Chainsaw Diplomacy

If Elon Musk is using Javier Milei’s Argentina as inspiration for his own mission with the Department of Government Efficiency that bodes extremely poorly for the U.S., writes Alan MacLeod.

By Alan MacLeod
MintPress News

Javier Milei made a special appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) earlier this month.

The Argentinian president gifted Elon Musk a custom chainsaw, which he promised to use to drastically reduce public spending in his new role as the de facto leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Musk and Milei have become close bedfellows of late, the former clearly impressed by the latter’s wholesale slashing of government programs and entire ministries and his anarcho-capitalist politics.

If Musk is indeed using Milei’s Argentina as inspiration for his own mission with DOGE, that bodes extremely poorly for the United States.

Milei’s rule has led to mass impoverishment of the Argentinian people, the enrichment of the country’s elite, and the vast expansion of a burgeoning police state. Many Argentinians are watching with concern, seeing parallels between Milei’s tactics and the Trump-Musk administration’s plans.

Economic Shock Therapy

Milei joined Musk on stage at CPAC, the most influential right-wing gathering of the year. Accusing the Democrats of “treason,” Musk lifted the shiny chainsaw — emblazoned with Milei’s slogan, “¡Viva la Libertad, Carajo!” (“Long live liberty, damn it!) — above his head.

“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy! Chainsaw!” he shouted to an excited crowd.

Milei has made the tool a symbol of his rule and his willingness to make sweeping cuts to government spending and eliminate entire government ministries, in alignment with his libertarian ideology.

Musk has long been a fan, tweeting that “prosperity is ahead for Argentina” following Milei’s election victory in November 2023. A few months later, the two met in person, with Musk declaring, “I recommend investing in Argentina.”

“There is an affinity, in ideological terms, between Milei and Musk,” Jodor Jalit, an Argentine journalist, lecturer and researcher, told MintPress, explaining that:

“They both sponsor a downsizing of the state, but for different reasons. For Milei, it is a crusade to order the macroeconomy. For Musk, it is a power grab move. He is trying to displace any potential rivals within the state. But Milei is trying to downsize the government for economic reasons.”

That Musk — in charge of implementing a massive government cost-cutting project — is so inspired by Milei should concern all Americans. In barely over a year in office, Milei truly has taken a chainsaw to Argentinian society, shuttering 13 ministries and firing 30,000 public employees, equivalent to around 10 percent of the federal workforce.

This includes the Ministries of Transport, Education, Public Works, Culture, Social Development, Science, Technology and Innovation and the Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security. “I am the mole that destroys the state from within,” he declared.

“A number of the policies he implemented pretty much amounted to a shock doctrine,” Jalit noted. 

Upon his assumption of the presidency, he immediately removed rent controls, leading to the cost of housing in Buenos Aires increasing by 135 percent in one year.

Price controls on key goods were also rescinded, leading to food becoming unaffordable to millions of people, who are now forced to scavenge in the streets. Utility rates have exploded: spending on gas for cooking and heating, for example, increased by 715 percent between December 2023 and October 2024.

The outcome has been mass destitution. Poverty has risen to 53 percent of the population, the highest seen in decades.

New pro-business laws currently being considered would increase the workday from eight hours to 12 and allow companies to pay workers not with cash but with tickets that can only be redeemed in certain supermarkets or shops.

Milei and his supporters argue that this shock therapy is a necessary medicine to cure the country of its long-standing economic problems. Nevertheless, the policies have led to deindustrialization and a brain drain, as those with the skills and opportunity to leave the country have often done so.

A recent poll found that 72 percent of Argentinians consider themselves worse off under Milei. And yet, the president has managed to hold on to approval ratings of above 40 percent.

“It is complicated because the ones who voted for him say that the president is making all these crises happen because it is all part of his plan,” Javier Gomez, an Argentinian influencer and political communicator, told MintPress, adding that a common conception among those sympathetic to him is that, “We need to suffer first, in order to pay the debts from previous governments. And so, anything that he does that may be wrong, stupid, or make people poorer, they say that it is fine. That is exactly what we expected.”

Jalit also noted that the past weighs heavily on the populace’s will to endure such an upheaval, stating that:

“Even though his measures and economic policies have had a big [negative] impact on purchasing power, people still support him. What this shows is that Argentinian society was ready for a change, which did not happen under [previous president, Mauricio] Macri.”

While social spending has been cut to the bone, money going to the country’s security forces has been drastically ramped up. The budget for the police, spying agencies and the military — the very groups that will handle any challenges to Milei’s rule — has more than tripled.

He has also proposed selling off Argentina’s existing prisons and allowing the construction of mega-jails housing up to 6,000 people each.

Chaos in Washington

In his role at DOGE, Musk is taking a not-so-dissimilar approach to Milei. Earlier this month, the South African-born billionaire sent a mass email to all federal employees, instructing them to reply with a bullet-pointed summary of around five tasks they had completed at work in the previous week.

“Failure to respond,” Musk announced, “will be taken as a resignation.” Those responses are being fed into an artificial intelligence system “to determine whether those jobs are necessary,” according to those familiar with the operation.

Musk’s rationale is that thousands of federal employees are dead or do not exist but are still receiving a paycheck and that a great number of others are doing socially useless work and are there merely as DEI hires, pushing a woke agenda.

In January, the new government halted payments to USAID on the grounds that it constitutes a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America,” in Musk’s own words. In the process, they exposed a Washington-funded network of over 6,000 journalists around the world who were being paid to promote pro-U.S. propaganda, as an earlier MintPress News study found.

Musk’s email telling thousands of people that they were all being reassessed for their jobs and that AI would decide whether they would keep it caused widespread panic and a rebellion from other branches of the government.

The heads of the Justice Department, the F.B.I., the State Department, the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all instructed their employees not to respond.

President Donald Trump, however, squashed the rebellion even as it was starting. “I thought it was great,” he said of the email, echoing Musk’s reasoning.

“We have people that don’t show up to work, and nobody even knows if they work for the government, so by asking the question ‘tell us what you did this week,’ what he’s doing is saying are you actually working. And then, if you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired, or you’re fired,” he said, adding that “a lot of people are not answering because they don’t even exist.”

Later, on live television and in front of his entire cabinet, Trump doubled down, stating that if anyone was unhappy with Musk’s leadership, they would be “thrown out” of government. Musk sent a second email to federal workers, telling them they had “another chance” to justify their jobs to him.

Crypto Grifters

In line with their anarcho-capitalist ideologies, Milei and Musk are strong supporters of cryptocurrency. This obsession with digital money has left both in hot water.

On Valentine’s Day, Milei promoted the newly established $LIBRA coin, claiming that it was a new tool to stimulate economic growth across Argentina through investment in small businesses and startups.

As a result, $LIBRA’s value skyrocketed from less than one-thousandth of a penny to $5.20 each. The endorsement from the president of Argentina made $LIBRA’s founders tens of millions of dollars, as some 50,000 people flocked to invest in the project.

Just hours later, however, Milei mysteriously deleted all his posts promoting $LIBRA, and the coin’s price cratered, almost instantaneously destroying more than a quarter-billion dollars of investor wealth.

The fiasco, however, did make a small number of people extraordinarily wealthy. The nine founding accounts of $LIBRA earned more than $87 million by cashing out their coins while the price was high. The project bears all the hallmarks of a classic “rug pull” — a scam where insiders jack a crypto-currency’s price up and quietly sell their assets, leaving the project to tank and investors holding worthless digital tokens.

Amid widespread allegations of fraud, an Argentinian judge has been tasked with leading an investigation into Milei’s actions.

Musk, too, has relentlessly promoted cryptocurrency, encouraging his millions of followers to invest, particularly in Dogecoin, which he once called “the future currency of the Earth.”

Detractors claim that these appeals to invest amount to market manipulation. Musk faced a lawsuit claiming that his actions amounted to rigging the price of Dogecoin. However, as cryptocurrencies are not regulated in the same way as stocks, the suit eventually fell apart.

It is no coincidence, however, that Musk himself chose the acronym “DOGE” for his newly created department.

Cry for Me, Argentina

Internationally, Milei’s policy turnabout has been no less drastic, radically altering the country’s trajectory. Argentina had not only applied but had also received a formal invitation to join the BRICS economic bloc, which was viewed as something of a golden ticket across much of the Global South.

Yet Milei publicly rejected the offer, claiming that he would never do business with “communist” countries, such as China or Brazil, and pledged to cut economic ties with the pair. “Our geopolitical alignment is with the United States and Israel. We are not going to ally with communists,” he insisted.

The commitment to serving Washington’s interests has been a rare constant theme of Milei’s presidency. He has regularly invited top American military commanders to the country, pledged to purchase U.S. military hardware, and begun the construction of an American naval base in the far south of the country.

This base will allow Washington to surveil and control the Antarctic region and shipping traffic passing by Cape Horn, South America’s southernmost point.

The United States will also have a major role in Argentina’s burgeoning security apparatus. Milei invited then C.I.A. director William Burns to Buenos Aires and signed an agreement that would see the C.I.A. train Argentinian intelligence and security services.

Unlike most Latin American nations, Argentina has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine. Milei met with President Volodymyr Zelensky and has provided Ukraine with both humanitarian and military assistance.

In recent weeks, though, this support has shifted. As soon as the United States under Trump began to flip its position on Ukraine, Milei and Argentina followed suit, abstaining from supporting Ukraine at United Nations General Assembly votes.

Under his leadership, Argentina has often found itself in the extreme minority at the U.N. In October, he instructed Foreign Minister Diana Mondino to vote alongside the U.S. and Israel and refuse to condemn Washington’s blockade on Cuba and fired her when she refused to do so.

The resolution passed 187-2. Two weeks later, Argentina was the only country in the world to vote against a bill opposing violence against women and girls.

Milei has positioned himself as part of a global movement of right-wing populists that include Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and Marine Le Pen of France.

Also included in that list is the State of Israel. During his political campaigning, he made sure to very visibly wave the Israeli flag. Once in office, he swiftly designated Hamas as a terrorist group, the first and only Latin American nation to do so.

In February 2024, at the height of the Israeli attack on Gaza, he traveled to Jerusalem to meet with Israeli officials and to publicly weep at the Western Wall. There, he vowed to move Argentina’s Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thereby endorsing Israel’s land grab, considered illegal under international law.

Last week, Milei also declared two days of national mourning over the deaths of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, two children Israel claims (with little evidence) were killed by Hamas. His decision earned him accolades from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who described him as a “dear friend.”

“Your exemplary decision to declare two days of national mourning for Kfir and Ariel Bibas — two innocent children brutally murdered by the terrorist monsters of Hamas — should serve as an inspiration to all leaders of the civilized world. Thank you for your unwavering integrity and outstanding leadership. I look forward to welcoming you to Israel soon,” Netanyahu wrote.

Therefore, if Milei and his actions in Argentina truly are a model for Musk, Americans should be deeply concerned. His maladroit slashing of his country’s government and social services has sparked chaos, poverty, and uncertainty in Argentina.

His policies, however, have greatly enriched those at the top of society. Musk’s erratic and sweeping cuts bear a striking resemblance to Milei’s. Argentinians are watching Musk’s moves with a sense of déjà vu: they have seen this one play out before.