THE ANTARCTIC TRIANGLE

What are the connotations of the discovery of a major oil field in Antarctica?

 

By Sir Charlattam

There is no need to repeat that Argentines are immersed in the conjuncture and the smallness of their existence, while the world is moving in a frenetic and accelerated way towards changes that will mark the century. But it is not only these circumstances that they ignore. There are others that pass before their very noses and which relate to their national reality without them realising what this means for their future.

The news of the discovery of large oil reserves in the subsoil beneath the Antarctic ice caused a great stir in Buenos Aires, not because of the existence of the fuel but because of who discovered it.

The Russian research vessel Akademik A. Karpinskiy reported the discovery of reserves totalling 511 billion barrels of oil, which far exceeds the oil reserves in the “Vaca Muerta” deposits in Neuquén and is even supposed to double the reserves of Saudi Arabia. This is very new news with geopolitical overtones that will be seen over time. But as was to be expected, the capitalist media, aligned with Washington's discursive policy (graciously accompanied by London) have cast a veil of suspicion, trying to suggest that Moscow's intentions are malicious. The evidence?

The bias in certain journalists and the media companies they serve is more than evident when you listen to them and is not surprising. If only it were of their own making. They only reverberate what comes down from the editorials of the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal or the New York Times sounding boards of the American Establishment. There is no doubt that these legends have their blood in their eyes after the renewed assumption of power by Vladimir Putin and his fruitful visit to China that materialises the fears of Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

To clarify what this is all about and to remove the Russophobia from this announcement, let us explain that this polar vessel is not part of an oil company or any private corporation, let alone a Federation navy. It is an oceanographic research vessel with entirely scientific objectives which, in the course of its work, came across the novelty of this deposit, without this meaning that it is projecting a possible extraction.

But the media and some journalists in Buenos Aires, particularly the notoriously Anglophile ones who never miss an embassy cocktail party, were quick to seek controversy, taking advantage of the ideological tendency of Milei's government (pro-British). For these sectors, the Russians are undoubtedly seeking to take control of the field, without realising that there are other actors much closer to them and really interested in this plan.

Thus, some British analysts from the Royal Holloway College have already suggested (exaggerated by The Telegraph and the BBC) that Russian intentions were closer to prospecting than to a geological study, giving the area an exclusive British sovereignty that it does not actually have. What has Buenos Aires said about this? Practically nothing.

The facts speak for themselves and if not, let's see how French warships sail freely in Argentine waters, adding to the already customary incursions of Her Majesty's Royal Navy who, together with the US 4th Fleet, pass through, park and dock with complete freedom in ‘Port Stanley’. Where is the respect for sovereignty and for the memory of those 44 sailors who ‘disappeared’ after the sinking of the submarine ‘ARA San Juan’? By the way, what has happened to these investigations?

In the present circumstances the country is in the hands of a government that despite being led by a pro-Zionist and Atlanticist ‘libertarian’ does not represent the majority of its constituents. Javier Milei and his sister are an ideological oddity, something exotic intermingled with Anglophile liberal officials, Peronists and radicals recycled from the caste, and a nationalist vice-president like Victoria Villarruel.

In short, a collage of hand-cooked positions that, if we wanted to give it a unifying label, the best and most illustrative could be ‘neoliberal fascism’.

In Argentina, and more so these days, there is one question that nobody wants to answer, and that is: How can you sleep with the enemy? That enemy is Great Britain, but Argentina's politicians, with its president at the head and its businessmen, are delighted to be the whore of London without realising that it has long since ceased to be the capital of the empire, let alone a typical British ‘gentelman’.

Certainly, London was shaken by the news and the Foreign Office immediately sent out a request for reports to its bases in Antarctica and in particular to Port Stanley in the Falklands in the South Atlantic. Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent -except for its obsequious bootlickers- absolute nothingness is the best way to describe what the Argentine government is doing. 

Of course, in London there is not the slightest concern about Buenos Aires' policies and do you know why? Because there is none. The umbrella that London got over the Malvinas sovereignty issue in the 1990s with the Menem government is more vigorous and in force than ever, not forgetting that it stipulated demeaning and subordinate conditions among which is the consensual control of all Argentine movements.

Even the Royal Navy does not need to move a single ship to prevent any Argentine movement. Nor does it need its MI6 stations in the southern cone to set its assets rolling in Buenos Aires or Ushuaia. London has had outsourced assets for these tasks for decades, so the novel they are trying to weave about the Russian danger should be entitled ‘the enemy at home’.