Argentina’s sovereignty claim is a just cause
President Muricio Macri’s ride on a regular bus through dirt roads in the Buenos Aires district of Pilar on Thursday prompted controversy when photographs of what looked like a publicity stunt involving patrol cars, bodyguards and props were released by the website La Letra P. Macri’s bus ride, immediately upon his return from the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
By Sebastián Lacunza Editor-in-Chief
A diplomatic policy in which a president corrects his foreign minister and vice versa is nothing new for the Mauricio Macri presidency. Already around December, his baby steps in foreign policy took the form of announcing that he would request the application of Mercosur’s “democratic clause” against the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro, an extreme which met with no consensus in the region and which led the then recently appointed Foreign Minister, Susana Malcorra, to try and tone down the rhetoric and defuse the request.
But this week there was a far more recent example of this back and forth. Last Tuesday it was Macri correcting Malcorra during his speech to the United Nations. Although tepidly, the president reiterated that Argentina’s sovereignty claims over the Malvinas take priority within Argentine foreign policy. He thus made amends for Malcorra jointly signing with the British Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan a text which succeeded in uniting the critics of every type, whether experts, nationalists, doves or pragmatists. The agreement (which within a few days had degenerated into a mere and vague statement of intent) took on board all the Kelper claims regarding oil exploitation, trade and transport in exchange for nothing without making any reference to sovereignty — something which, it is worth recalling, is a “permanent and unrenounceable” constitutional mandate. Without anybody to defend it, this text, if not already a dead letter, is only wishful thinking.
But if this is a competition between the president and his foreign minister to correct each other all the time, Malcorra had her chance for revenge. In trying to wriggle out of the uncomfortable position where the Malcorra-Duncan agreement had left Argentine foreign policy, Macri said that Britain’s brand-new Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May had declared herself willing to discuss Malvinas sovereignty. A brief dialogue of two minutes had sufficed, so it would seem, for the greatest achievement of Argentine foreign policy since the return of democracy. Obviously, Macri’s version turned out to be either a misunderstanding or directly a falsehood and it was left to Malcorra to set the record straight. The foreign minister with her broad experience of international negotiations is undoubtedly much better at reading diplomatic jargon than the President. Something which can work out in her favour but also against because any “errors” in Macri’s mouth can be attributed to his inexperience while the words of his minister are seen as calculated.
Those pushing to shift Malvinas policy towards the seduction of the Kelpers and the Foreign Office often point out that taking a nationalistic tone has produced no results. In other words, despite the condemnation of the United Nations General Assembly and the Decolonization Committee, the expressions of solidarity from Latin America and the economic sanctions against the self-appointed oil investors in Malvinas waters, the islands remain under the rule of the United Kingdom, one of the greatest military powers on the planet. If the measure of success is London sitting down to talk sovereignty (something which Macri believed he had achieved in the course of a brief doorway chat with May in the UN building), it might be added that a frivolous seduction without setting conditions did not produce any results either in the 1990s.
It is true that apart from being a just Argentine claim, the Malvinas are a patriotic cause drawing politicians of various kinds. This even applies to Macri, in the worst sense, when he seeks to redeem shady characters who, besides fighting on the Malvinas, sought to topple democracy in 1987, such as the carapintadas Aldo Rico and the recently reincorporated official Juan José Gómez Centurión.
The difficult road towards regaining the islands — both with a pragmatic or nationalist approach — requires serious diplomacy with clear aims and a capacity for sealing alliances to make London feel the cost of maintaining its overseas territory.
Meanwhile we can question Malcorra for taking such bold steps while seeking votes to be elected UN secretary-general. Either one thing or the other. Either Argentina’s foreign minister should refrain from agreements which look like bids to circumvent the British veto on the UN Security Council or she should take leave from the post. We are talking about perhaps the best-qualified of Macri’s government officials to occupy their present post. But in diplomacy you not only have to do the right thing but be also seen to be doing it.
The Malvinas episode was another step that shows the contradictions between the rhetoric and the facts produced by the government. Cabinet Chief Marcos Peña has just said that Macri’s opponents disparage the communication strategy of the Casa Rosada. He is right. Let’s Change, the political alliance headed by Macri, has proven its ability to read the country’s reality, to anticipe scenarios and to build political partnerships with extreme pragmatism. He thus became the first centre-right politician (neither Peronist nor Radical) to be elected president in Argentina’s democratic history. With ten months in office, Macri’s approval ratings remain around 40-45 percent (the highest in the region) despite a pronounced increase in poverty and unemployment and worsening trends in almost all sensitive economic figures (fiscal deficit, debt, inflation, foreign investment). Dismissing the Macrista ability not only regarding communication tools but also political planning would be nonsense.
Another matter is that Peña tries to say that the government's communication merit is down to the multitude of empty phrases expressed in the self-help meeting for Let’s Change officials held at the Kirchner Cultural Center on Friday, or photomontages in the Central Park or hours later — even with less glamour — a bus in an impoverished area of Pilar in the Greater Buenos Aires. If the idea that the strength of the government is due to fraudulent ornaments prevails, proving its uselessness is a matter of time.
@sebalacunza