After many years in which politicians from Western countries tried to make believe that they were good people who respected the current norms and were willing to kindly dialogue with those who did not share their opinions, the democratic world has entered a very different time. With disconcerting rapidness, what could be called the brutal sincerity of which the main exponent is Donald Trump has become fashionable. Impressed by the success of the American Bravucón who has fun talking about her adversaries, especially if they are in difficulties, thousands of ambitious men and some women in Europe, Latin America and other parts of the planet are trying to emulate it. One is Javier Milei.
For rejoicing of the libertarians, less than a week ago Trump assured the world that Milei is “a great leader” that “he is doing a fantastic job” in which he saved Argentina from extinction as a country. Since at that time Milei was in danger of losing pieces of the conceptual armor that for more than a year had protected him from his many enemies, he would have taken Trump’s intervention for the arrival of the seventh cavalry. He hopes that the chilling technicians of the International Monetary Fund provide due attention to what is said by “the most powerful man in the world.” They are likely to do so, but for being Trump such a divisive and so controversial character, having his enthusiastic support could cause him many problems in the months and years to come.
Why was the abrupt change of the world political climate that has stunned those who did not see him approaching? To the manifest deficiencies of the order that is disintegrating before our eyes. Argentina is far from being the only country that seemed to have become accustomed to the political and cultural hegemony of a hypocritical and voracious “caste” whose life members dominated a supposedly progressive dialect and systematically privileged their own corporate interests. Something very similar happened in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe and, of course, Japan and South Korea. Today, the societies in which a rebellion against status quo is not giving strength is scarce. Unfortunately, there are no reasons to assume that the eventual triumph of the rebels serves to inaugurate a prolonged period of peaceful coexistence.
In some places the replication of “La Casta” has positive consequences by allowing necessary reforms in countries, such as the United States and many in Europe, which have borrowed to the neck. It is what would happen here if, as it seems to be the case, most have really concluded that the fiscal rigor is preferable to the alternative and that it would be politically suicide to deny it.
It has been thanks to his willingness to reduce public spending to a sustainable level that Milei has acquired so much power that he can afford to whip anyone who is encouraged to disagree with him, overwhelming him with puerile insults that at other times would have cost him the support of most of the electorate. Thus, Milei should pray for their most aggressive rivals to continue clinging to economic facilism; If the conviction was spreading that the bulk of the leaders would be resolved to handle national finances with more responsibility than in the past, it would lose the monopoly of an advantage that has reported so many benefits. After all, he understands very well that his current supremacy, such as Trump’s, is a consequence of a long series of foreign failures.
For now, Milei, author of his own cult of personality, feels invulnerable. There are no indications that his role in “the cryptogate” has harmed him a lot; Happily for him, it is such a cryptic issue, involving a unaspedable financial “product”, that very few understand it very well, although the one who, it is said, certain characters of doubtful reputation could chat with him in exchange for money they do threaten to cause him as many headaches as their denoded efforts will continue to incorporate the very questioned judge Ariel Lijo to the Supreme Court.
As Trump in the United States, Milei is believed by his electoral triumph to subordinate absolutely everything to his cravings. Convinced as his own future, and that in the country, will depend on his ability to mimic with the American strong man, did not hesitate an instant to abandon his “friend” Ukrainian Volodimir Zelensky to his fate. Loyalty? It is a matter of priorities; In Milei’s opinion, getting harvesting with Trump is worth much more than the fate of a distant country of which he knows nothing but that, until yesterday, deserved his solidarity for advertising reasons.
Are Trump, Milei and others right to give a discounted that, until new notice, the national and international internal policy will be dominated by nothing more than the particular interests of a handful of protagonists, and that therefore can trample without regrets without regrets to the conjuncturally weakest? It is possible, although in that case the future will be even more bleak than, recently, they anticipated even the most darkened prophets of disasters to come, but there is nothing written. There may be sin of naivety the persuaded that, despite sporadic setbacks, civilization would continue to advance without them having to strive, but this does not mean that it is reasonable to resign themselves to a world dominated by characters such as Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
For now, the only leaders who seem resolved to defend the rescueable of the “rules -based order” that Trump wants to throw the dump are those European leaders, including the Italian Giorgia Meloni, who, outraged by the gansterile form in which the American, flanked by the vice president JD Vance, attacked Zelensky before the television cameras of the middle world when they celebrated a world Meeting at the White House, they assured him that they would continue to support Ukraine in their effort to repel the Russian invaders.
Will Europeans be in a position to do so? Only if those in charge of the United Kingdom, France and, above all, Germany recognize that from now on the continent in which Western civilization was born will have to fend for itself and accept that, as the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk points out, “it is absurd that 500 million Europeans ask 300 million Americans who defend them of 140 million Russians.” Bad that despite those accustomed to spending fortunes on social welfare and referring to their own pacifist feelings, they will have to boost their arms industries and greatly increase the size of their military forces, in addition to taking very seriously the problems caused by the collapse of the birth rate of the native population and importation, to replace those not born, of tens of millions of people religious beliefs that are alien to them and, in some cases, openly hostile.
Trump and those around him seem convinced that Europe is dying and are acting accordingly, but his obituary may be premature; After all, it is feasible that, thanks to the contempt they feel and their refusal to continue providing protection against their enemies, they have launched changes that allow them to recover from the psychological and social damage that in recent decades has inflicted itself.
For Argentina, what is happening is significant. If the gap that separates Europe from the United States, it will no longer be tried just to expect the commercial relationship with China not to anger the strategists in Washington, but also to take into account the possibilities raised by the presence of a third block whose economy, unlike the American, is complementary.
Without access to Russian and awareness gas and oil that Trump’s United States has become an unreliable economic partner, Europeans have good reasons to invest a lot of money in Argentina. Would Americans oppose them? Trump does not try to hide his willingness to discipline Europeans, applying punitive tariffs with the purpose of forcing them to obey their orders, so that it would surprise that he did not think about asserting a commercial version of the Monroe doctrine to deter Europeans wishing to try his luck in a country governed by his “favorite president”.
Trump is a friend of conflict. He wants the world to be a Darwinian war theater in which, to cite the Tukidides Athenian, “the forts do what they can and the weak suffer what they owe.” Far from feeling satisfied with what he has already achieved, the American ultra -nationalist is resolved to take advantage of the power he has achieved to punish the reluctant to kneel before him. He will believe that he will have benefited that shameful episode in which he mistreated in public the president of a country of medium dimensions that, to preserve his independence, is fighting with admirable tenacity against a strikingly greater military power, but the truth is that, for all except his most fanatized supporters, he served as a warning about what could happen to them unless they are able to defend themselves from defending their bars.
