Weekend Box #109: Milei Gets Matey with NATO, Red Alert & more
Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business and cultural news from around the world.
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MILEI GETS MATEY WITH NATO
Argentina, under President Javier Milei's leadership, has submitted a formal application to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) as a ‘global partner’, marking a significant shift in the country's geopolitical stance.
Defence Minister Luis Petri announced the move, presenting a letter of intent to NATO officials during a meeting in Brussels last week. "We will continue to work on recovering links that will allow us to modernise and train our forces to NATO standards," Petri stated on social media.
NATO currently has nine ‘global partners’, including like-minded countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea. Colombia is the only Latin American nation among the partners, achieving this status in 2018. The partnerships involve collaborative efforts with NATO tackling issues such as terrorism, cyber threats, and maritime security.
NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana acknowledged Argentina's regional importance and expressed openness to the country's request, though emphasising that all 32 NATO members will need agree to formalise the partnership.
Argentina's pursuit of NATO partnership reflects Milei's new foreign policy direction. The president, known for his ‘anarcho-capitalist’ beliefs, has pivoted away from joining the BRICS nations and prioritised closer ties with the West, particularly the United States, and Israel since taking office in December 2023.
For the UK, however, this is unlikely to mean a change in Argentina’s stance on the Falkland Islands. Milei has repeatedly said he wants to protect his country's sovereignty claim on the Malvinas. In a meeting with Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron in January, they agreed to disagree over the disputed islands, and do so politely.
NATO recently marked its 75th anniversary amid challenges from an assertive Russia and criticism for not sufficiently supporting Ukraine's aspirations to join. Milei has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine and its leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, urging the "Western, democratic, and free world" to back the war-torn nation.
SHORT & SWEET
Every cloud has a silver lining: that’s one way to look at the plummet in value experienced by America’s tech giants over the last week. Not a silver lining for them, that is, but for short sellers who have made over $10 billion from their falling shares.
For those who need a crash course, short selling is an investment strategy based on predictions that share prices in a company will fall. An investor will: 1) borrow shares in the company to sell on the stock market at the current market price. If the shares fall as predicted, the investor will: 2) buy them back and return them to the stockbroker or investment bank, aiming to profit from the difference between the share prices at stage 1) and stage 2).
Short sellers who predicted a fall in the so-called ‘Magnificent 7’ – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla – profited handsomely from a staggering $1.1tn drop in the combined value of the companies last week.
AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould has suggested explanations for the drop in value of individual companies, such as Apple’s weak iPhone sales data and Tesla’s poor deliveries, while also arguing that the markets’ view on interest rates and regulatory pushback to the tech sector at large may account for the combined fall.
The most marked drops amongst the ‘7’ were experienced by chip maker Nvidia and electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, both losing around 14% of their value – Nvidia’s worst weekly fall in over 19 months – to give short sellers a profit of around $3bn. Tesla’s misfortunes have continued into this week, as the company reported a 55% decline in profits and a 9% decline in revenues, the largest it’s reported since 2012.
Ouch. At least those short sellers will be happy, we suppose…
RED ALERT
Last year, Iain Duncan-Smith MP warned that Britain had been “deeply penetrated” by Chinese spies. This week showed the UK is not alone in being a target of Chinese espionage as a top adviser to Maximilian Krah, a senior member of the German right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, was arrested under suspicion of spying for China.
The advisor, Jian Guo, has been accused of spying on Chinese dissidents in Germany for several years while masquerading as a dissident himself. It is further alleged he shared sensitive information about the work of the European Parliament with Chinese intelligence.
Guo, a dual German-Chinese citizen, had also offered his services to the German intelligence authorities around a decade ago but was turned down amid suspicions he planned to operate as a double agent.
The case has done more than stir concerns about Chinese spying; it has posed a serious challenge to the credibility of AfD, which has pushed its way up to second in Germany’s polls. Krah has so far been unmoved by calls to step aside as the AfD’s lead candidate for the European Elections in June, though he is likely to have a lower profile during the campaign.
Meanwhile, three German nationals were arrested on suspicion of handing over technology with military applications. The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence warned it was “just the tip of the iceberg” of spy rings operating in Germany.
Duncan-Smith’s point was proven in the UK this week, too. Two men, one of whom was a Parliamentary researcher, were charged with spying for China after allegedly supplying information which could be “useful to an enemy.”
Governments and businesses have been warned by intelligence agencies not to be naïve about the threat of Chinese spies. The events of this week will surely result in tighter security measures.
SNACK TIME’S OVER
The last year has seen a significant rise in the number of ‘anti-tourism’ measures enacted in European cities, and this week Milan became the latest to clamp down on noisy holidaymakers.
A proposal, put forward by the mayor’s office, would ban the sale of takeaway food including pizza and ice cream after midnight between May and November. Bars and restaurants would also have to close outdoor areas late at night, in an attempt to allow locals a peaceful night’s sleep.
Passionate about food at the best of times, this suggestion has been met with outrage by indignant Italians and business owners, for whom a late-night gelato is both a custom and a significant money-spinner. In 2013 a similar bill was met with a hundred-strong ‘Occupy Gelato’ sit-in and such a severe backlash that the then-mayor had to apologise and backpedal. In a statement, he reassured the masses, “If there was a mistake on our part, it’s already been corrected… Milanesi and non-Milanesi can eat ice cream day and night anywhere they like."
Other European cities have taken similar measures against overtourism. These range from Venice’s new fee to enter the city, to time-limited visits at the Acropolis, to a ban on cruise ships in Amsterdam, to a ban on luggage in Dubrovnik, to a crackdown on short-term rentals in cities across the continent.
After the quiet COVID years, tourist numbers have skyrocketed in recent months and are expected to exceed pre-pandemic levels this summer, with 800 million low-cost airline seats predicted to be sold in 2024. While these tourists undoubtedly bring problems which these kinds of measures may combat, the balance between safeguarding city landmarks (and their residents’ peace), and the revenues and jobs that tourists provide, is a delicate one.
BIG WINS AT BIENNALE
This year’s 60th Venice Biennale was titled “Foreigners Everywhere” and aimed to give a platform for ‘outsider’ voices, including members of the LGBTQIA+, displaced, and indigenous communities. Many of the works on display focussed on representation of migration and proliferation, as well as the use of ancient and ancestral artistic techniques.
Stand-out pieces included the ‘Refugee Astronaut’ by Yinka Shonibare, a “nomadic” astronaut created with beautiful African fabrics and representing the difficulties of displacement; ‘kith and kin’ by Archie Moore, an expansive and colossal genealogical chart of some 65,000 years; and artist Glicéria Tupinambá’s solo installation at the Brazil pavilion.
The Golden Lion for best international participation, one of the top prizes, was awarded to the Māori artist collective Mataaho Collective for its work ‘Takapau’, described by the judging panel as “a luminous woven structure of straps that poetically crisscross the gallery space… hark[ing] back to ancestral techniques.”
Mataaho Collective’s win marks a shift in the art world towards true recognition of communities outside the mainstream, and is particularly noteworthy given the criticism some levelled at this year’s Biennale that its theme was tokenistic.
However, the Biennale was also marked by protests and geopolitical tensions this year, demonstrating that when art seeks to make a political stand on one point, it naturally opens itself to political statements being made across the board. No matter how far organisers would attempt to keep simmering tensions at bay, ultimately many of the artists and national pavilions chose to address the fact that art can never exist in a vacuum, and must respond to world events, whether they be social, political, or cultural – even when that doesn’t fit the agenda.
And that’s it for this week. I hope you found something of interest that you might want to delve into further. If so, please get in touch at cwilkins@audleyadvisors.com.
For now, that’s The Weekend Box officially closed.