Javier Milei has led Argentine to ruin by utterly subjugating it to the US
Argentina is on the brink of bankruptcy. Because that’s the name for where you are when you desperately need a promise of a bailout to buy time, while you may still need the full bailout later, as both the Financial Times and The Economist admit.
Due to an acute crisis, triggered by a local but crucial election defeat for the government of self-declared “anarcho-capitalist” and chainsaw artist Javier Milei, the country’s currency has now crashed and wobbled and its stock market plunged repeatedly.
Milei’s recent “crushing setback” (Al Jazeera) in the key province of Buenos Aires shell-shocked his supporters abroad: Bloomberg TV deplored a “big disappointing surprise for investors” and announced an “inflection point” for Argentina. With midterm elections pending there in late October, the Buenos Aires rout may well be a sign of worse to come for the West’s libertarian poster boy, namely a massive rejection by the national electorate. Importantly, Argentinians seem to agree: they see Milei’s Buenos Aires debacle as his first painful defeat, to be followed by more.
And many believe he will richly deserve all of it. Milei, after all, has not “only” been an ideologically bigoted wrecking ball, but also a purveyor of corruption, nepotism, and, last but not least, ruinous mass scamming. One of his party’s top candidates has just dropped out of an election campaign because of sleaze allegations clearly too true to be ignored. Milei’s sister Karina, whom he calls “the boss” (How’s that for unresolved childhood issues, Dr. Freud?), stands very plausibly accused of very shady deals with pharmaceutical companies (As they whisper in Brussels, “never go full von der Leyen!”). And Javier himself has played a nasty key role in a memecoin pump-and-dump scam that, according to Forbes, cost almost everyone who invested a total of over $250 million.
For a moment, the rout was checked, but only because the US government demonstratively announced that it would do (read: pay) whatever it takes to save, in effect, not Argentina but Milei personally, as both The Economist and CNN acknowledge. Yet those American promises have failed to turn into anything specific, surprise, surprise. Instead, a senator and the US agriculture secretary have gone public with criticism of splurging on Argentina, while its farmers compete with American ones. And so, the tailspin is setting in again.
Economic and political turmoil are not new to Argentina. But there are two things that are very special about the current crisis. One is obvious and receives a lot of attention: In the great, really global ideological struggle between austeritarian, hyper-capitalist globalists, of whom Milei is a local if extra-crazed variant, and their opponents, from left-wing egalitarians to sovereignists, Milei’s nosedive represents a great embarrassment for the globalists and if not yet a victory then a godsend of an opportunity for the egalitarians and statists.
Here is a radical experiment in fanatical state slashing (that chainsaw again) and vicious redistribution from the have-less to the have-everythings. It was greeted with ill-considered enthusiasm by the global 1% and, in general, the right, from Elon Musk (a “bromance,” according to the also Milei-besotted Wall Street Journal) to Giorgia Meloni to, of course, Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.
And boy, is that experiment in trouble! Say what you will about real-existing Mileism, but once it needs both IMF support and also the big brother in Washington to save its behind in a highly unusual fit of altruism that may or may not happen, it is definitely not “winning,” whatever the US president and his sycophantic yes-men may be fantasizing about in public. Instead, we now hear of a “former savior” stuck in deep trouble.
Trump has even claimed, absurdly, that Argentina needs no bailout. Instead he had something else, and much cheaper, to offer when recently meeting a very humble Milei at the UN: The American uber-capitalist explicitly “endorsed” Milei for his next presidential run in Argentina. So much for national sovereignty.
In good Trump style, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was called on to obsequiously amplify his boss and confirm what a “fantastic job” Milei has been doing and that he was, in essence, facing the same task as Trump in the US.
There was a sad, gauche look to it all: At the UN General Assembly Milei roared about wanting the Falkland Islands/Malvinas back from Britain. (How’s that for desperate antics trying to distract from your malaise at home?) Facing Trump, he sat silent, perching on his chair like a guilt-ridden pupil in the headmaster’s office. Handed a document as if receiving a score card, Milei accepted it with maximum servility: nothing left of that wild chainsaw wielder, more like a teacher’s pet holding up a reward. It remains to be seen if such scenes attract or repel Argentina’s voters.
By the way, about that bailout again: Trump dismissing it, clearly, was a matter of extremely misleading rhetoric, not substance. In reality, the Financial Times has informed us, Bessent has been busy putting together a whole package of options that have one thing in common: they’ll pump money to the Milei regime and they’ll cost American taxpayers, never mind how elaborately construed to hide that fact: A cool $20 billion for a swap line for Argentina’s Central Bank alone, plus a declared readiness to buy Argentinian national debt and “significant standby credit.” Eventually not all of the above may be deployed and perhaps nothing at all, but it is or would have been, of course, a bailout by another name.
And then there is the second but much-neglected aspect of the Milei fiasco, the one that receives far too little attention: Under Milei’s rule, Buenos Aires has not only aligned itself with Washington as perhaps never before, not even during the last century’s Cold War. In effect, the man with the chainsaw has quite literally sold out his country, surrendering its assets and sovereignty with a perverse glee unusual even by the sorriest standards of the most abject South American Yankee Quislings.
At the same time, Milei has long been commendably explicit about a key fact: Opting for extreme submission to the US as a matter of policy has also meant saying “no” to an easily available alternative and balancer, BRICS, and the emerging order of multipolarity it embodies.
Indeed, when Milei entered office in late 2023, Buenos Aires was well on its way to joining BRICS. It is virtually certain that without Milei, Argentina would be a member now. Yet upon his election he took a chainsaw to this prospect, openly declaring that “our geopolitical alignment is with the United States and Israel.”
And, less than two years later, here we are: Due to Milei’s reckless slash-burn-and-plunder policies, millions of Argentinians are in deep trouble. The libertarian snake-oil miracle he promised has not happened and will not happen. His policies did stabilize the currency for a moment that may well prove fleeting, but they did so by wrecking both the real economy and the already fragile cohesion of Argentinian society. Unemployment is higher than ever since 2021, while half of Argentinians with work fear losing their jobs; real wages are falling, the cost of living rising, making Argentina “one of the most expensive countries in Latin America.”
And all of the above is happening while Argentina is dependent on the US – and, according to Milei, Israel – as never before. It is not Milei’s fault that there has never been a miracle fix to Argentina’s long-standing problems. But it is his fault that he promised one and made things worse again. It is also his fault that he gratuitously slammed the door on the opportunity of joining an ever-growing, economically and politically weighty community of states that is aligned not with any single country but an inevitable international order of multipolarity.
Instead, Milei led his country not only into yet another crisis but a very desolate place, where it is alone as never before with American friends from hell. His personal humiliation in the meeting with Trump was just a foretaste of what all of Argentina can expect as long as it won’t shake off Milei. Argentina’s establishment is already showing signs of serious rebellion: the Senate has just blocked Milei’s repeated attempts to slash funding for universities and pediatric care.
Argentina’s crisis is not a local event. And it is about much more than Milei’s inflated ego, tired antics, and long overdue come-uppance. Instead, Argentina is yet another harbinger of a global transition phase: With very few exceptions, states are now going to face an ever-starker choice. Join multipolarity or submit totally to the US, as its empire contracts while becoming even more brutal and exploitative than before.
