Javier Milei’s harmony with the US and his support for Ukraine bring Argentina closer to NATO
The harmony of its president, Javier Milei, with the United States and with the Republican candidate for the Presidency, Donald Trump; and his active role in favor of Ukraine in the first months of his mandate are key to the success of Argentina’s request to become “socio global” of NATO. For obvious geographical reasons – NATO space is the northern area of the Atlantic Ocean – the status of “global partner” is the highest degree of association with NATO that Argentina can aspire to.
Since 2022, in the final stages of the Presidency of the conservative Iván Duque (2018-2022), Colombia is the only country in Latin America with the role of “global partner” of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an alignment international with the United States and its European allies that has not been questioned by the current Colombian president, the leftist Gustavo Petro. Currently, Argentina, Colombia and Brazil enjoy the category of “important non-NATO allies” of the organization. In the Argentine case, this role has been in force since 1998.
Geopolitics and defense expert Fabián Calle believes in statements to EFE that the potential admission of Argentina – a process that could be completed in two or three years – would mean that the country would have “a more active role in relation to diplomatic planning, seminars, exchange of officers, technical assistance or collaboration in possible peace or stabilization operations“. The former advisor to the Ministry of Defense assures that the new status is “a seal of quality” for the Argentine Armed Forces.
“(The application for membership as a “global partner”) will allow certain technologies to be incorporated more easily,” says Calle when asked about the practical effects of this potential new role that countries such as Australia, Japan or New Zealand already occupy. Ultimately, the NATO actor that could see The most suspicious of Argentina’s incorporation would be the United Kingdom, with whom the South American country has had a diplomatic dispute for more than two centuries over control of the Malvinas Islands, which led both powers to confront each other in a war over the archipelago in 1982.
“This application is a more favorable product for the Milei Administration,” the professor of International Law at the Catholic University and the National University of La Plata and an expert in matters related to the Malvinas Islands, Bruno Tondini, assures EFE. “It is clear that, within NATO, states that have conflicts coexist,” he says, referring to the territorial dispute between Spain and the United Kingdom over the enclave of Gibraltar. According to Tondini, the request to join the Atlantic alliance “does not imply any curtailment of Argentina’s sovereignty claim” and, in fact, the United Kingdom – in a kind of political limbo after ‘Brexit’ – could see its diplomatic positions regarding the archipelago called into question.
Beyond the southern Atlantic, analysts agree that this new decision by the Milei Executive certifies its “diplomatic turn“in the direction of the United States, Israel and their allies; following Argentina’s withdrawal from the bloc of emerging countries (BRICS) – which the Government of Peronist Alberto Fernández (2019-2023) had agreed to enter at the beginning of this year – or to its progressive distancing from China.
Above all, according to Tondini, the succession of decisions of the Executive has to do with the Argentine president’s vocation to establish himself as a regional leader above the leftist presidents of Brazil (Lula da Silva), Chile (Gabriel Boric) or Bolivia (Luis Arce). In Calle’s opinion, The new status of the country would not represent a major obstacle to commercial relations between Argentina and China, one of its most important partners in this matter, but with whom Milei has reiterated its distance in relation to defense, security and geopolitics.
In this sense, Tondini considers that the war in Ukraine and Milei’s proximity to Volodymyr Zelensky -eIn contrast to the dialogue position of his predecessor in the Casa Rosada – could have been definitive for the implementation of this diplomatic process.
