Donald Trump has long embraced vengeance.
asserted
Trump → embrace → vengeance
“I am your retribution,” he declared to an admiring audience at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) as he commenced his march back to the White House.
asserted
he → declare → House
But the tide of international events in the past three and a half years have turned Trump’s vindictive mindset to the advantage of Javier Milei, the boisterous rightwing Argentinian president.
asserted
tide → turn → Milei
Trump’s notorious fixation with payback was almost entirely the trigger for Milei’s televised address to his fellow Argentinians on Thursday, as he stated his intention to reopen his country’s claim to a set of windswept islands in the south Atlantic – known to Britain as the Falklands, and to Argentina as the Malvinas.
uncertain
he → televise → Malvinas
The centuries-old dispute over the islands’ sovereignty has lain dormant since 1982, when the two countries fought a brief, but bloody, conflict that began after Argentina’s ruling military dictatorship invaded the territory.
asserted
dictatorship → lie → territory
Britain reclaimed it after troops in a naval taskforce dispatched by the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher – ironically lionized by Milei as a political exemplar and inspiration – stormed the territory and eventually forced Argentina’s surrender.
asserted
troops → reclaim → surrender
An uneasy peace has reigned in the generation since, although Argentina, which returned to democracy the year after the conflict, has never renounced its claim to the isles – despite the adamant insistence of their fewer than 2,000 inhabitants that they remain British.
uncertain
they → reign → inhabitants
This week, however, Trump suggested he is reconsidering US support for Britain’s sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.
uncertain
he → suggest → Islands
Why would the president go out on a limb to threaten this fragile peace?
asserted
president → go → peace
Milei jumped on Trump’s comment that he was “reviewing” the US’s longstanding neutral stance on the territory’s sovereignty, which amounts to a de facto recognition of Britain’s control.
asserted
which → jump → control
Fueling Trump’s animus is grievance that Britain, under former prime minister Keir Starmer, declined to support the US president’s decision to go to war on Iran, another irony given that country’s deep-rooted suspicions of Britain and its imperial past.
asserted
Britain → fuel → Britain
The president’s obsession that allies declined to help him in a war he never consulted them on runs deep and wide – from Westminster to Seoul – and has the potential to upend US relationships around the globe, if unchecked.
And Milei’s attempt to capitalize on Trump’s vengeance underlines the potential for ripple effects of this war to reach waters far beyond the Gulf.
asserted
effects → decline → Gulf
In what has become a repetitive refrain, Trump laid bare his sense of wounded affront in an interview with a rightwing British cable channel on Thursday.
asserted
Trump → become → Thursday
“Your country was not there to help me,” he told GB News.
asserted
he → help → News
“We didn’t need help, but I did ask Nato, and I asked your former leader: ‘Why don’t you send a couple of ships?’
asserted
you → need → ships
He said: ‘We don’t have any.’
asserted
We → say → any
Milei’s opportunism could also be used by Trump as a bargaining chip – to lever more money from the cash-strapped UK treasury for defense spending and Nato contributions, after the new British chancellor of the exchequer, John Healey, recently suggested that it might not reach increased spending targets.
uncertain
it → use → targets
It is a sorry pass for the “special relationship”, fostered through alliances in two worlds wars and deepened during the cold war and subsequent conflicts.
asserted
It → foster → war
Yet Britain is hardly alone in feeling the heat of a wrathful Trump.
asserted
Britain → feel → Trump
Vengeance has been targeted in recent months at numerous other allies, now regarded with more hostility by the White House than traditional adversaries such as Russia and China.
asserted
Vengeance → target → Russia
Annual joint military exercises with South Korea – a vital ally of Washington since the Korean war broke out in 1950 – were suddenly scaled down and cut short by six days last month, on Trump’s orders, because of his irritation that the Seoul government declined to join the fight against Iran.
asserted
government → break → Iran
He has repeatedly threatened to bomb or “blow up” the tiny Gulf kingdom of Oman, which has had friendly ties with the US for 200 years, if it impedes his efforts to reopen the strait of Hormuz, which Iran has closed to most commercial shipping.
asserted
Iran → threaten → shipping
The White House also announced the withdrawal of 5,000 US troops from Germany after the country’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, rebuffed pressure to get involved in the Iran conflict and said Trump had been “humiliated” in the conflict.
asserted
Trump → announce → conflict
Threats of retribution have also been aimed at Spain, which has resisted pressure to boost defense spending, and Italy, whose prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, was a former Trump ally.
asserted
minister → aim → spending
Turbulence under Trump
But Milei, a self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” who has paraded with a chainsaw to signify his attitude to public spending and attended Trump’s 2025 inauguration,
asserted
who → style → inauguration
Last year, the administration extended his troubled government a $20bn loan guarantee to stabilize the infamously shaky Argentinian economy – but premised the money on Milei’s party defeating the leftist opposition in forthcoming congressional elections, which it duly did.
asserted
it → extend → which
Such rough currents may be the “winds of change” Milei referenced in Thursday’s speech, delivered – Trump-style – with his cabinet members flanking him.
uncertain
members → reference → him
But he may have been aware the phrase had other, historical connotations – evoking the words of a famous speech in 1960 by then British prime minister Harold Macmillan in Cape Town, heralding independence for Britain’s former colonial possession in Africa.
uncertain
phrase → have → Africa
“The wind of change is blowing through this continent,” Macmillan said then.
asserted
Macmillan → blow → continent
“Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.”
asserted
growth → like → consciousness
In his address, Milei suggested the sun was setting on Britain, just as it once did on its empire, citing multiple crises of a migratory, demographic and economic nature that are unlikely to be resolved.
uncertain
that → suggest → nature
“It is clear that they are on a path of decline,” he pronounced.
asserted
he → pronounce → decline
He did not mention his own falling political popularity – a factor that may also have played a key role in the former military junta’s decision to seize the islands in 1982, as opposition grew against the backdrop of mass disappearances of political dissidents and multiple human rights abuses.
uncertain
opposition → mention → dissidents
Then, too, Britain was grappling with tensions over immigration and race riots, soaring unemployment and long-term economic decline that Thatcher had been elected pledging to reverse.
asserted
Thatcher → grapple → that
In the late winter of 1982, there was little sign that she was capable of doing so – until the Falklands conflict sparked a sudden upturn in her political fortunes.
asserted
conflict → be → fortunes
But she had the solid backing of the special relationship, and her ideological soulmate, Ronald Reagan, in the White House.
asserted
she → have → House
Andy Burnham, Britain’s newly installed Labour prime minister, must contend with the chill wind emanating from the menacing and destabilizing presence of Trump.
asserted
Burnham → instal → Trump
The Aporia
