On the campaign trail, Argentina’s showman president, Javier Milei, brandished a chainsaw to highlight plans for ferocious spending cuts. In office, the rightwinger has apparently decided to take the power tool to foreign relations as well.
In recent days, Milei has busied himself losing friends and alienating people with a series of verbal attacks on the leftwing leaders of Argentina’s two biggest neighbours, Bolivia and Brazil.
First came Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whom Argentina’s far-right libertarian leader had called a corrupt communist during last year’s election. Last week, when Lula suggested Milei should apologize for talking “loads of nonsense”, the Argentinian quickly scotched the idea.
“Since when do you have to say sorry for telling the truth?” the television celebrity turned politician said of his attack on the president of Argentina’s top trade partner. “Have we become so sick with political correctness that you can’t say anything about the left even when it’s true?”
Over the weekend, Milei aimed his artillery at Bolivia’s president, Luis Arce, whom he accused – without evidence – of staging a “fake and fraudulent” coup attempt last Wednesday in order to boost his popularity. On Monday, Bolivia announced it was recalling its ambassador to Argentina because of Milei’s “unfriendly and reckless” remarks.
Ties between Buenos Aires and Brasília look likely to deteriorate further in the coming days amid reports that Milei, a mercurial Donald Trump-admiring populist known as El Loco (The Madman), will make his first trip to Brazil as president this weekend.
But instead of holding clear-the-air talks with President Lula, Milei is set to meet Brazil’s former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro at a rightwing congress in Balneário Camboriú, a beachside Bolsonaro stronghold in southern Brazil.
As well as Milei, speakers include the ultra-conservative Chilean politician José Antonio Kast, Bolsonaro, his congressman son and his former environment minister, who last week praised the “balls” of the military officials who tried to overthrow Bolivia’s president.
Milei will reportedly skip a summit of the regional trade bloc Mercosur in Paraguay on Monday, supposedly so as to avoid encountering his Brazilian foe.
Milei’s quarrels with the leaders of Bolivia and Brazil are not the first diplomatic fights he has picked since taking office last December. In May, Spain withdrew its ambassador from Argentina after Milei insinuated that Begoña Gómez, the wife of Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, was “corrupt”.
Those outbursts, while headline-grabbing, have not surprised analysts given Milei’s long history of combative and expletive-ridden on-screen rants.
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“Milei is a leader who makes confrontation his way of being. It’s in his genes,” said Facundo Nejamkis, the director of the consulting firm Opina Argentina.
When it came to domestic politics, Milei’s mission was to spar with all political rivals he calls members of Argentina’s corrupt “political caste”. He was now taking the same approach to foreign policy. Milei had realigned Argentina with the governments of the US and Israel. “And he ends up confronting all the world leaders who do not fit into that international positioning,” said Nejamkis, who observed that Milei’s followers appreciated having a leader who they believed “tells it like it is”.
Juan Courel, an expert in political communication from Alaska Comunicación, said Milei’s attacks were designed to energize his hardcore base. They also served to underline how, more than a plan for government, what Milei offered supporters was a narrative. “Milei is offering an ideological and cultural crusade on a global scale – and many of his followers believe him – partly because of this kind of bickering,” he said.
For now at least, the tactic seemed to be working. “His levels of support have been basically stable since he took office, in spite of a huge drop in living standards,” Courel said.
Milei showed little sign of changing his tune on Tuesday. Those who disagreed with his attacks on Arce and Lula, he wrote on social media, were “absolutely idiotic dinosaurs”.