By Javier Surasky-
The expression
that best describes Argentina's current foreign policy is "fanatical
ignorance." The country is pursuing a foreign policy crafted by
individuals who are ignorant and work to spread and maintain their ignorance as
official truth to sustain their ideological extremism.
Javier Milei's speech to the General
Assembly on September 24, 2024, is a prime example of this. However, given the immensity of fallacies
and distortions found in its less than four pages, a product of his ideological
extremism on par with any other based on different ideas, faith, or beliefs, we
will focus our attention on his now traditional and recurring position of
wanting to lead a crusade against the 2030 Agenda, in which no country
accompanies him.
This is not
new. During his electoral campaign, Milei maintained that "We will not
adhere to the 2030 Agenda. We do not adhere to cultural Marxism, we do not
adhere to decadence" (here), and once in office, he explained that he was
traveling to the Davos Forum with the aim of "planting the ideas of
freedom in a forum that is contaminated with the socialist agenda 2030 that
will only bring misery to the world" (here).
In his
speech to the UN, the president defined the 2030 Agenda as "a
supranational government program of a socialist nature, which aims to solve the
problems of modernity with solutions that undermine the sovereignty of
nation-states [...] an agenda that claims to solve poverty, inequality, and
discrimination with legislation that only deepens them." This implies an
absolute lack of understanding of the Agenda the idea of supranationality and
the United Nations' working methods.
Let's begin
by recalling that more than 150 heads of state and government participated in
the Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015, where all UN member
countries adopted the 2030 Agenda and its SDGs. It is not a "treaty" that
Argentina has "subscribed" to, as the presidential spokesperson said
the day after the speech. Moreover, the adoption of the 2030 Agenda was the end of a negotiation
process repeatedly noted as the most participatory in United Nations history.
The SDGs
are indeed far from being achieved, as well noted in the Secretary-General's 2024 progress
report, but blaming
the 2030 Agenda for this is equivalent to saying that traffic rules are
responsible for people running red lights. This "confusion" between
norm and action is characteristic of any ideological fanaticism.
The 2030
Agenda is even weaker than traffic rules as it does not include measures that
states are legally obliged to take, but rather political commitments to
prioritize issues such as the fight against poverty and hunger, providing
quality education and access to health services for all, ensuring the
availability of sufficient and affordable energy, respect for the rule of law,
reducing inequalities, access to clean water, and environmental preservation
and care. Are these objectives repugnant and socialist? Are the ideas of
liberal authors contrary to these ends?
Furthermore,
the 2030 Agenda does not establish how these objectives should be achieved but
calls for each country to pursue them according to its characteristics,
priorities, and policies.
Milei said
that the adoption of the 2030 Agenda has been one of the causes that made the
UN move away from its principles, making a biased, fanatical, and sui generis
interpretation of them, which he reduces to the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, whose content he reduces only to the first article of the Declaration.
The
Argentine president seems unaware that the Universal Declaration states in
Article 2 that every person has the rights and freedoms proclaimed in the
Declaration without distinction of any kind, including, among other elements,
their "political opinion." This is inconsistent with his assertion
that those congressmen who vote against his projects are "rats,"
although they become "heroes" when they change their votes, nor with
his multiple insults against "lefties" (Milei has repeatedly called
them “shit” and “garbage”).
He must
also not remember that Article 22 establishes that "Everyone, as a member
of society, has the right to social security," or that Article 23 grants
"protection against unemployment" and the "right to just and
favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy
of human dignity," or that Article 28 establishes that "Everyone is
entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms
set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized," which provides an
international basis for his hated social justice.
To
understand the fear that the 2030 Agenda seems to instill in Milei and his
government team, it is not enough to demonstrate their ignorance: one must
understand that this has been their entry point into conspiracy theories.
Today,
there are three conspiracy theories vying to be the "true"
explanations of the 2030 Agenda:
- "New World Order"
Theory: This theory is based on the idea that an elite (Bilderberg Club
style) formed by a small group of the world's most powerful governs the
planet's destinies for their benefit.
- "Great Reset" Theory:
Proposed in Davos after the pandemic, and with the UN's vision of
"building back better," this theory focuses on the economic
dimension and suggests that there is a plan orchestrated by the most
powerful countries to appropriate all world wealth. They claim the
intentional creation of a pandemic to initiate their plan.
- "Communism by Drip"
Theory: After the fall of the Soviet Union - and knowing that communism
could never take over the West - the "left" initiated a
worldwide campaign to slowly insert its ideas into Western societies so
that by the time the plan was discovered, the West would have already
embraced the communist ideal without realizing it.
Milei
aligns with the third option, which he takes to the extreme by stating that
Argentina does not support the Future Pact and inviting "all nations of
the free world to join us, not only in dissenting from this pact but in
creating a new agenda for this noble institution: the agenda of freedom."
His words place Argentina in a group whose members are not exactly "the
nations of the free world" nor defenders of human rights, not even of
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration he has been talking about: North Korea,
Nicaragua, Syria, Russia, and Venezuela. Indeed, the last two are countries
explicitly attacked by Milei in his speech.
The
president has said that the UN, instead of confronting conflicts like the one
in Ukraine, "invests time and effort in imposing on poor countries what
and how they should produce, with whom to associate, what to eat and what to
believe, as the present pact of the future intends to dictate." The Pact,
as anyone can read, says nothing about the topics Milei mentions. It would be
an intelligent step for those making the country's foreign policy to read the
documents they will criticize before demonstrating their ignorance.
Milei's
speech to the UN will go down in history as either a blasphemy or an
international embarrassment. It is another example of how disinformation and
ideological extremism feed off each other and form a dangerous combination.
Official disinformation is thus seen as a necessity to legitimize an extremist
political program that needs to construct its own reality.
The
messianism characteristic of extremism has been shown in Milei's UN speech with
a clarity that makes it impossible not to see, enabling lies and disinformation
as guides for a foreign policy as demented as its protagonists.
