Argentina, 2025

The Assembly will now hear an address by His Excellency Javier Gerardo Millet, President of Argentina Republic. I request the protocol to exhort His Excellency and invite him to address the Assembly. United Nations Authorities, representatives of member states, all citizens closely following this summit, good morning to you all. Last year, I stood here before you at this very same Assembly and I outlined a new direction that Argentina's foreign policy was going to take. We asserted that it was imperative to return to the ideas of freedom, the immortal principles that underpin the dignity of life, freedom and property. These are rights that all individuals should enjoy under the law. We asserted that there was a need for international cooperation to aim to guarantee those rights. However, I also warned that the UN had cast aside what had been its lodestar in recent decades. The successful model of the United Nations spoke of the need for peace without victory. It was grounded in cooperation between nation states. It was, however, replaced by a supranational model of government comprising international bureaucrats that sought to impose on citizens across the world a specific way of life. The United Nations has moved from an organization that sought to mediate peace between peers to an organization that claims not only to decide what every nation state does, but also what all individuals, wherever they may be in the world, must do. We believe in the original aim and purpose of this organization. We believe that there are global problems which require dialogue and international cooperation if they are to be resolved. However, for that reason and to achieve that goal, we must reject these abuses of authority that often go hand in hand with noble agendas. As we maintained last year, we will never support the amputation of indigenous or commercial freedoms, nor will we support the violation of natural rights of citizens of member states. In the last year and a half, we have voted in accordance with that principle. I am saying this to you well aware that many of you do not share my views, but as I have always said, it is preferable to say an uncomfortable truth than to speak a comforting lie. In that vein, today I want to talk to you about a specific problem facing all modern countries. As things stand, the world is seeming to pit the present against the future and seeing it as a contradiction. This is a political, economic, and philosophical problem, and the response to that problem and that opposition will determine the course of humankind. If we push to the end this idea of comfort versus discomfort, I would say that now the entire world seems stagnating in the comfort of the present, overlooking the consequences that will have for the future. Given that doing what is uncomfortable seems to strip votes and power from those that take it on, leaders prefer to do everything in their power to protect the status quo that they inherited, and they do so disregarding future consequences. They light a fire to heat the present and disregard the future. Modern states have thus entered into a very complex dynamic from which they cannot return. Incentives both for the people and politicians mean that we tend to talk about the distribution of wealth today, overlooking the need to compile wealth for tomorrow. Currently, decision makers are facing the decision, either they preserve the legacy that was entrusted to them, or they destroy it. This legacy can be accumulated wealth, productive capacity, laws, or any other thing that serves the common good. In general, they tend to, if they burn their legacy, if they opt to continue with what's comfortable, they'll have a lot of profit and benefit in the future, but there will be great future costs. What you put aside today, you lose for tomorrow. They seem to be preserving growth and prosperity in the present and casting aside the well-being of future generations. We need to find a balance, meaning that eating bread today doesn't mean we'll go hungry tomorrow and we need to guarantee sustained growth and well-being. That's something economists call economic growth. That growth can sometimes seem slow and sometimes halt briefly because progress is never linear, but it's precisely long-term consistent growth that has systematically revolutionized the world and has wrenched thousands of millions of people from poverty. The difference between zero growth and 2% growth in the long term is the difference between stagnation and prosperity. The Argentinian people know a great deal about this issue because we're the only country in the region that hasn't experienced growth in the last 15 years. In legal terms, growth, the condition for growth, is respecting the sanctity of property and the free market. That means nothing other than ensuring free trade between peers and free cooperation between peers. Without the right to ownership, there can be no savings, and without savings or free trade, there is no investment. If there's no investment, there can be no growth. But it's not in anyone's individual political interest, apparently, to respect these principles because it is precisely when we expand the state that individual freedoms of the citizens are eroded. We simply seek to protect ephemeral present well-being to earn votes, and that's what our politicians do. Accumulated wealth decreases over time with this way of moving forward, and so what we're seeing now is countries are increasing public expenditure, but that doesn't ultimately create wealth. It rather destroys wealth. With that in mind, politics gains power on two fronts. They get democratic legitimacy and they obtain resources that they can spend, so politics has a double incentive to foster that intergenerational betrayal because, despite the fact that people lose in the future if this course is followed, there's short-term gain. A great man may be that who sows trees whose shade he will never enjoy. A great man might be the one who cuts down the trees that others sowed, but this cannot continue. This is the major trap that all nations are succumbing to. When this process is continued, growth stagnates. When growth stagnates, the demand for redistribution of wealth grows ever louder. So populist policies and the calls for them become stronger and stronger. Populist policies appeal to envy and resentment, and the ultimate conclusion of this process is vulnerable young people suffocated under the weight of a state that they know is only there to exploit them. Fiscal expansion, monetary expansion, and the expansion of state power is suffocating individuals, and that's all part of a pattern which we're seeing across all countries, particularly those who claim to make up the free world. But the problem is not only one of economic policies. We also see it when there are violations of equality before the law or when we indiscriminately open the doors to immigration for political reasons. On the contrary to what we don't see there is immigration, we see invasion. International cooperation bodies have this one among its number, and such international organizations are not alien to this problem. As the years have passed, this organization has acquired responsibilities that run counter to its founding spirit. It has created layer upon layer of organizations, agencies, and programs until it achieved this hypertrophy of administrations that are barely effective when it comes to resolving the problems for which they were created. Responsibilities that the UN's taken on have swelled and swelled, and in step with that the contributions made by member states have swelled, and in turn the palpable results that this organization has achieved have greatly reduced. They can't offer the world what they could. There's this cocktail of incentives, and in addition you have in this organization, unlike how it was, international organizations now see a situation whereby no one's really held accountable for their failures to resolve problems. This contradiction between lofty goals and scant results has created the erosion of the prestige of this house. Without going further, the poor results of Agenda 2030 bear witness to what I've outlined above. What continues to be seen in practice is a cycle whereby we recycle structures. There's more and more being spent, and more and more targets being set. For this reason, Argentina decided to step aside from this process, because we saw in Agenda 2030 the improper expenditure of scant resources for purposes that we don't share in order to distract attention from the real global difficulties. The world is on course for stagnation, and that's why we stood apart. I need to raise the alarm here, because in Argentina we've seen the natural consequences of proceeding in this way. You keep doing what's comfortable, but then you end up out of step with the future. In other terms, what I'm saying to you is that we're speaking to you from a future that hasn't arrived to you yet, and you've still got time to avoid this problem, because no society will survive if it sets fire to the future to simply heat the present. In my country, we've learned the hard way a very valuable lesson. For decades, we jeopardized a future in order to distribute the dividends of the present. In 2020-30, we finally got to a point where we'd had 100 years of doing things improperly. We'd been kicking the can down the road, but there was no one left to kick the can too. And then what happened was what I outlined previously. Our state crumbled as a result of this implosion. For the last year and a half, we've taken on the Herculean task of administering and managing extreme scarcity. And for the first time in decades, we're doing what we have to do for a better future. So the only way to usher in that better future is to do exactly the opposite of what we previously did. What we're doing stands in opposition to the rest of politics. That politics asked us to do what everyone was doing for years and what has pulled us into decline. They're asking us to jeopardize our future to meet present demands. They want us to apply the same remedy that we did a thousand times. And that's exactly what brought us here. But I'd like to say clearly that Argentina has a government that decided to undertake the right path, even though it's the thorniest one, because prosperity and progress for our peoples cannot be delayed one day longer. However, we are not the only ones that are taking difficult decisions at this juncture, as history demands that we do. President Trump of the United States also understands that the time has come to reverse a dynamic which is leading the United States towards a disaster. And we know that a disaster in the United States is a global disaster. His unflinching and successful policy in terms of halting illegal immigration makes that conviction more than clear. He knows that he must do what's necessary, even though many may not like it before it's too late. In other countries, for example, it's already too late to take the decisions he has. That's not only what's important. What Donald Trump is also doing is restructuring the terms of international trade in an unprecedented fashion. That's a titanic task which gets to the very core of the global economic system, because that system has been gnawing away at the industrial heart of his country and the country now has a unparalleled debt crisis. Furthermore, he's undertaking a cleaning up of the institutional capture of the American state, because it's being infiltrated by left-wing factions that were seeking to undermine any reform program that was necessary. Both I and Donald Trump know what we're doing in the face of these challenges. All of these challenges have a common denominator that all countries, including supranational organizations, must address. They must find a way of creating dividends for the future and not succumb to the temptation of dealing with the present. This is something that major nations, Western nations, have been aware of and putting into practice for decades. We need to get back to that. We need to go back to our roots. We need to tackle priorities first. And that needs to go hand in hand with the idea that you need to do what's difficult but right and prioritize that over and above what's easy and comfortable. As I previously said, this also stands for international organizations that have gradually been integrating such actions into their ecosystem. I think I speak on behalf of all of you when I say that the UN must lead the charge when it comes to this paradigm shift. They must return to the roots that made it the great organization that it once was in the past. I wish to humbly lay before you as an assembly four principles that we think might serve as we seek to achieve the aforementioned goal. One, the principle of a core mandate. The central mission of the United Nations is to preserve international peace and security. Everything else must be viewed as complementary to or in service of that goal. The strategic management of resources of this institution consequently requires that we stick to our priorities and not take on others. Secondly, the principle of international subsidiarity. The UN must tackle an issue solely when it is patently clear that the problem demonstrably exceeds national capacity for action. In all other cases, it is right and proper to return the initiative to states. They are the ones who have the democratic legitimacy and answer to their peoples. Three, the principle of institutional efficiency. Argentina has undertaken a process whereby it seeks to optimize the state. We've eliminated redundant structures and returned resources to taxpayers. In the same way, we believe that the UN requires a similar journey. That requires conducting reliable audits, closing ineffective programs, the consolidation of agencies into single bodies, and financing tied to real achievement. Four, the principle of normative simplification and streamlining. Peace is not only the absence of conflict. It requires prosperous societies. International cooperation must not transform into an obstacle for economic growth and an obstacle to the creation of opportunities. Consequently, we can only and must only support initiatives that do not stymie states' capacities to lead their own production and productive efforts. Efforts to attract investment and foster trade that are the right way to reduce poverty. These principles will be highly valuable, we believe, in terms of getting our organization back on course so it can stand the test of time and produce tangible results over time. To conclude, I want to raise four sensitive and crucially important issues for the Argentine Republic. Firstly, I wish to reiterate our legitimate claim and irrenunciable claim in terms of sovereignty over the Malvinas, South Georgia, South Sandwich Islands, and the surrounding maritime areas that continue to be illegally occupied. In spite of the fact that 80 years have elapsed since the creation of this organization, colonial situations such as this one remain unresolved. For this reason, we call upon the United Kingdom to resume bilateral negotiations in accordance with Resolution 2065 of this very same General Assembly, together with all relevant subsequent resolutions. Secondly, I wish to once again roundly reject expressions of fundamentalist violence that continue to be seen and that are spreading throughout the world. In Argentina, we already suffered this horror with the attacks against the Israel Embassy and La Hamia in 1992 and 1994, respectively. For this reason, we urge the international community to strengthen legal cooperation to guarantee that Interpol and its signs are respected and those responsible for such atrocities are brought to justice. That will help us to ultimately be able to heal this painful wound that plagues our country's history. Thirdly, we're witnessing an unacceptable escalation in political violence on the left at a global level, violence that in Argentina we know only too well. It is unacceptable to use force where reason fails. For this reason, we emphatically reject any procedures which essentially undermine the basic norms of democratic, peaceful coexistence. Fourthly, the situation of the Argentine citizen, Nahuel Gallo, who was abducted and detained arbitrarily in Venezuela without charge, with no legal assistance or consular assistance. In simple words, this is a forced disappearance. We demand that the Venezuelan government release him immediately, and we appeal to the international community so that this legitimate claim is heeded, this in defence of the most basic principles of international law and human dignity. Finally, we reiterate our demand for the immediate release of the hostages which remain captive in Gaza. Finally, may God bless the free world. May the forces of heaven accompany us. Thank you. Thank you very much on behalf of the Assembly, His Excellency, the President of Argentina Republic.