As promised soon after his election, Argentinian President Javier Milei chose Israel for his first official state visit. This decision shows not only Milei’s staunch support for Israel in times of war but also his role in the defense of Western values. In fact, Israel cannot be considered a separate geopolitical entity since it is part of the “Collective West.”
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Explaining Russia’s recent anti-Israel stances, renowned Russian intellectual Fyodor Lukyanov himself stated, “The Hamas attack and the outbreak of the war in Palestine in which the US and EU have unconditionally supported Israel, established the Jewish state as an integral part of the ‘Collective West,’ which Russia fiercely confronts.”
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Argentinian President Javier Milei visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem
(Photo: Western Wall Heritage Foundation)
Milei wants to reclaim for Argentina its role as a member of the West and not of a Global South that feels victimized by the Global North. In reality, Milei already managed to put Argentina back on the geopolitical map, despite its catastrophic economic condition. Especially after pulling out of plans to join the BRICS bloc and his speech in Davos against “collectivism”, Milei rose as the global leader of the Western idea of liberty.
Averting the birth of the 'multipolar world order'
During his trip to Israel, Milei repeatedly stressed that Israel and its people share the spirit of liberty. In this sense, the Argentinian president’s visit to Israel can be interpreted as a will to rebuild the “unipolar world.”
However, this time the push to bring back the values of liberal democracy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (I am talking here about classical liberalism and not the progressive one, which developed in recent decades and that shares alarming features with communism) comes not from the United States but unexpectedly from Argentina.
For years, Latin America was considered to be the area of the world in which to find support against the “unipolar world order,” where the United States is the dominant global power holding the banner of liberal capitalist societies. However, after Milei’s election, something changed. New liberal movements in the so-called “Global South” are starting now to pressure the “Global North” to wake up and take back the reins of the world in order to avert the birth of the “multipolar world order” (before Milei’s rise to power, the road to a “multipolar world order” seemed a likelihood).
Milei: The anti-Dugin
The “multipolar world order” is the one that China, Russia and Iran have been working toward for years with the ultimate goal of destroying the “unipolar world,” that is the West (Israel included, as part of the “Collective West”) and its values.
Until a few months ago, it seemed that the “end of history” concept, Francis Fukuyama’s idea that predicted that liberal democracy would prevail as a permanent order, was over. Yet here comes Milei and shows the free world the need to rebuild a powerful liberal “pole” to contrast all the emerging anti-liberal “poles.” In this, Milei can be defined as the “liberal anti-Dugin.”
According to Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, especially after October 7, this is the moment to build a new Islamic “pole” that could counter – along with other such “poles,” Russia and China – the unipolar world order.
“After all, this is a struggle between the multipolar world and the unipolar world, which means that it is being waged not only in the interests of Russia as a pole, but also indirectly (or even directly) in the interests of all the emerging geopolitical poles. This is best understood by China and, among Islamic countries, by Iran,” Dugin wrote.
Las fuerzas del Cielo
Milei is now fighting on two hard and important fronts, which are all part of the same liberal battle. At home, he is battling against “Kirchnerism” (i.e. Peronism/socialism) to recover the Argentinian economy, and in the international arena, he is struggling to rebuild a liberal strong pole, free of collectivist temptations. This pole, according to Milei, has to respect the following definition of liberalism, as defined by Argentinian liberal thinker Alberto Benegas Lynch: “Liberalism is the unrestricted respect for the life project of others based on the principle of non-aggression and the defense of the right to life, liberty, and private property.”
Clearly, this ambitious project will need the awakening of the United States in order to be fully achieved. However, Milei alone with “las fuerzas del Cielo” (“the forces of heaven”, as he often says) managed to move the consciousness of the liberal world. Hence, his trip to Israel, a Western bastion, represents the first important step toward the rebuilding of a liberal world order.
- Anna Mahjar-Barducci is a journalist and author, residing in Jerusalem