President Javier Milei isolated Argentina from economic partners and its South American neighbors recently with announced plans to consider sending military aid to Ukraine in its war against Russia.
The controversial leader revealed the proposal during an interview with US-based news outlet CNN in which he called Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador “ignorant” and labeled Colombian leader Gustavo Petro a “terrorist assassin.” The impolitic remark about Petro led to Argentine diplomats being expelled from the country’s embassy in Bogotá.
The controversy comes as Milei’s approval rating has sunk amidst unyielding protest in Argentina. The country is coping with widespread hunger for the first time since the early 2000s as Argentina’s economic challenges continue. Milei has been criticized in recent days after police violently repressed demonstrators in the nation’s capital calling for support for the country’s soup kitchens.
Analyst Caleb Maupin joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program on Monday to discuss the latest developments in Argentina, claiming the self-declared “anarcho-capitalist” Milei is attempting to sell elite-friendly neoliberal economics in a faux-radical package.
“I must say that I'm not shocked by Milei's behavior,” said the journalist. “He pulled Argentina out of the BRICS talks. He has been mouthing nothing but hatred for both China and Russia since coming into office. He's a huge supporter of Israel and its atrocities against the Palestinians and what's going on right now.”
“But what concerns me is that there are many people who are critical of US foreign policy… who seem to be under the impression that Milei is some kind of hero fighting the deep state, that he's somehow sticking it to the global elites,” Maupin added. “I find this delusion to be very, very frustrating. Milei is espousing the ideology of the global elites, which is called neoliberalism, the belief that the market always renders the best solution, the belief that the state has no obligation to protect working people from unemployment, from hunger, etcetera.”
“A layer of people… seem to blindly believe this man is somehow on their side simply because he espouses libertarianism, simply because he frames things in terms of fighting globalism, fighting socialism.”
Milei rose to prominence as a political commentator on Argentine television, known for his bombastic rhetoric and criticism of the country’s political establishment. Many observers gave the upstart candidate little chance of winning the country’s presidency late last year. But Milei was able to channel deep discontent over Argentina’s dire economic straits after the Covid-19 pandemic into victory over Peronist candidate Sergio Massa.
“One thing that I think is worth pointing out is that part of the way Milei was able to build up support among the Argentine population is that many people in Argentina have been reduced to a very dismal existence by the so-called gig economy,” Maupin claimed. “They don't have the status of being a regular worker with a regular work contract, working so many hours, guaranteed employment and such.”
“This existence – what some economists are referring to as the precariat, precarious employment – has made these folks very angry at the existing Argentine state that requires them to have certain licenses and taxes them at a substantially higher rate because they’re technically not employees, they're technically business owners,” he explained. “I think that needs to be addressed because that's an issue that's not just affecting Argentina, it's affecting our country.”
Maupin claimed that despite his anti-establishment rhetoric, Milei is merely pursuing familiar policies that place Argentina under the influence of Western financial institutions.
“He's now giving up Argentina's currency, he's trying to make Argentina at this point have the US dollar,” Maupin noted. “Look across the region. When Ecuador took these moves in the late 90s it completely destroyed Ecuador's economy. Ecuador had a man-made famine in 1999 where people were starving and dying of malnutrition.”
“That's what happens when you open up your economy to neoliberal looting,” he claimed. “All throughout Latin America in the 90s we saw Javier Milei's policies implemented… Neoliberalism has been tried as an economic system, and it has failed. And just because you frame it now all of a sudden in anti-establishment rhetoric, you repackage it… the policies are still the same.”
“Neoliberalism is still the same, and free market policies are what the World Economic Forum and the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and these huge globalist institutions, it's what they've been pushing from the beginning.”