WHERE DOES ARGENTINA WANT TO GO?

What is the geopolitical agenda of a libertarian government, is there such a thing?

 

By Sidney Hey

A question that, besides being difficult to answer, those who should be answering it don't really know the answer. Walking around Buenos Aires as a citizen of the world, just one more of those who swarm here, you sense that the vertigo of daily life overwhelms the neglected and nowadays very bewildered ‘porteños’.

While this is where the seat of national political power resides, it is hardly representative of the gigantic and varied reality of a country of 2.80 million square kilometres. Added to that, its administration must be quite complex and even traumatic if we see how at a moment's notice in one of its jurisdictions a child can evaporate without those responsible being found -or wanting to be found- to be responsible.

As far as I know, politicians around here call themselves democratic and respectful of the system, which at this point means nothing. Listening to them utter this mantra is like listening to an American, a Belgian or an Australian politician. They have all made flesh the American discourse of ‘democracy is in danger’ as a discursive tactic to protect their own privileges when they are caught in their dealings. What else do you think this ‘democracy’ thing is all about?

Javier Milei's supposedly ‘libertarian’ government is a novelty for a traditionalist, two-party system such as Argentina's, but also for its model, the US. It is not yet clear whether it is just him or his entire government, although the way things look around here the answer is only one: only Milei is libertarian and only in what is convenient for him.

But there is still another question to be answered about this ideological condition: is he a political libertarian or just an economic libertarian?

Although the average citizen around here cares little about political labels, in what Milei proclaims and does, we are noticing abysmal differences that Argentines should begin to question if they do not want to fall into another bear trap.

First let's say what it is to be libertarian. Briefly that would be something like a moral guideline that does not accept state intervention in the body, in the market and abroad. The state would only be reduced to guaranteeing bodily integrity, life and private property. But there is a problem, Milei says he is an ‘anarcho-capitalist’, an extreme branch of economic libertarianism that rejects the existence of the state as a tax collector on individuals. But what is his government doing? It is increasing and creating more taxation that is stifling its voters.

On the political side, his conception of the ‘non-state’ seems to be applied in a curious way that would be more a substitution of the Argentine state by the interests of other states. How could one understand his exaggerated laxity towards the country's enemies such as Great Britain (to which Milei has sent reserves in pure gold) and NATO, who occupy the South Atlantic, or his regrettable and overacted obsession with France because of his vice president's statements that were not untrue.

If a few hours ago the French and Moroccans booed the Argentine national team, it was not because of this nonsense, but perhaps because of the pro-Zionist stance of the Argentine government, which has struck a chord with French Muslims.

As for vice-president Victoria Villarruel, never has the ideological difference with the president been clearer than after this episode. Although for some there are more coincidences than differences, Milei's positions have shown that these differences are qualitatively important. While Villarruel is closer to the interior of the country, the Mileis are more comfortable with the exterior; while Villarruel makes explicit his respect for the country's Catholic cultural tradition, the Mileis consider that their spiritual and also political loyalty lies elsewhere and with another ‘flock’.

While Villarruel is calling for the restructuring of the armed forces and the intelligence area with his own initiatives to strengthen the country in the current complex international context, Milei is handing them over to the external control of other states, condemning the future of other governments' decisions to remain under foreign-controlled arms (and intelligence agencies). And so I could go on with other differences that strain internal relations.

It is not only for the Mileis that Vice Villarruel is uncomfortable, but also for those who sponsor the governmental brethren. The last thing the orthodox rabbis of the Lubavitch sect, Netanyahu's supporters and ultimately the Anglo-American financial interests with whom they are all connected, want is a nationalist Catholic who interferes with their grand plans for them. Even if she starts to grow in popularity by displacing Milei and with what we saw with Donald Trump in the ‘empire of democracy’, they will have no problem getting her out of the way and then disguising the facts with the ever-collaborative performance of the local media by talking about ‘mere incompetence’.

That too is part of what the Milei's are bringing into the country and it will be too late by the time Argentines want to react.

Perhaps it is difficult for her without the political structure of the traditional parties such as Peronism or Radicalism, although it is true to say that they are ideologically discredited museum pieces that are in decline.

I believe that Victoria Villarruel is the only hope that Argentina will be able to get back on its own track or at least fight for political and economic decisions to stop being subordinated to the directives of power poles that are already in decline and that even run the certain risk of seeing the dollar collapse as the hegemonic currency.

While Milei and his sister ‘the boss’ seek to ensure that the national state intervenes as little as possible to benefit the interests of other states, vice-president Villarruel has the character and determination to ensure that this does not happen and, beyond her ultramontane Catholic nationalism, she sees that there are options to position herself geopolitically with alternatives that are in line with her ideology and consistent with the interests of the state.