December 17, 2023 from Buenos Aires
Since the inauguration of President Javier Milei, we have observed a series of worrying gestures and initiatives in the field of international relations, which will be analyzed in this brief statement. But before explaining our position on them, we cannot fail to mention the most energetic rejection of the fierce economic adjustment proposed by the current government, which will result in a phenomenal transfer of income from the popular strata and sectors to the ruling classes and the reconstruction, in a regressive and unequal key, of Argentine society, a process that will require, as already expressed by its Minister of Security, the implementation of a brutal repressive policy.
Having established our position on domestic policy, let us move on to the analysis of foreign policy initiatives. First of all, it is important to highlight the small number and international importance of the foreign heads of state and government who attended the presidential handover ceremony on December 10. Only four countries of the region: Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador and Chile sent their heads of state. King Felipe VI, who does not rule the kingdom of Spain, came, as did the Prime Minister of Hungary, and the presidents of Armenia and Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski. In other words, no relevant figure in international politics except, for the worst reasons, that of the Ukrainian leader. In his place were visitors recruited from the international ultra-right, such as Jair Bolsonaro and his son Eduardo -an irresponsible snub to the current Brazilian president- and the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal. The United States sent a very second-rate figure, as did the European countries. The Latin American absences were very significant: Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, president of Argentina’s main trading partner; Andrés Manuel López Obrador; Gustavo Petro; Xiomara Castro, who will be the pro-tempore president of CELAC as of January 1 next year, Miguel Díaz-Canel, Nicolás Maduro, Daniel Ortega and the president-elect of Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo are other names that were conspicuous by their absence. To make matters worse, the unusual presence of the Ukrainian president in Buenos Aires became even more repudiatory when the new government -whose mantra is to say “there is no money” for any request related to social investment- decided to donate two Russian-made helicopters, the Mi-171E, which were destined to transport missions between the Argentine bases installed in Antarctica.
Secondly, to say that on Tuesday, December 11, the Argentine delegation abstained in the vote on a proposed UN General Assembly resolution demanding nothing less than an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the opening of humanitarian aid corridors and the start of talks to put an end to the conflict. The resolution was approved by 153 of the 193 members of the UN, against 10 who voted against: the United States, Israel plus eight countries among which two are from our region: Guatemala and Paraguay, and 23 abstentions, among them Argentina. This vote distances our country from its tradition of promoting the peaceful settlement of disputes and the protection of international humanitarian law. This country has always voted for peace and cease-fire, wherever it may be. Not since that fateful Tuesday.
Third, these concrete gestures and initiatives begin to ratify the disastrous course that President Javier Milei and his Foreign Minister Diana Mondino outlined during the campaign: unconditional alignment with the United States and with the genocidal regime of Israel; promotion of free trade agreements with all their harmful asymmetries; promotion of the Mercosur-European Union agreement, flexibilization of Mercosur and an approach to the Malvinas case that takes this country back to the policies of carnal relations of the 1990s and the Cambiemos government. Such position implies reducing to its minimum expression the claim for the sovereignty of the Malvinas Islands, without questioning the British presence in the South Atlantic and the existence of a NATO military base in our continental sea. The government also announced that it would abandon all the work carried out to join the BRICS group on January 1, 2024, which evidences an erroneous reading of the changes that have irreversibly modified the coordinates of geopolitics and international geo-economics. This ill-advised decision closes the ways for the incorporation of our country to what experts on the subject define as the new and most impetuous reconfiguration of world power and in which three of Argentina’s most important trading partners are included. In other words, we are in the presence of a foreign policy based on ideological anachronisms and not on national interest, far removed from the need for regional integration, unity and complementarity that the countries of Our America need to build sovereign projects and improve the lives of their peoples.
By virtue of these antecedents, the Argentine chapter of the Network in Defense of Humanity denounces this type of gestures and initiatives that erode the Argentine trajectory as an emblematic country in the defense of Human Rights and the peaceful resolution of controversies in the international arena.
Source: In Defense of Humanity – Argentina, translation, Resumen Latinoamericano – English