A Game of Patriots and Opportunists

“In politics, only those who place the sail where the wind blows ever succeed, never those who try to make the wind blow where they place the sail.” Antonio Machado’s maritime metaphor describes an intelligent navigator who reads the wind instead of vainly ordering it to change direction.

Javier Milei, tired of waiting for the wind to propel his economic sailboat, stuck in frustratingly stagnant waters, has made a tactical move after correctly reading the Malvinas breeze. Despite pleas and advice, he has decided not to lift a finger to revive the weak real economy, the article argues, because any such attempt would necessarily involve a Keynesian turn. Instead, he has reached for an old device from the political trunk.

For Leopoldo Galtieri and Margaret Thatcher, Malvinas represented less a genuine patriotic longing than a practical domestic opportunity, the article says. Other Argentine leaders used the issue with less drama and tragedy but for the same purposes. Milei, it argues, has joined this old tradition of opportunists at sea.

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In politics, only those who place the sail where the wind blows ever succeed, never those who try to make the wind blow where they place the sail.

A social-media user from Milei’s inner circle celebrated the move with the line, “Milei has just won the 2027 presidential election.” The article calls that an expression of hope and a hypothesis, not real news. Still, it presents the president’s abrupt shift and measures that few could openly oppose as a calculated show of force. The move seeks to create a new agenda around a noble cause, unsettle opponents and produce unanimity. It is, in the article’s formulation, an astute maneuver by a president under pressure.

The article also points to what it calls contradictions with nearly three years of libertarian government, including actions it says often ran against Argentine interests in Malvinas. It argues that national unity conflicts with the “irreducible and savage divisionism” practiced by libertarians. Nationalism also demands two things that an uncompromising libertarian finds difficult to accept: a strong state rather than a dismantled one, and greater public spending. A “sacred cause” does not come free, the article says, particularly when state salaries have been cut for police, doctors, nurses, soldiers and gendarmes, all presented as essential to surveillance and sovereignty.

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Milei has just won the 2027 presidential election.