The United States and Israel have created a global atmosphere so chaotic that Argentina’s president feels bold enough to threaten the invasion of British territory – the Falkland Islands.
In a pre-Trump world, Javier Milei simply would not and could not say: “Our role and relevance as a country in the world has changed dramatically. The Falklands are our future – we need to recover these islands, which are nationally relevant. There is no other path forward.”
But the US president, the leader of the Western world, has threatened to annex Canada, a Nato member, and repeatedly hinted that he’d like to conquer Greenland, a part of Denmark, also a Nato member.
Milei knows that Britain cannot defend the Falkland Islands against an Argentine invasion. But the South Atlantic archipelago is British and therefore falls under the umbrella protection of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
The problem is that Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t understand, nor does he care, what Nato is for. And he encouraged Milei in his threats to take the Falklands to prevent a British company from exploiting oil reserves beneath its seas.
Trump is smarting from the refusal of the UK to get involved in his US-Israeli war against Iran, which falls entirely outside Nato’s defensive remit.
He thinks Western allies should have joined him on his adventure against Iran, which led to Tehran closing the straights of Hormuz and chaos in the crude oil markets.
“So, your country’s not doing well. Don’t forget, you get a big percentage of your oil from the Strait of Hormuz, and you weren’t there to help me,” he told GB News on Thursday.
“Your country was not there to help me. We didn’t need help, but I did ask Nato, and I asked your former leader, ‘why didn’t you send a couple of ships?’
“He said we don’t have any, and it was pretty sad, the whole thing. So Nato was not there, even though they get – most of those countries get – a big portion of their oil from there. So we’re doing that by ourselves.”
That was enough for Milei to threaten sanctions against companies that get involved in oil exploitation off the Falklands coast. And to pledge to take the Falklands back.
Israel’s government, meanwhile, is furious with the UK, which is soon to announce sanctions against Israeli firms operating in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Jewish Israeli settlers have been rampaging and killing Palestinians with the help of the Israel Defence Forces in a campaign of state-sanctioned forced removals.
Yair Netanyahu, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, who has played no role in Israeli politics, publicly endorsed Argentina’s claims to the Falklands over the last week. He would not have made such a bizarre intervention without being told to by his father.
Diplomatic sources said that the UK is coming under intense pressure from the White House to drop its sanctions pledge against Israeli settlements.
“You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see the links here. Hitting Britain with the threat of invasion when its military is on its knees means that Nato would need to get involved. But the biggest Nato ally is already saying ‘not us’. That weakens the alliance; it weakens Britain’s ability to push back against Argentina; it serves Israel very nicely,” said a European diplomat.
It also serves the interests of a major power that has also recently threatened the UK. Russia has said it would take action against Britain over its support for Ukraine’s armaments programmes. It is already prosecuting a hybrid shadow war in cyberspace and with sabotage attacks across Europe.
It makes some sense for Milei to renew his nation’s Falklands ambitions at a time when Britain’s armed forces are being told to cease training to save money and are at their lowest strength for hundreds of years.
He knows that if he sent Argentine marines, as his country did in 1982, there would be no way that the UK could send an armada to kick them out as Margaret Thatcher did.
He is exploiting the chaos of the White House and the incoherent fantasies spun from the Oval Office, which led to the disastrous war in Iran and the end of military support by America for Ukraine, as well as threats to invade Nato nations.
For the Argentine president, this is all a great opportunity. For the US and its allies in Europe, this is another hybrid victory for Russia under a doctrine that sees chaos among rivals as victory in itself. The latest boost to an economically weakened and militarily bloodied Moscow comes at no cost to Russia.
Israel is playing a local game but, once again, it looks as if populist leaders like Trump and Milei actually work for the Kremlin.
