The aircraft carrier USS George Washington cruised through the south Atlantic last week in the first joint U.S. naval exercise with Argentina in more than 30 years. Leftist Peronistas who governed the country during much of those decades gave bases to China, supported Maduro’s regime in Venezuela and covered up Iran’s involvement in terrorism, as they drove the country to bankruptcy.
Argentina’s new libertarian president Javier Milei, recently elected on a landslide by Argentinians suffering an annual inflation of 15,000 percent , is changing course and his foreign minister, Diana Mondino, has just signed an agreement for “High Level Strategic Dialogue” with U.S. secretary of state Anthony Blinken . “I want a free capitalist world but it must be protected from those seeking to prey on it,” Milei said in a recent interview with The Free Press. (READ MORE from Martin Arostegui: Cuba Is Training Leftist American Anti-Semites. The Biden Administration Is Helping.)
The Biden administration has had to overlook Milei’s vitriolic attacks on “ globalist collectivism” and his open admiration for Donald Trump, to seize a much needed chance to roll back Chinese, Russian, and Iranian encroachments on the western hemisphere which have reached alarming levels and are increasingly coordinated.
“A realization by the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon that Washington could completely loose control of the hemisphere unless they took advantage of the opportunity to strengthen ties with Argentina allowed national security concerns to prevail” The American Spectator was told by Fabian Calle of the Argentine Council for International Relations, who is an advisor to the new government.
Biden’s State Department had otherwise shunned right wing leaders, such as El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, who they threatened to sanction over his brutal but effective crackdown on the country’s “Mara” gangs, while appeasing communist dictators in Venezuela and Cuba to gain favor with iconic center leftists like Brazil’s Lula da Silva.
Results: Venezuela’s model of dictatorship in democratic camouflage is being adopted in other countries; Lula is parroting Hamas propaganda and welcomed Iranian war ships in Rio harbor last year. Cuba has allowed China to set up an electronic listening station and hosting a Russian naval squadron including a nuclear submarine which arrived in Havana this week and sails next to Venezuela.
A series of U.S. defense and intelligence officials have traveled to Argentina for high-level discussions with their new Argentine counterparts over recent weeks. The head of the U.S. Southern Command, Gen. Laura Richardson, who has been outspoken in denouncing the growing Chinese and Russian presence in the region, has made several trips to arrange delivery of badly needed assistance to Argentina’s neglected armed forces. CIA director Nicholas Burns has flown to Buenos Aires as has FBI director Christopher Wray who arrived on board a giant Air Force C-17 Globemaster.
There is some progress. Chinese construction of a port in Tierra del Fuego dominating strategic waterways connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific has been stopped. Gen. Richardson repeatedly warned in congressional statements, that the facility would have “dual use” as a military base that could hinder the only crossing point between the two oceans for aircraft carriers which are too large to cross the Panama Canal.
Negotiations are currently underway to switch the port concession over to the U.S., which also wants control of the “Hidrovia” or a canal system under construction by China in the crime ridden Triborder region, which connects Argentina’s northern Parana river with Bolivia and could be turned into a major drug trafficking route.
The FBI has been allowed to impound an Iranian Boeing 707 cargo jet covertly operated by the IRGC through a Venezuelan air charter company, which was running hundreds of flights between the Middle East and Latin America, according to Argentine security officials. It was grounded in Argentina in 2022 through the enforcement of U.S. sanctions which blocked its refueling by an American owned company servicing Argentine airports.
The pilot was identified as a member of Quds as were seven other Iranians on board, most of whom carried Venezuelan passports. They were returned to Venezuela before Milei took power, preventing a U.S. supervised interrogation. Argentine security officials told The American Spectator, however, that the secret IRGC flights involved “ logistical support” for Hezbollah cells forming throughout the hemisphere.
Argentina was the target of devastating Hezbollah attacks in the 1990s and Peronista governments tried covering up the involvement of Iranian diplomats in the bombings that demolished the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center, killing over 100 people. A special prosecutor appointed by Argentina’s congress to investigate the case was assassinated.
Argentine officials fear what China might do if they accede to U.S. demands to dismantle a China’s Tiangong deep space ground station in Argentina’s southern Patagonian province of Neuquen equipped with a 65 foot antennae and operated by a PLA linked company that forbids outside inspection. While presumably built to guide a projected Chinese lunar expedition, the facility could also guide hypersonic missiles over the Antarctic for a sneak attack on the U.S., interfacing with Chinese satellite tracking stations in Bolivia, Venezuela, and Cuba.
“I’m surprised that the government of Argentina permits the Chinese armed forces to operate in Neuquen. We don’t know what Chinese soldiers are doing with that telescope” U.S. ambassador to Buenos Aires Mark Stanley recently told the Argentine newspaper La Nacion.
Construction of the satellite base was authorized by former president Cristina Kirchner through a corrupt deal in which private owners of the 494 acres were never paid for the property. She is so worried about possible prosecutions for what was possibly the most corrupt government in Argentine history. On a recent visit to Moscow, she met with NSA defector Edward Snowden to ask him what U.S. intelligence agencies have on her. Argentine intelligence officials told The American Spectator that Cuba has greatly influenced Kirchner who declared before the Argentine congress in 2021 that “the future is with China and Russia.”
Kirchner left Argentina vulnerable to Chinese economic blackmail. Beijing is already calling in a debt of an $8 billion owed through its interest free credit or SWAP system ruthlessly leveraged to exercise political control over Latin American and African governments.
Argentina doesn’t have the cash to pay off China. The Peronistas emptied out the nation’s reserves, leaving Milei with a negative balance of -1.5 billion and Beijing can further sink the economy by cutting imports from Argentina, whose entire soy bean production is committed to China. (READ MORE: Russia Is Pounding Eastern Ukraine’s Industrial Heartland)
Milei is trying to generate a free market based recovery with drastic cuts in the obese state sector, diversification from commodities, and cancelation of uncompetitive trade agreements. He visited Wall Street and Silicon Valley last week to sell his plan, receiving an enthusiastic reception from Elon Musk and other CEOs eyeing Argentina’s vast mineral wealth in lithium and copper.
But if China sabotages the economy at a time in which the population is suffering the effects of austerity measures, violent protests could be activated by Venezuelan agents who have largely taken control of Peronista social organizations and labour unions, according to intelligence sources. Street violence supported by Venezuela, which has destabilized conservative governments throughout the continent in recent years, could be further coordinated with Iranian sponsored terror attacks over Milei’s support for Israel.
Securing Argentina is crucial for America’s future in its own hemisphere as well as a test for its ability to pull distressed friends out of Chinese quick sands. The next months will be critical for Milei and we can only hope that it isn’t too late to turn back the Biden administration’s failed policies in Latin America.
