With Argentina’s March 26 signing of a letter of intent to purchase 24 Lockheed-Martin F-16 fourth-generation fighters from Denmark and its invitation for the U.S. Navy to access its strategic port in Ushuaia, the United States has an opportunity to begin to halt the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) designs to isolate the United States in its own hemisphere.
Before free market economist Javier Milei became president of Argentina on Dec. 10, 2023, the CCP was for 15 years pushing to close a deal to turn Argentina into a strategic ally to promote Beijing’s access and influence in Latin America in pursuit of global hegemony.
The CCP’s first goal was to begin the rearmament of Argentina to spark a second war to conquer the British territory of the Falklands Islands, which would have quickly included the United States, a war China could not lose.
Under the Socialist-Peronist side of Argentine politics—particularly the administration of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007 to 2015)—Argentina was considering new Chinese-funded arms purchases in early 2015 amid economic challenges.
These included up to 24 Chengdu FC-1/JF-17 “fourth generation plus” light fighters with some construction in Argentina, up to 100 co-produced Norinco VN-1 wheeled armored fighting vehicles, and up to five anti-ship missile armed corvettes, with some built in Argentina.
It is likely China would have quickly offered additional sales of CM-400AKG hypersonic anti-ship missiles to arm the JF-17s, new air-independent propulsion (AIP) equipped Yuan-class submarines, and even its medium- and intermediate-range anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs).
And unlike the 1982 Falklands War, Venezuela would likely have used its Russian Sukhoi Su-30MK2V strike fighters, perhaps supported by Chinese ASBMs, to attack British Royal Navy and U.S. Navy carrier battle groups transiting to defend the Falklands.
It is also conceivable that if left-leaning regimes were in power in Brazil, Chile, and Peru, they and the leftist and perpetual African National Congress (ANC) regime in South Africa would have offered military support for Argentina against Britain and the United States.
An Argentine victory in the Falklands would have paved the way for new Chinese military bases in the region. In contrast, an Argentine loss would have spurred generations of anger against the United States and Britain that China could exploit to eventually achieve the same military access.
Chinese military access to Argentina could then be used to complement China’s Great Wall base just across the Strait of Magellan in Antarctica and blockade this vital passage that enables the U.S. Navy to shift aircraft carrier battle groups to fight wars in the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean—illustrated by a pending U.S. carrier visit to Argentina in May.
But Ms. Fernández de Kirchner left China a consolation prize: a 50-year lease for a space tracking and control base in Argentina’s Neuquén Province—all Chinee space tracking bases are run by the People’s Liberation Army Strategic Support Force (PLASSF).
This PLASSF base can today help guide the PLA Rocket Force’s fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) nuclear-armed missiles designed to fly over Antarctica and up South America to attack targets in the United States from undefended southern trajectories.
On March 23, this PLASSF base helped guide China’s Queqiao-2 communications relay satellite, which will assist the country’s unmanned probes to the south pole of the moon and its manned missions to the same before 2030 to advance Chinese control of the moon and of the strategically crucial cis-lunar space between the Earth and the moon.
But just three days later, Argentina’s new defense minister, Luis Alfonso Petri, met with his Danish counterpart, Troels Lund Poulsen, to sign a letter of intent to purchase 24 of Denmark’s F-16 fighters, which it is replacing with fifth-generation Lockheed-Martin F-35A fighters.
For Argentina, this purchase is a huge deal; when delivered around 2028, it will complete a nearly 20-year search to reconstitute the “fast jet” air defense capabilities for the Fuerza Aerea Argentina, or Argentine Air Force.
A second deal with the United States will include the sale of weapons like the AIM-120C AMRAAM medium-range and AIM-9X short-range air-to-air missiles, making Argentina’s F-16s competitive with neighboring Chile, which operates 36 F-16 fighters.
At least in theory, Beijing must now consider that before the end of the decade, Washington could ask Chile and Argentina to commit some of their potential 70 F-16s to counter Chinese aggression, which would most likely involve CCP attempts to assert greater control of Antarctica.
However, Washington must move quickly to build a more active defense relationship that Mr. Milei desires.
On April 3, U.S. Southern Command Commander U.S. Army Gen. Laura Richardson arrived in Buenos Aires and, on April 5, gifted Argentina an ex-U.S. Air Force Lockheed C-130H medium transport aircraft that had previously been under lease.
But that same day, braving the ire of nationalist politicians, Mr. Milei addressed Gen. Richardson in the Argentine port of Ushuaia, close to the Magellan Strait, and stated: “We are very grateful for the visit of General Richardson and for the support that the United States government has decided to provide to Argentina. Let us hope that these first steps are the beginning of a special relationship between both nations, which allow the tree of freedom to extend to all corners of the planet so that no citizen of the world is ever again subjected to the whims of dictators, autocracies, religious fanatics, and communism.”
This happened just a year before local Argentine politicians were working to secure Chinese investments in the Port of Ushuaia.
It is now critical that the United States respond with investments in this port and then build on Mr. Milei’s gesture by seeking to ameliorate the Falklands War as a source for regional resentments that Beijing has used to isolate Washington.
The United States should propose to Britain that it consider the joint construction of a new base in the Falkland Islands to host powerful and very long-range phased array radar (LPAR) for missile and space tracking to warn of Chinese and Russian FOBS attacks that would transit Latin America and the Southern Atlantic Ocean—to attack the United States and Europe.
Such a base could then be jointly manned by technical personnel from Latin states such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and others not in the China–Russia orbit. The next step would be to consider building defenses against the China–Russia FOBS nuclear threat.
This would turn the Falklands into a source of military and economic benefits by preventing China and Russia from attacking some of Argentina’s and Latin America’s main markets.
The lesson of the CCP’s attempt to strategically envelop Argentina, its dual-use military expansion to assert greater control over Antarctica, and its designs to use the Southern Hemisphere for FOBS nuclear warfare and space control is that Washington requires greater defense activism in Latin America.
