The arrival of the ultraliberal Javier Milei to the presidency of Argentina has not only meant a radical economic change. It is also representing a drastic change in international politics, with an accelerated approach to the United States and its allies, which took a new step yesterday. The Argentine Minister of Defense, Luis Petri, traveled to Brussels to meet with the Deputy Secretary General of NATO, Mircea Geoana, to whom he formally delivered “the letter of intent that expresses Argentina’s request to become a global partner of this organization. ”, as reported by Petri himself on the X network.
Currently, NATO has 32 full members and nine global partners, a category that implies close collaboration with the organization in areas of common interest, such as international security and stability and currently held by Australia, New Zealand, Iraq, Japan , South Korea, Mongolia, Pakistan, Afghanistan – whose association has been suspended since the arrival of the Taliban to the government – ??and Colombia, the only Latin American country, admitted in 2017.
The request to join NATO as a global partner takes place a few days after the visit to Argentina of the head of the US Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, with whom Milei showed unusual deference by going to meet with she dressed in camouflage to Ushuaia, in the extreme south of the country, where they announced the installation of a joint naval base between Argentina and the United States in the Patagonian Tierra del Fuego. The next day, Milei participated in Buenos Aires in the donation ceremony by the US of a Hercules C-130 military transport plane for the Argentine Air Force.
The installation of the naval base, as well as Milei’s gesture with Richardson – interpreted by the opposition as a genuflection before the US – caused great controversy in a country that for much of its history has displayed its nationalism and anti-imperialism, especially under Peronist governments.
Subsequently, Milei, ideologically close to former US President Donald Trump, openly justified his approach to Washington. “My ally is the United States, whether Democrats or Republicans. And boy are they supporting us. They gave us a Hercules. What happened the other day was the greatest act of sovereignty in the last forty years. Because being a military base in Ushuaia, it supports our claim to Antarctica,” declared the president. Milei also justified the joint naval base as a “first step” to recover the Falklands, from British sovereignty. This last statement, framed in Argentina’s historic claim to these islands, should not have gone down particularly well in the United Kingdom, a full member of NATO.
Last March, Buenos Aires already signed another military agreement with Washington by which US army engineers will be installed in the agro-export waterway that runs along the Paraná River and that in recent years has become one of the main maritime exit doors. of drugs from America to Europe and other markets.
Before traveling to Brussels, Minister Petri was in Denmark on Monday, where he signed an agreement to buy 24 American F-16 fighters owned by the Danish Air Force, an acquisition that must have the approval of the United States. In fact, Milei He was scheduled to go to Copenhagen and fly on one of those fighter planes, but he suspended the trip due to Iran’s attack on Israel last Saturday. The Argentine president canceled his agenda and returned from the United States, where he was, to return to Buenos Aires and convene a crisis cabinet, putting himself at the service of Israel and the Western powers, in an overacting that also generated controversy in Argentina, in addition to numerous memes on the networks.
A close ally of the White House, Israel was one of the first countries that Milei visited after entering the Casa Rosada. The far-right president, who has expressed his intention to convert to Judaism, traveled to the Hebrew country in February, where he unequivocally expressed his support for the Netanyahu government in its invasion of Gaza and announced the transfer of the Argentine embassy to Jerusalem, a controversial decision. that only five countries in the world have executed, including the United States.
Argentina’s unconditional approach to Washington also responds to economic reasons. Milei’s ultraliberal project, supported by a majority of Argentines in the elections, which consists of a savage reduction in public spending to leave the State to a minimum, is closely followed on Wall Street and by the International Monetary Fund, with the that Argentina has contracted a monumental debt of more than 41,000 million euros as a result of the loan requested during the government of the liberal Mauricio Macri (2015-2019). The Casa Rosada depends on constant renegotiations with the financial organization to meet periodic debt maturities; agreements that must have the endorsement of Washington, among other countries.
Milei’s drastic economic adjustment, with a reduction in public spending that includes the dismissal of thousands of officials and the privatization of state companies, is reminiscent of Menemism. And it was precisely with the Peronist Carlos Menem (1989-1999) when Argentina experienced one of its eras of rapprochement with the United States, which was portrayed in a phrase that has passed down to posterity and was uttered in 1991 by its Foreign Minister. , Guido Di Tella, during a visit in Washington to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB): “We do not want to have platonic relations (with the United States): we want to have carnal and abject relations.”
