Javier Milei remains in power thanks to a balance that is as fragile as it is perverse: the dispute over who will succeed him. He is no longer sustained by social trust or a vision for the future, but by the calculations of each faction seeking to prevent its rival from inheriting the throne. The fight for succession is now his only political lifeline.
His government failed. And it failed quickly. Not because of his televised rants or the ravings of an extravagant entourage, but because the project he tried to impose was, from its inception, an economic and political delusion. The dogma of the absolute market, taken to the extreme of dynamiting the state itself, was in itself unsustainable for any complex society.
It must be emphasized: the same sectors that promoted this experiment will seek to wash their hands of it by blaming Milei for “individual madness.” They will present the failure as a consequence of his erratic temperament, hiding the fact that what collapsed was the rationality of the model that sustained it. Banks, corporations, and media operators are already working on this alibi: shifting responsibility to the psyche of an “eccentric” president rather than to the systemic insanity of his program.
The scene is not new in Latin America. Bolsonaro in Brazil, Fujimori in Peru, or even the brief experiment of Castillo show a pattern: elites accept disruptive figures as long as they serve to implement adjustments that would be impossible by other means. When they become dysfunctional, they are discarded, always in an attempt to save the heart of the economic project. Milei is part of that series: an instrument rather than a protagonist.
Today, the range of possibilities surrounding his departure oscillates between extreme scenarios—the asylum, prison, forced resignation. But what is really at stake is not Milei’s personal fate, but whether Argentine society will manage to prevent those who pushed him to power from washing their hands of responsibility. It is not enough to get rid of the “madman”: the project that made him necessary must be dismantled.
The problem is not Milei, even though Milei is very mad.
The problem is the insanity of the project that brought him to power.
