Argentina’s zero tolerance turn and the limits of libertarianism

Argentina’s new governing paradox is becoming harder to ignore. A president elected on a promise to shrink the state is expanding its most coercive functions.

When Javier Milei came to power, he did so as a self-described libertarian, pledging fewer regulations, less government and greater individual freedom. His political appeal rested on a simple but powerful idea: that Argentina’s crisis was, above all, the result of an overgrown state. Cutting it down, he argued, would unlock growth, restore efficiency, and expand freedom.

Yet the trajectory of his security policy points in a different direction.

Under the banner of “zero tolerance,” Milei’s administration has embraced a strategy built on harsher penalties, expanded policing and a more assertive state presence. This approach, familiar across Latin America, places enforcement at the centre of efforts to address crime and drug markets. It assumes that more control – more arrests, more seizures, more punishment – will produce greater order.

The tension with libertarian principles is difficult to ignore. Libertarian thought is rooted in a deep scepticism of coercive state power – particularly in areas such as prohibition, where intervention expands authority while distorting markets and incentivizing illicit activity. Zero tolerance strategies within prohibitionist regimes move in the opposite direction, relying on greater state intervention to control demand that rarely disappears.

The consequences are increasingly visible. Criminal activity has not been eliminated; it has adapted. Violence has declined in some areas only to reappear in others. Illicit markets have not collapsed but reorganized into more flexible, decentralized networks capable of responding to enforcement pressure.

This is not simply a question of implementation. It reflects the structural dynamics of prohibition itself.

When demand persists and supply is restricted, scarcity generates profit. Those profits attract actors who organise, innovate and compete. Over time, criminal organisations evolve from hierarchical groups into more resilient, networked systems – able to fragment, relocate, and diversify their activities. Enforcement pressure does not dismantle these systems; it reshapes them.

Argentina is already experiencing these dynamics. In some regions, security operations have produced short-term declines in violence. But these gains are uneven and often temporary, as criminal activity shifts geographically and organisationally. The result is not elimination, but redistribution.

The political implications are equally significant. Prohibition generates substantial flows of illicit capital and that capital often seeks influence within formal institutions. Allegations involving figures such as José Luis Espert – a libertarian politician aligned with Milei’s broader political project – have drawn attention to the potential permeability of political systems operating within these environments. Beyond individual cases, they point to a broader pattern: the intersection between illicit economies and formal political structures.

This raises a deeper question about the coherence of Milei’s project. His administration promotes a vision of reduced state intervention while simultaneously expanding the coercive functions of the state in the name of security. The result is not a smaller state, but a more selective one – less present in some areas, more assertive in others.

This selectivity is not unique to Argentina, but it is particularly striking in a government that defines itself through libertarian language. When the state retreats in economic regulation but expands in policing and punishment, it does not disappear – it reorients its power.

Even within libertarian circles, this tension has not gone unnoticed. Nicolás Morás, founder of the Los Liberales streaming channel, has argued that prohibitionist policies tend to reproduce the illicit markets they seek to eliminate. His critique reflects a stricter interpretation of libertarian principles, one that questions whether such policies are compatible with a genuine commitment to limiting state power.

Argentina is not alone in confronting these dynamics. Across Latin America, similar strategies have produced comparable outcomes: displacement rather than elimination, adaptation rather than collapse. The persistence of these patterns suggests that the problem lies not only in policy design, but in the underlying assumptions of prohibition itself.

The question, then, is not only whether zero tolerance can deliver short-term results, but whether it is consistent with the broader political vision it is meant to serve. If libertarianism implies limits on coercion, the expansion of prohibitionist enforcement raises difficult questions about how those limits are defined – and where they are ultimately drawn.

If Argentina continues to expand the state in the name of liberty, it may find that the contradiction is not temporary – but the defining feature of Milei’s Presidency.

* Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera is a professor at George Mason University and co-director of the Corruption, Networks and Transnational Crime Research Center (CONTRA).