. Nevertheless, in his first two years in office, Milei has headed off hyperinflation (monthly inflation was accelerating past 12 percent as he took office and has now fallen to around 2 percent) and restored fiscal discipline to a country infamous for having none. In 2024, Argentina recorded its first budget surplus in a decade. The price was a surge in the poverty rate, but that has now ebbed to 32 percent, lower than the 42 percent at which it stood when Milei took office, but still a very high number, as is 2 percent monthly inflation. He will need better figures to keep alive hopes that his medicine, which has also included sweeping deregulation, will lead to a cure.

 

Economic growth has picked up, reaching an annualized 6.3 percent in the second quarter (GDP fell by 1.7 percent last year). The pace is still uneven, but a brighter political picture ought to encourage investment and reinforce the foundations for more soundly based development than Argentina, which, with its abundant resources, has the potential to rejoin the ranks of the wealthy nations, has known for a long time. The country’s benchmark stock index was up about 20 percent on Monday.

 

For all that, it needs to be remembered that LLA’s strong result was a surprise, a fact that contains a warning. There had been clear signs this summer that Argentines were wearying of the trudge to recovery. Their mood was not improved by allegations of scandal within the administration, common enough in Argentina, but exactly the sort of malfeasance that Milei the outsider was meant to end. It did not help, to say the least, that among those said to be involved were Milei’s sister, in many respects the second-most-powerful person in the administration.

 

This contributed to a strong showing in September by the Peronists in local elections in Buenos Aires province, a traditional stronghold (although not on Sunday, interestingly) and home to around 40 percent of the electorate. That in turn led to a run on the Argentine peso, given extra impetus by the widespread (and understandable) view that it is overvalued. For all his belief in markets, Milei knew that a dramatic fall in the peso risked reviving inflation, the most important of all the benchmarks of his success. He could not risk that ahead of the midterms. Thus his administration has never allowed the peso’s price to be set in the open marketplace, most recently replacing a (too) gradual depreciation with a “dirty float” under which it was meant to trade within certain, widening bands.

 

The problem was that, despite all the greenbacks stashed away in the country, the Argentinian government itself had little in the way of dollars to use to prop up its currency when it neared the band. The U.S. Treasury stepped in, buying pesos in the market and arranging a $20 billion swap line with Argentina’s central bank. In practice, this means lending Argentina up to 20 billion badly needed greenbacks. It also talked about raising $20 billion in private finance. A pre-election peso rout could have sunk the LLA.

 

This was a bold but — America Firsters, please note — far from altruistic move by Treasury Secretary Bessent. A financial crisis in Argentina might have sparked panic beyond its borders. Moreover, if it had handed victory to the Peronists, China, which has already been taking a keen interest in Argentina, its immense resources, and its location in the Western Hemisphere, would have pounced. Keeping such a crisis at bay means that Milei, a fierce defender of Western values, who has aligned Argentina closely with the U.S., will be able to continue with reforms that, if successful, will mean a major geopolitical win for the U.S.

 

But merely keeping a crisis at bay will not be enough. Sunday’s result will probably revive calls for the “dollarization” of Argentina. That is a debate for another day, but for now, Milei will have to focus on introducing the peso to the free market without a chaperone, no easy task, but one best undertaken with the political wind behind his sails.

Why the ‘America First’ Trump Administration Is Bailing Out Argentina

By Jim Geraghty

Wednesday, October 15, 2025

 

Argentina uses the peso. As currencies go, it’s particularly unstable. And when I write “particularly unstable,” I mean that over the past decade, the Argentinian peso has lost 99 percent of its value against the dollar. For comparison, during the time period the Syrian pound lost 98.55 percent of its value against the dollar, and the Syrians were dealing with a 13-year brutal civil war with chemical weapons and ISIS and every horror under the sun.

 

The Argentinian peso lost so much of its value for a lot of reasons: long stretches of high inflation, high government debt (back in 2023, the Argentinian government’s debt equaled 156 percent of the country’s gross domestic product; it came down to 83 percent last year), corruption scandals, market volatility. Once a currency has lost a lot of its value, who wants to own a lot of it?

 

As recently as July, everything seemed to be coming up roses for the Argentinian economy, with the libertarian-minded Argentinian President Javier Milei taking a victory lap. The editors of National Review wrote back then:

 

Argentina’s economy is growing at 7.7 percent, according to the latest year-over-year data. It grew by 1.9 percent in April, the most recent month for which data are available. The Chinese economy is growing at a rate of about 5 percent per year (if you believe the official statistics, which there are good reasons to doubt).

 

Argentina is achieving this growth not through a strategic industrial policy or a mercantilist trade policy. It’s achieving it by rolling back the overextended public sector, slashing the government budget, controlling the money supply, and removing price controls.

 

But that editorial warned of unresolved issues lurking in the not-too-distant future:

 

Milei will of course still face challenges. He has enormous damage to clean up. Midterm elections are upcoming, and one of his signature economic proposals, dollarization, has yet to be implemented. The powerful Peronist apparatus may still get its revenge.

 

As summer turned to autumn, Argentina’s politics were rocked by the claim that President Milei and his sister Karina were involved in a corruption scheme. From the New York Times, September 6:

 

While the tape attributed to [Karina Milei] was innocuous, rallying party members and telling them to stay united, a separate tape attributed to a different government official suggested she was profiting from a bribery scheme.

 

And all of this has emerged just as she was organizing Milei’s party’s campaign for a crucial midterm vote this fall — a key test of her brother’s transformative plans for the country.

 

But just as he has done since they were children, Mr. Milei, 54, has stood by his sister, denying the accusations, and there are no signs that her power or influence have weakened. . . .

 

A cryptocurrency scandal involving Mr. Milei and an American consultant has led to accusations that Ms. Milei took payments for access to her brother even after he became president.

 

The consultant, Hayden Davis, said in text messages obtained by The New York Times that “I send $$ to his sister and he signs whatever I say.” . . .

 

On September 7, Buenos Aires, the largest and most populated province in the country, held its provincial elections. The leftist or Peronist Party won 46 percent and Milei’s won 34 percent, a result that was interpreted as a “sweeping setback” of Milei and his agenda; the president acknowledged it was a “clear defeat.”

 

As The Economist summarizes, international investors started to fear that Milei’s free-market agenda had been halted, and the Argentinian government would soon revert back to its bad habits:

 

The trouble started on September 7th when, with his sister embroiled in a corruption scandal, Mr. Milei badly lost a legislative election in the province of Buenos Aires. He then suffered a series of stinging defeats in congress. Markets panicked, worried that this signaled the end of popular support for his reforms, and the potential return of spendthrift Peronists. A sharp peso sell-off began, while investors ditched Argentine bonds.

 

Since April, when the IMF launched its 23rd program in Argentina, the peso has been floating within a widening band, the limits of which the Argentine government has vowed to defend. By mid-September the peso’s official rate was testing the upper limit of that band, even briefly piercing it on September 17th to reach 1,475 to the dollar. Over the following two days the Argentine central bank spent some $1 billion of its scarce foreign-currency reserves to defend the currency.

 

Suddenly, the Argentinian government didn’t have enough foreign-currency reserves — you know, money that is actually worth something — to keep purchasing its own pesos, which were increasingly worth next to nothing. But they had to, otherwise people would conclude that the Argentinian peso really wasn’t worth anything, setting off a massive financial crisis.

 

Enter U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. On September 22, Bessent announced to the world via X, “Argentina is a systemically important U.S. ally in Latin America, and the U.S. Treasury stands ready to do what is needed within its mandate to support Argentina. All options for stabilization are on the table. These options may include, but are not limited to, swap lines, direct currency purchases, and purchases of U.S. dollar-denominated government debt from Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund. Opportunities for private investment remain expansive, and Argentina will be Great Again. We remain confident that President Milei’s support for fiscal discipline and pro-growth reforms are necessary to break Argentina’s long history of decline.”

 

About a month later, the Trump administration has concluded that yes, indeed, the U.S. must buy a whole bunch of Argentinian pesos to keep the Argentinian economy afloat. On October 9, Bessent announced:

 

Argentina faces a moment of acute illiquidity. The international community — including the International Monetary Fund — is unified behind Argentina and its prudent fiscal strategy, but only the United States can act swiftly. And act we will. To that end, today we directly purchased Argentine pesos. Additionally, we have finalized a $20 billion currency swap framework with Argentina’s central bank. The U.S. Treasury is prepared, immediately, to take whatever exceptional measures are warranted to provide stability to markets.

 

This is not exactly a common move from the Treasury Department. As the Federal Reserve Bank of New York noted, this is only the fourth time the U.S. government has made a move like this:

 

The Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury may intervene in the [Foreign Exchange, or FX] market when required to counter disorderly market conditions. After the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, the United States monetary authorities (the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury) used FX intervention both to reduce excess exchange rate volatility and to signal the views of the U.S. that the exchange rate did not reflect fundamental economic conditions. However, since 1996, the U.S. has only intervened on three separate occasions, including a purchase of Japanese yen in June 1998, a purchase of euros in September 2000, and a sale of Japanese yen in March 2011.

 

This isn’t unprecedented, but it’s pretty darn rare.

 

The American people, by and large, hate bailouts, at home or abroad. The arguments about creating moral hazards are strong and compelling. But the consequences of not bailing out a particular institution may well be worse than the bailouts themselves. As Bessent put it in a separate X post on October 10, “We do not want another failed or China-led state in Latin America. Stabilizing Argentina is America First.”

 

No, we don’t want that. But it would be hard to begrudge MAGA-minded Americans, or anyone else really, wondering how the same administration that earlier eliminated the U.S. Agency for International Development, which had an average annual budget of $23 billion, just spent close to that sum to purchase Argentinian pesos. This administration really can’t stand foreign aid . . . except for the days that it really supports foreign aid.

 

On October 26, Argentina will hold its midterm elections for half the seats in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, and one-third of the seats in the Senate. Those midterm elections are widely seen as make-or-break for Milei’s free-market economic agenda.

 

The American perception of this bailout is unlikely to be helped by the fact that President Trump, in yesterday’s meeting with Milei, made it sound like the whole point of the bailout was to help Milei in the Argentina midterm elections:

 

Trump: And the election is coming up very soon, and it’s a very big election being watched by the world because he’s done an incredible job. But with that comes some pain and — they have some pain and now they’re coming out of it. I think the victory is very important. Your poll numbers, I hear, are pretty good, but I think they’ll be better after this.

 

And you know, our approvals are somewhat subject to who wins the election because if a socialist, or in the case of New York City, a communist wins, you feel a lot differently about making an investment. I think, Scott, you’d feel that if somebody that had no chance — in other words, if somebody wins and has no chance of ever having a great economy, because of that philosophy, you would put a halt to what we’re doing.

 

Scott Bessent: Yes, sir, and we’re confident that President Milei is going to do well. We’ve been criticized by a couple of American Peronists like Senator Warren.

 

On September 22, Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to Bessent:

 

It is deeply troubling that the president intends to use significant emergency funds to inflate the value of a foreign government’s currency and bolster its financial markets. President Trump’s close personal relationship with President Milei, and the timing of this bailout ahead of a critical October 26 midterm election in Argentina, raise serious concerns that the purpose of this bailout is personal and political — and comes at the expense of the American people.

 

Let’s do something we rarely do around here and give Warren credit for consistency; she opposed the bailouts of Wall Street back in 2008, locking horns with Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

 

But whether or not you think Warren qualifies as a Peronist . . . don’t cry for her.

 

Earlier this month, Agustin Forzani, a Buenos Aires-based economist who got his masters’ at George Mason University, argued here at NR that unless Argentina made lasting structural changes, Milei was always going to be swimming upstream in a system that incentivized bad choices and short-term thinking:

 

Argentina requires a transformation at its institutional level. The challenge is not simply to elect the right people to do the right thing but to implement a framework that depends less on who is in charge at any given point. Institutions must provide the foundation for long-term economic growth and political stability. This involves not only maintaining the fiscal surplus, putting the currency on an even keel (no easy task as recent events have reminded us), and advancing pension, labor, and tax reforms but also deeper political changes, such as strengthening the judiciary and improving the rule of law. . . .

 

Milei’s government will eventually end. Others will take office, possibly even those who left Argentina on the brink of collapse in 2023. But if Argentina builds a sound institutional structure, even the worst politicians will be constrained from returning to policies that deliver short-term political gain at the expense of long-term prosperity.

 

If Argentina doesn’t give Milei’s party a big reassuring win in the midterms . . . how likely is it that he will be able to keep pushing his country into a more stable and free-market-oriented direction? And if he can’t . . . how likely is it that five years from now or ten years from now, the Argentinian currency is somehow worth even less and needs another bailout like the current one?

Bolivia Is Fed Up with Socialism

By Dominic Pino

Monday, August 18, 2025

 

Since 2006, Bolivia has been governed by the Movement for Socialism party. Former President Evo Morales, in office until 2019, became a darling of the international left, moving the Bolivian economy to greater state control and moving its foreign policy against the U.S. and toward Venezuela, Russia, and China. “Capitalism is the worst enemy of humanity,” Morales has said.

 

After seeing capitalism’s alternative firsthand for two decades, the Bolivian people seem to have decided capitalism isn’t the absolute worst.

 

A few years of relative success on economic measures seemed to vindicate Morales, but things have been going downhill for many years. Politically, the socialist movement has fractured, with Morales leaving his old party and encouraging his supporters not to vote for it. In the first round of this year’s presidential election, which concluded on Sunday, the Movement for Socialism candidate received just 3 percent of the vote. The party could potentially lose all of its seats in the Bolivian legislature.

 

On a per capita basis, Bolivia is the poorest country in South America besides Venezuela. Bolivia’s 1990 GDP per capita of $5,124 was about $1,000 behind neighboring Peru’s. Today, Peru is more than $5,000 ahead, and Peru’s growth hasn’t been exactly stellar either. Inflation is about 25 percent.

 

In recent times, Bolivians have been dealing with persistent fuel shortages. Fuel is price-controlled, of course, which has caused a steep decline in production and exploration in what was once South America’s natural-gas powerhouse. When the ruling-party candidate went to cast his ballot on Sunday, other voters shouted that he should wait in line to vote like they have to wait in line for fuel.

 

The two candidates who advanced to the runoff, scheduled for October 19, both want to undo socialism. The first-place finisher, Christian Democratic Party candidate Rodrigo Paz Pereira, said he wants “capitalism for all, not just a few.” The second-place finisher, Jorge Quiroga of the Libre party, was already president from 2001 to 2002, before the socialists took power.

 

The result might remind you of Javier Milei’s victory in Argentina to undo decades of socialism there. But the most Milei-aligned candidate was Samuel Doria Medina, a businessman with a more radical austerity agenda, and he finished third. He endorsed Paz after conceding.

 

Paz comes from a family of Bolivian politicians, and his father was president from 1989 to 1993. He did not run as a “brash populist,” but rather as the candidate of “renewal,” according to Latin America watcher Kevin Ivers on his Substack newsletter. “Campaigning more on vibes than bold policy, Paz gathered the confidence of voters hungry for change but not yet ready to go too abruptly to the right,” Ivers wrote. A Quiroga victory would be a more straightforward return to the pre-socialist era, restoring the right-wing former president to office.

 

Either way, Bolivians will be getting a step toward freer markets and away from government control. Paz wants to decentralize government power by sending half of all public funds to regional governments. He also wants to shut down failing state-owned enterprises, stabilize the currency, and remove import barriers. Quiroga has been promising to do Milei-lite, with public spending cuts and government reforms to root out the socialists in power.

 

One key difference is that Paz opposes help from the International Monetary Fund, while Quiroga is open to it. Milei has had a positive relationship with the IMF while pursuing his free-market reforms in Argentina.

 

Choosing between which variety of pro-market candidate is a great place for Bolivia to be. Bolivian bond prices have been rising this year as investors anticipate the end of two decades of socialism. More important, though, the Bolivian people can finally expect some relief from shortages and stagnation.

 

Government controls on the price of bread haven’t changed in 17 years, but the size of the loaf has been cut roughly in half. In an Associated Press story this month, 60-year-old bread seller Raquel de Quino said, “Let’s pray to God that under the next government, there will [be] bread for our children.” The enemy of humanity is the economic system that makes poor women say that sentence.