• Argentina Milei embraces pragmatism: meeting with Fernandez and reconciliation with the Pope
  • New President Javier Milei, the ultra-liberal who promises to turn Argentina upside down and bring ties with Spain to a minimum

The next few days will be decisive in an operation of high and delicate diplomatic engineering that will affect South America, but that is also very important for the European Union (EU): to ensure that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, and Javier Milei, imminent president of Argentina, are able to sit down to talk.

If the operation is delicate, it is largely the fault of both. If Milei campaigned claiming that Lula was a "socialist" with whom he did not want to associate, because socialism is corrupt and sinks their countries, Lula sent his team specialized in winning elections to Buenos Aires to help the Peronist Sergio Massa. But Massa lost, Lula congratulated Milei without naming him and hours later Milei made a smiling video conference with Jair Bolsonaro.

It is difficult to cross more aggressions in such a short time, both the Foreign Minister of Brazil, Mauro Vieira, and the future Minister of Foreign Affairs, Diana Mondino, are aware of that.

"Milei has already chosen the president he wants to have in Buenos Aires on inauguration day," a high-ranking source at Itamaraty, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, told El Mundo, with bitter irony.

On the night Milei won the Argentine presidency with 55.6 percent of the vote, Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of the former president's sons, uploaded a drawing on social media showing his father, Milei and Donald Trump smiling. Argentina's president-elect has strong affinities with the former U.S. president and the former Brazilian president, and is well aware that Bolsonaro is little short of the devil to Lula.

The tense situation added a new ingredient on Wednesday, when Milei posted a message on the social network X: "Thank you to each of the world leaders who contacted me to congratulate our team and express their good wishes for the future of Argentina."

The message included the mention of several world leaders, including Chile's Gabriel Boric, on the left, Italy's Giorgia Meloni, France's Emanuel Macron, Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and British Foreign Secretary David Cameron. Lula did not appear, despite the fact that on Sunday the Brazilian congratulated the Argentines on the election, nor Pedro Sánchez, who has not yet made contact with Milei.

The Argentine has insisted that he will not have relations with "socialist or communist" countries, a position that must be moderated by his foreign minister, Mondino. The future head of Argentine foreign relations has been talking with her Brazilian counterpart, Mauro Vieira, and with the Brazilian ambassador to Argentina, Julio Glinternick Bitelli, as well as with the Argentine ambassador to Brazil, Daniel Scioli. Between the four of them, they are building a network that allows the two presidents to feel safe to take the step of starting a relationship.

Scioli's case is particularly interesting. Presidential candidate of Peronism in 2015, narrowly defeated by Mauricio Macri, he managed to get Bolsonaro and the current Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, to talk and understand each other on some issues despite having begun their governments with disqualifications and insults. Scioli wants to remain in Brasilia as ambassador, and it would not be surprising if he did: Milei was part of his economic teams in the 2015 campaign.

On Tuesday night, Lula gave a signal of détente at the Rio Branco school of diplomacy at the Itamaraty Palace.

"I don't have to like the president of Chile, Argentina or Venezuela. He doesn't have to be my friend. He has to be president of his country, I have to be president of my country. We have to have a Brazilian state policy and he has to have his. We have to sit down at the table, each defending his or her interests. There can be no supremacy of one over the other, we have to come to an agreement. That's the art of democracy."

We must "try to live together democratically in adversity," Lula added. A coexistence that would be greeted with joy in Brussels, headquarters of the European Union (EU), which is seeking to close the strategic partnership agreement with Mercosur and the last thing it needs is for Brasilia and Buenos Aires not to understand each other. And also important for the rest of the world, because Brazil will preside over the G-20 in 2024, and a fight between the South American giant and its main regional partner would not exactly help.

  • Argentina
  • Brazil
  • Javier Milei
  • Lula da Silva