The former Argentine President, Lionel Fernandez, in his visit to Putin offered him the possibility of being “the gateway to Latin America” and in his meeting with Xi Jinping, confirmed Argentina’s adherence to the Belt and Silk Road Project, which could mean a staggering $24 billion in investments for Argentina and the end of its pivot in the orbit of the United States.
This set off alarms in the Biden administration who expressed concern over the growing presence of China and Russia in the country and in particular the possibility of China installing a joint military base with Argentina in Ushuaia in exchange for financial support Chinese to install a gigantic logistic Pole in the province of Tierra del Fuego.
After being elected President, Milei announced a “new foreign policy doctrine of Argentina based on a special relationship with the United States” after meeting with the head of the US Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, to discuss the installation of a joint US-Argentina base in Ushuaia that will control the traffic of mega containers through the Drake pass.
This, coupled with the future installation of a pseudoscientific base of Britain in the South Shetland Islands, will ensure maritime control of the Anglo-American axis of a route that will be the alternative to the Panama Canal.
However, the Falklands could be the black swan of Milei, after his optimistic claims in which he did not rule out “reaching a long-term agreement with Great Britain similar to that of Hong Kong involving the Malvinas return to the country”, the appearance of immense oil reserves in Sea Lion would be a missile on the geopolitical waterline of Milei.
Thus, according to the English newspaper The Telegraph, the British local authorities of the Malvinas Islands intend to organize a popular consultation to extract 500 million barrels of oil in a well located 240 kilometers north of Port Argentino, in Sea Lion. The drilling and exploitation tasks would be carried out by the Israeli company Navitas Petroleum who plans to extract 300 million barrels in the next 30 years, which would ward off the possibility of a British-Argentine co-rule over the disputed islands.
Milei is aware that if he positions himself far from the space acceptable to Argentine society and his decisions do not manage to move the window to his point of interest, the frame could end up breaking. At this point, it would not be ruled out that Milei assumed the flag of the historic claim of the Argentinian Islands and thus reinstate the previous frame of the window agreed by the vast majority of the Argentine population, decision that however could trigger a new war with Britain in the horizon of the next quinquennium.
Germán Gorraiz López is a political analyst.