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How Milei and Trump are stoking tensions over the Falklands |
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| Argentina’s President Javier Milei has escalated his country’s claim over the Falkland Islands, a British overseas territory, warning he will place economic pressure by sanctioning oil companies with operations in the area. | ||
| The Falkland Islands are “Argentine, by history and by right, there is no debate about it,” he said in a nationally televised address Thursday evening. | ||
| Milei argued the “winds of change blowing around the world” are favorable to Argentina’s long-claimed sovereignty over the South Atlantic archipelago, citing remarks made by his ally, U.S. President Donald Trump, who recently suggested the U.S. would be reviewing its neutrality on the dispute. | ||
| The Argentine President flagged a planned oil project in the area as a cause for concern. Within the next 18 months, two companies—one British and the other Israeli—are set to start extractions from the Sea Lion oilfield, which lies north of the islands and holds an estimated 1.7 billion barrels of oil. Milei described the project as an urgent threat to Argentina’s sovereignty. | ||
| The Falkland Islands, known in Argentina as “Islas Malvinas,” sit roughly 300 miles from the Argentine coast, and have been a British territory for almost two centuries, but Argentina has never accepted British sovereignty over the area. | ||
| Responding to the economic threats, the U.K. government reasserted its “unshakeable” commitment to the archipelago. | ||
| Meanwhile, Argentina’s sovereignty claim and the accompanying rhetoric has become a unifying issue in the country, experts tell TIME.
“The Argentinian nation is easily united behind this claim through the Falkland Islands. It’s a rallying point,” says Marc Weller, a programme director at the U.K.-based think tank Chatham House. —Callum Sutherland |