Like Carlos Menem more than a quarter of a century before, Javier Milei has put Argentina in the wake of the United States. However, while in those times it was relatively easy to align with the superpower, today it is far from easy. Unlike the then American president George HW Bush, who was a moderate conservative of traditional ideas with many years of experience in the diplomatic world, Donald Trump is a capricious egomaniac who, without feeling intimidated by his own cultural deficiencies, believes himself summoned to redesign the international order. He wants all other countries to pay tribute to “the greatness” of the United States; To ensure that they do, he improvised a tariff system in which those he believes are good pay relatively little and the bad have to endure punitive rates.
Fortunately, everything suggests that Mileist Argentina will have a privileged place in the new Trumpist world. It was thanks to the friendship with the magnate that he forged before his return to the White House that Milei was able to emerge successfully from the financial upheaval that threatened to destroy his presidency and, to the relief of everyone with the exception of Cristina, Axel Kiciloff and their supporters, the country was spared a major political and economic crisis that in all likelihood would have put a premature end to its umpteenth attempt to adapt to the prevailing circumstances. If the geopolitical adventures of the North American friend continue to prosper, there will be more benefits for Argentina; If he is forced to abandon some initiatives, he might be even more willing to provide help to his most loyal allies.
Trump sees absolutely everything in personal terms, hence his willingness to rescue Milei when she was at risk of sinking. Another leader favored by his conviction that ultimately what matters most is personal chemistry is Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. For reasons that some attribute to secret information in the hands of the former KGB official that could harm him, and others to nothing more sinister than the respect he feels for “strong men”, Trump always seems willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, something that never happens with the Ukrainian Volodimir Zelensky whom he repeatedly treats as an annoying and ungrateful beggar, perhaps because he does not like at all that in many countries the Ukrainian appears as one of the most admirable heroes of the times he they run
At the beginning of his presidential term, Milei boasted of his closeness to Zelensky who, to reward him, attended his inauguration. How would the libertarian react if Trump chose to sacrifice Zelensky and Ukraine for the sake of an unconvincing peace deal? It would be very surprising if he dared to protest against such an infamous decision.
Likewise, Trump clearly trusts that the personal relationship he believes he has established with Xi Jinping will help him reach a mutually advantageous arrangement with China, which dominates the market for rare earths needed by manufacturers of cell phones and other electronic products, which entails the risk that the Beijing regime will take a friendly attitude as a signal that the United States would not intervene if it occurred to it to try to invade Taiwan.
Like Putin, dictator-for-life Xi knows that time is running against him since in the coming years the internal problems, both economic and demographic, facing his respective countries will tend to worsen, so it would behoove them to score some spectacular geopolitical successes before it is too late.
Regarding Latin America, Trump seems to have chosen an interventionist strategy similar to those of past US governments. Despite his alleged isolationist feelings, he does not hide his intention to overthrow the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, who for him and those around him is the head of a drug trafficking cartel who deserves to end his days in a North American prison.
To frighten him, off the Venezuelan coast Trump has stationed a fleet led by the gigantic aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford that has enough firepower to annihilate the weak Chavista armed forces and, to underline the message he is sending to Maduro, prohibits the world’s airlines from entering Venezuelan airspace. It may just be a matter of psychological warfare; We will soon know how far the “most powerful man in the world” is willing to go to eliminate a tyranny that has caused enormous damage to its own people but that, even so, is in charge of a sovereign country in a region that has always been adverse to North American arrogance.
Now, the impatience, the now widespread conviction that one must act quickly because unless one does everything could collapse, of Putin, Xi, and many others, including Trump and, of course, Milei, is making relations between different countries increasingly tense. There is a widespread feeling that the world is on the eve of great change and that it is therefore incumbent on leaders to seize quickly any opportunity to strengthen themselves that arises.
The nervousness that so many feel can be understood. Few days go by without some group of supposed experts warning us about the deadly risks that will be posed by the proliferation of novel devices supposedly capable of mentally disarming enemies, the growing danger that Putin will fall into the temptation of using “tactical” nuclear bombs or invading more neighboring countries, the abrupt collapse of the birth rate, the risk of more viruses breaking out like the one that gave us Covid 19, the climate changes that some want to reverse by dismantling the industry on which almost everyone depends, the sporadic financial crises, the migration of millions of men and women from the poorest and most conflictive countries on the planet to those that are still prosperous and, of course, the accelerated development of Artificial Intelligence which, specialists say, is about to completely revolutionize the planet’s labor market, which is not good news for those who will not be in a position to retrain.
Trump, a thorough optimist, assumes himself capable of handling all the pressures resulting from such phenomena. He minimizes the importance of some, such as those linked to climate change, which in his opinion is a leftist scam invented by those who want to destroy Western civilization, but he is frontally opposed to immigration from the “third world” that is causing so many difficulties in the most developed countries. He is confident that the United States has the natural and human resources to take advantage of the opportunities that arise, although he insists that he will first have to correct the mistakes that, in his opinion, his predecessor “sleepy” Joe Biden made, starting with his lax immigration policy.
In addition to suddenly stopping the entry of undocumented immigrants, it is peremptorily expelling many who had established themselves years ago in the United States, measures that have the approval of the majority but that are costing it the support of many “Hispanics” who share its opposition to woke leftism but do not want to be harassed by the increasingly aggressive immigration authorities.
Although for geographical reasons the bulk of those who live in the United States without having met the legal requirements come from Latin countries, those who worry Trump the most are Muslims. In addition to announcing that until further notice those traveling with Afghan passports will not be admitted, in the messages he sends to the world through social networks, he vehemently criticizes Europeans for having allowed the growth in their countries of large communities of people who have not the slightest interest in integrating into the societies that host them but, on the contrary, aspire to dominate them by instituting Koranic “sharia law.” He advises them to adopt measures similar to those he himself is applying.
Trump’s preaching in this sense, and the example he has provided with his harsh immigration measures, has had a very strong impact on European politics. Just a couple of years ago, the only people who dared to talk about “remigration” were people considered “ultra-right”, if not “neo-Nazis”, from parties like Alternative for Germany, but lately a lot has changed. More and more people are persuaded that it is impossible for Muslims who are programmed to believe themselves superior to everyone else to coexist with others, and that therefore they will have to be pressured to move to countries where they would feel more comfortable. This is what is already happening not only in Hungary and Poland, where the formation of significant Islamic communities has been prevented, but also, less explicitly, in the rest of the old continent where it is no longer taboo to refer to the “remigration” of those who so despise those who do not share their religious beliefs that they are inclined to sympathize with terrorists who do not hesitate to perpetrate atrocities in the name of their faith.
