Chilean defence expert Richard Kouyoumdjian has suggested that Argentina abandon its strategy of pressure on the United Kingdom and offer to buy the Falklands for about US$15 billion, the equivalent of about US$4 million for each islander, in a column published by Chilean outlet El Líbero in which he calls Javier Milei’s government’s policy “ineffective”.
Kouyoumdjian, executive vice-president of the AthenaLab think tank and a councillor in the Santiago municipality of Las Condes, argues that a strategy “based only on communications, legal and economic actions has a low probability of being effective” and looks more like an effort to keep the issue alive ahead of the 2027 presidential campaign. In his view, only military capability sufficient to take the islands or impose a blockade could force change, and Argentina “does not have the required military capacity, nor will it for several more years”.
The analyst describes three strands of Argentine policy: sanctions on companies linked to the islands, which the United States has already objected to; the 2010 decree requiring prior authorisation for ships sailing between the mainland and the archipelago; and rearmament, with the purchase of second-hand F-16 fighters which, he says, could not match the British Typhoons deployed at Mount Pleasant. He also says that so far the strategy’s “only success” has been to “entangle the Chileans”, a reference to Argentine pressure on logistics routed through Punta Arenas.
“If I were president of Argentina, I would go for a safe strategy, perhaps with less epic, that of buying the islands,” he writes. “I am sure that at a good price everyone sells, and problem solved.” According to Kouyoumdjian, Argentina could finance the purchase by granting the United States or China the right to operate from Mount Pleasant. The key, he concludes, is for the islanders to reverse the decision expressed in the 2013 referendum, in which 99.8% voted to remain a British overseas territory. “Win without going into battle. Buy, don’t fight.”
The proposal runs counter to the positions of both sides. Argentina maintains that the dispute is a question of sovereignty to be resolved through bilateral negotiations with the United Kingdom, while London and the Falkland Islands Government defend the islanders’ right to decide their own future. The column is published five days before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea hears Argentina’s request to halt the Sea Lion oil project, and a week before Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies debates the sovereignty defence bill.