National Post (National Edition)
Javier Milei's game of diplomacy
I've been relishing a classic feast of British press overreaction to a BBC interview with the colourful libertarian president of Argentina, Javier Milei. The Beeb's Ione Wells visited Milei at the Casa Rosada last week in Buenos Aires for a chat, and nothing like this could possibly happen without some talk about those damned islands — the Falklands or las Malvinas, depending on which country you believe to be their rightful sovereign.
Argentine leaders have to be careful how they talk about the Falklands (and about their uninhabited dependencies elsewhere in the South Atlantic). For decades regimes of left and right in Argentina have opportunistically kept the disputed islands at the forefront of the public imagination, fostering a spirit of delayed revenge. Sometimes this leads to daft verbal outbursts about “colonialism,” alongside game-playing with supplies and access to the islands. The constitution of Argentina contains language asserting “legitimate and imprescriptible sovereignty” over the rocks.
So anything a current Argentine leader says about the Falklands is bound to be scrutinized closely at home and in the United Kingdom.
Milei is naturally impulsive, and has the particular problem that he is a political admirer of the late Margaret Thatcher. Wells tried to provoke him by bringing up the 1982 sinking of the General Belgrano and the consequent deaths of 323 Argentine sailors, which is still a slightly controversial episode of the Falklands War among the most self-hating shades of U.K. political opinion.
Milei, who had arranged a little display of Thatcher memorabilia in the room where the interview was held, sliced right through Wells's Gordian knot.
“Criticizing someone because of their nationality or race is very intellectually precarious,” he said. “I have heard lots of speeches by Margaret Thatcher. She was brilliant. So what's the problem?”
Even if you venerate Thatcher, who ordered the sinking of the Belgrano in cold blood, you can perceive this is a non sequitur. Milei is under no obligation to like a fellow neo-liberal who was a military enemy of his own country. But one does remember British statesmen have often been willing to express admiration for Napoleon I, Washington, Rommel and other killers of large numbers of British soldiers.
Milei's other remarks about the Falklands were perfectly compatible with the dovish political line occasionally taken by Argentine heads of state. In 1998, when Milei's predecessor Carlos Menem described the Falklands War as regrettable, the British press erupted in unseemly glee as though he'd just handed over the keys. Milei insisted Argentina is not going to relinquish legal claim to the islands, but he doesn't want conflict with the U.K., and he suggested that it is a matter that will take generations to defuse peacefully.
Wells observed that the U.K.'s foreign secretary, exprime minister Lord David Cameron, visited the islands in February and reaffirmed the right of the Falklanders to remain British. Milei, carefully making a Diplomacy 101 de facto/de jure distinction, observed that the territory “is now in the hands of the U.K.” and that he sees no quality of provocation in the visit.
As in 1998, the British newspapers took these remarks and ran in opposite directions with them. The Sun's lede blared “The Falkland Islands are British, Argentina's leader has dramatically admitted in an interview.” I don't much like that reporter's chances of beating Diplomacy 101. But over at the Express, the headline talked of “Argentine president's menacing threat to take back the Falkland Islands”! Not just a threat, mind you: a MENACING THREAT.
ARGENTINE LEADERS HAVE TO BE CAREFUL HOW THEY TALK ABOUT THE FALKLANDS.