Regime Change and Acknowledging Failed Policies

Admitting failure usually means acknowledging that the policy was misguided all along or that it sought to achieve something that was out of reach.

Dan Drezner comments on the failure of U.S. regime change policy in Venezuela:

This is a case, however, where hindsight makes the sanction decision seem worse than it might have appeared in early 2019. Even someone who is critical of the recent U.S. sanctions policy should acknowledge that Venezuela seemed ripe for successful statecraft. The Maduro gover…