MercoPress · September 30, 2026

Opinion column in *The Spectator* compares Milei's claim regarding the Malvinas Islands with Galtieri's

The British weekly *The Spectator* published an opinion column by law professor Andrew Tettenborn that compares the Javier Milei administration’s offensive regarding the Malvinas Islands to that of Leopoldo Galtieri’s dictatorship in 1982, although he clarifies that legal rather than military means are now being used. The author describes the arbitration that Argentina announced on Monday regarding the Sea Lion oil project as “lawfare” and argues that Milei’s true objective is to reopen the debate on the archipelago’s sovereignty, taking advantage of what he considers British political weakness.

The column points out that Argentina’s claim is, at its core, a territorial sovereignty dispute—something that courts of the law of the sea have historically avoided resolving, as was the case with the Chagos Islands in 2015. The article also contains inaccuracies: it misidentifies the origin of an environmental lawsuit against the project and suggests, without confirmation, that there are criminal charges against executives of the Rockhopper company. Tettenborn recommends that the British government reject the claim and stand its ground, arguing that international courts have lost their impartiality.

Via MercoPress