{"id":606204,"date":"2026-09-05T00:48:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T00:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/606204\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T00:48:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T00:48:12","slug":"trumps-retribution-could-now-include-falklands-as-favor-to-milei-and-revenge-on-the-uk-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/606204\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s \u2018retribution\u2019 could now include Falklands as favor to Milei \u2013 and revenge on the UK | Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump<\/a> has long embraced vengeance. \u201cI am your retribution,\u201d he declared<\/a> to an admiring audience at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) as he commenced his march back to the White House.<\/p>\n

It is unlikely Argentina<\/a>, and far-flung holdovers of the former British empire, were on the US president\u2019s mind at the time.<\/p>\n

But the tide of international events in the past three and a half years have turned Trump\u2019s vindictive mindset to the advantage of Javier Milei, the boisterous rightwing Argentinian president.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s notorious fixation with payback was almost entirely the trigger for Milei\u2019s televised address to his fellow Argentinians on Thursday, as he stated his intention to reopen his country\u2019s claim to a set of windswept islands in the south Atlantic \u2013 known to Britain as the Falklands, and to Argentina as the Malvinas.<\/p>\n

The centuries-old dispute over the islands\u2019 sovereignty has lain dormant since 1982, when the two countries fought a brief, but bloody, conflict that began after Argentina\u2019s ruling military dictatorship invaded the territory.<\/p>\n

Britain reclaimed them after troops in a naval taskforce dispatched by the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher \u2013 ironically lionized by Milei as a political exemplar and inspiration \u2013 stormed the territory and eventually forced Argentina\u2019s surrender.<\/p>\n

An uneasy peace has reined in the generation since, although Argentina, which returned to democracy the year after the conflict, has never renounced its claim to the isles \u2013 despite the adamant insistence of their less than 2,000 inhabitants that they remain British.<\/p>\n

This week, however, Trump suggested he is reconsidering US support for Britain\u2019s sovereignty over the Falkland Islands<\/a>. Why would the president go out on a limb to threaten this fragile peace? And why now?<\/p>\n

Milei jumped on Trump\u2019s comment<\/a> that he was \u201creviewing\u201d the US\u2019s longstanding neutral stance on the territory\u2019s sovereignty, which amounts to a de facto recognition of Britain\u2019s control.<\/p>\n

Fueling Trump\u2019s animus is grievance that Britain, under former prime minister Keir Starmer, declined to support the US president\u2019s decision to go to war on Iran, another irony given that country\u2019s deep-rooted suspicions of Britain<\/a> and its imperial past.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s obsession that allies declined to help him in a war he never consulted them on runs deep and wide \u2013 from Westminster to Seoul \u2013 and has the potential to upend US relationships around the globe, if unchecked.<\/p>\n

And Milei\u2019s attempt to capitalize on Trump\u2019s vengeance underlines the potential for ripple effects of this war to reach waters far beyond the Gulf.<\/p>\n

In what has become a repetitive refrain, Trump laid bare his sense of wounded affront in an interview with a rightwing British cable channel on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour country was not there to help me,\u201d he told GB News. \u201cWe didn\u2019t need help, but I did ask Nato, and I asked your former leader, \u2018Why don\u2019t you send a couple of ships?\u2019 He said, \u2018We don\u2019t have any.\u2019 It was pretty sad, the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Milei\u2019s opportunism could also be used by Trump as a bargaining chip \u2013 to lever more money from the cash-strapped UK treasury for defense spending and Nato contributions, after the new British chancellor of the exchequer, John Healey, recently suggested that it might not reach increased spending targets.<\/p>\n

It is a sorry pass for the \u201cspecial relationship\u201d, fostered through alliances in two worlds wars and deepened during the cold war and subsequent conflicts. Yet Britain is hardly alone in feeling the heat of a wrathful Trump.<\/p>\n

Vengeance has been targeted in recent months at numerous other allies, now regarded with more hostility by the White House than traditional adversaries such as Russia and China.<\/p>\n

Annual joint military exercises with South Korea \u2013 a vital ally of Washington since the Korean war broke out in 1950 \u2013 were suddenly scaled down and cut short by six days last month, on Trump\u2019s orders, because of his irritation that the Seoul government declined to join the fight against Iran.<\/p>\n

He has repeatedly threatened to bomb<\/a> or \u201cblow up\u201d the tiny Gulf kingdom of Oman, which has had friendly ties with the US for 200 years, if it impedes his efforts to reopen the strait of Hormuz, which Iran has closed to most commercial shipping.<\/p>\n

The White House also announced the withdrawal of 5,000 US troops from Germany<\/a> after the country\u2019s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, rebuffed pressure to get involved in the Iran conflict and said Trump had been \u201chumiliated\u201d in the conflict.<\/p>\n

Threats of retribution have also been aimed at Spain, which has resisted pressure to boost defense spending, and Italy, whose prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, was a former Trump ally.<\/p>\n

Turbulence under Trump<\/p>\n

But Milei, a self-styled \u201canarcho-capitalist\u201d who has paraded with a chainsaw to signify his attitude to public spending and attended Trump\u2019s 2025 inauguration, remains on the US president\u2019s good side.<\/p>\n

Last year, the administration extended his troubled government a $20bn loan guarantee to stabilize the infamously shaky Argentinian economy \u2013 but premised the money on Milei\u2019s party defeating the leftist opposition in forthcoming congressional elections, which it duly did.<\/p>\n

This time there are no guarantees, other than that of never-ending turbulence at the hands of Trump. Such rough currents may be the \u201cwinds of change\u201d Milei referenced in Thursday\u2019s speech, delivered \u2013 Trump-style \u2013 with his cabinet members flanking him.<\/p>\n

But he may have been aware the phrase had other, historical connotations \u2013 evoking the words of a famous speech<\/a> in 1960 by then British prime minister Harold Macmillan in Cape Town, heralding independence for Britain\u2019s former colonial possession in Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe wind of change is blowing through this continent,\u201d Macmillan said then. \u201cWhether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his address, Milei suggested the sun was setting on Britain, just as it once did on its empire, citing multiple crises of a migratory, demographic and economic nature that are unlikely to be resolved. \u201cIt is clear that they are on a path of decline,\u201d he pronounced.<\/p>\n

He did not mention his own falling political popularity \u2013 a factor which may also have played a key role in the former military junta\u2019s decision to seize the islands in 1982, as opposition grew against the backdrop of mass disappearances of political dissidents and multiple human rights abuses.<\/p>\n

Then, too, Britain was grappling with tensions over immigration and race riots, soaring unemployment and long-term economic decline that Thatcher had been elected pledging to reverse. In the late winter of 1982, there was little sign that she was capable of doing so \u2013 until the Falklands conflict sparked a sudden upturn in her political fortunes.<\/p>\n

But she had the solid backing of the special relationship, and her ideological soulmate, Ronald Reagan, in the White House. Andy Burnham, Britain\u2019s newly installed Labour prime minister, must contend with the chill wind emanating from the menacing and destabilizing presence of Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has long embraced vengeance. \u201cI am your retribution,\u201d he declared to an admiring audience at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-606204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}