Politics as a Drug: When the Dose Matters More Than the Cure

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A contemporary paradox

In international politics, as in medicine, the strongest intervention is not always the most effective one. Sometimes the most effective treatment isn’t the one that promises an instant cure—it’s the one that delivers a poison with precision, capable of healing when the dose and timing are just right.

The recent U.S. approach to Venezuela, defined by selective involvement and the decision not to enforce a full regime change, has puzzled many observers. How can a country take action decisively and yet leave much of the existing power structure in place?

Several commentators have described the situation as an “intervention without rupture,” highlighting the surprise generated by the absence of a clean handover of power to the opposition. The intuitive reaction is straightforward: if you effect change, you replace; if you challenge a government’s legitimacy, you install an alternative. But political practice rarely follows moral expectations so neatly.

The logic of dosage

What appears to be at work instead is a strategy of modulation rather than eradication: not eliminating the problem at its root, but reducing its toxicity and preventing unpredictable side effects. This logic is hardly new. In classical philosophy it appears under the term pharmakon, used by Plato to describe something that can function as both remedy and poison. The same substance can cure or kill, depending on the amount, the timing, and the body that receives it.

The principle is familiar in medicine and biology. Vaccines, for example, introduce a weakened version of a virus in order to strengthen the immune system. Applied to geopolitics, the idea suggests that intervention need not aim at total transformation, but at controlled exposure.

Stabilizing without curing

Seen through this lens, the Venezuelan case takes on a different meaning. A complete dismantling of the regime could trigger a power vacuum, institutional collapse, or widespread violence. Preserving a softer, more manageable version of the existing system—less confrontational, more open to negotiation—may function as a lesser evil, a temporary stabilizing measure. This is not an endorsement, nor a moral absolution, but a form of risk management.

From this perspective, Washington’s decision looks less contradictory and more calculated. The immediate goal may not be democratic renewal in its ideal form, but the avoidance of a cure that proves more destructive than the disease. In foreign policy, the total collapse of a state rarely benefits those who initiate it; more often, it produces consequences no one fully controls.

The political pharmakon

The ambiguity of this approach was famously explored by philosopher Jacques Derrida in his reading of Plato’s pharmakon. Derrida argues that there are no pure remedies and no absolute poisons: every dose carries toxic residues, and every attempt at total elimination generates unintended effects. Politics, like technology or language itself, operates in this gray zone where outcomes cannot be cleanly divided into good and bad.

Acknowledging this logic does not mean celebrating it. A “dosaged” intervention remains an intervention, with serious ethical, legal, and geopolitical implications. It may stabilize in the short term while entrenching new dependencies, resentments, or external controls. The pharmakon offers no guarantee of healing; at best, it delays collapse.

An imperfect pharmacology

The surprise many express at the U.S. strategy may reflect a deeper misunderstanding: the expectation that international politics functions as a moral tribunal rather than as a practice of containment. In reality, it often resembles an imperfect pharmacology, where the central question is not whether something is good or evil in principle, but how much toxicity can be tolerated before the patient—in this case, an entire country—breaks down.

The real question, then, is not whether this strategy is right or wrong in absolute terms, but whether the chosen dose will stabilize without destroying. As with any pharmakon, the answer will only emerge over time.