“The West is in real danger, that is why we have to stick together,” said President Javier Milei.
“My priority is to be an ally of the United States. I will not negotiate with communists,” he declared after winning the election in November. To near universal surprise, his actions have been swift, dramatic and fully aligned with his words.
The Biden administration can hardly conceal its delight that a country so often in the vanguard of Latin America’s intellectual and political fashion has switched sides. The White House has bitten its tongue over Milei’s rapturous praise of Donald Trump, concentrating on the larger strategic prize.
The US Secretary of State and the head of the CIA have hurried to Buenos Aires to seal the alliance. So has the four-star chief of US Southern Command. “President Milei, we hear you loud and clear,” said General Laura Richardson.
“This is quite a blow for China after all the hype on the Brics. If Milei can make a success of it and show that he doesn’t need China after all, it will have a demonstration effect across Latin America,” said George Magnus, from Oxford University’s China Centre.
It is hard to overstate the extraordinary spectacle of Javier Milei appearing last month in naval combat dress side by side with Richardson at the frozen Patagonian port of Ushuaia and announcing a joint military base to patrol the Antarctic, with almost no prior warning and against the furious dissent of the governor of Tierra del Fuego, who declared the US general to be persona non grata and “an accomplice of the British occupation of the Malvinas”.