Good for the oil markets in the short term, but not good for American influence.
I don’t know whether it was a good idea for the Bush Administration to support a coup to drive Hugo Chavez from power. He looks like bad news for sure, but elections are supposed to mean something.
But I’m pretty sure that trying to displace Chavez and failing to do so was a bad idea. It didn’t look as if we even tried hard to help the opposition win the recall vote. Now maybe the opposition wasn’t really worth supporting, but Napoleon’s first rule of war applies to diplomacy: If you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna.
Add one to the list of key foreign countries we’d have an easier time dealing with if we had a President not named “Bush.”
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
Get away with gross contempt, III
The independent foreign monitors headed by former US-president Jimmy Carter have declared that there was no sign of significant fraud in the Venezolean referendum on the presidency of mr Chavez.
Did Mark Kleiman Really Mean That?
Mark Kleiman wrote: I don't know whether it was a good idea for the Bush Administration to support a coup to drive Hugo Chavez from power. I'll make it easy for you Mark as someone who is no fan of
Did Mark Kleiman Really Mean That?
Mark Kleiman wrote: I don’t know whether it was a good idea for the Bush Administration to support a coup to drive Hugo Chavez from power. I’ll make it easy for you Mark as someone who is no fan of