Solá’s Qualifying Diplomacy: The Argentine Things – Another Look

Argentina needs the United States far more than the United States needs. Especially to be able to work out with the IMF. The arrival of the new president, Joe Biden, is an opportunity to start from scratch, with good vibrations. No one needs to bend over. You just need to be clear, frank and courteous.

But Argentina’s Foreign Minister Felipe Solá couldn’t cope with something so basic. And yesterday it messed up the first day.

Yesterday, Solá had only one job to do: congratulate Biden. And he did, thanks to an official tweet from the Foreign Office. But he did it badly. Because, in the same tweet, he said that he hopes “that multilateral organizations will be respected and that they will not bet on the disunity of our nations as in the previous stage”.

So. The tweet does not specify who does not respect multilateralism, nor what is the bet on disunity or what is the previous step ”.

It is a sort of inappropriate reproach, a mixture of warning and chicana, but in vague and ambiguous language, very inappropriate for diplomatic precision but very typical of a Minister of Foreign Affairs who does not speak languages ​​but who , apparently, does not speak Spanish either. . It is another pearl of improvisation and fantasy in Chancellor Solá’s necklace, which we are used to.

But, above all, the tweet of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterates a very Argentine custom. Isolated, absorbed in its own pupo, rustic and ignorant of its surroundings, Argentinian populism has a long tradition: when it speaks to the rest of the world, it hardly ever really speaks to the rest of the world. The other nations, the other presidents, are usually just an excuse to speak on the bulletin board, in the internal forum, to demagogue a little, bah.

This explains the raw, tousled and primitive tweet from the Chancellery. We have no choice but to congratulate Biden, the rules call for it and the guy still hasn’t done anything to us and we need him. But don’t let the cabotage anti-imperialists, sentimental liberals, outdated nationalists or the Instituto Patria feel that we have ceded sovereignty to salute Biden. Then the greeting is added a phrase that sounds very macho here. The subordinate US Department of State employees who receive these tweets still have to wonder what Argentina “bet on disunity” is referring to. And maybe someone, with a little more experience, who should say to their coworkers, “Stop, don’t give it importance and don’t waste time. These are Argentinian things ”.