Geopolitics: It's always questionable when a nation that can't keep its lights on goes on a military spending spree. So now Argentina has just launched a new space rocket to "recover" its defense capacity. This won't end well.
Last Friday, Argentina's air force launched a research rocket connected to its space program that its defense minister called "a milestone," according to a report in Mercopress.
What's really going on, though, was spilled by Argentina's defense minister, Agustin Rossi, who called it a "step toward the recovery of scientific-technological capabilities for defense" and hailed it as "of the utmost importance." If it isn't clear, Argentina began the launch on the 20th anniversary that its last missile program was scrapped, following Argentina's Falklands defeat.
But the same week Argentina launched its nifty new rocket, the power grid blew out in Buenos Aires due to its creaky infrastructure and an overbearing government hand in the electrical industry.
Although the crash was blamed on a heat wave (it's summer down there), it represents just the tip of Argentina's iceberg of fiscal problems. Making a priority of its rocket program seems strange indeed.
The Argentinian government is extremely unpopular these days. The electrical blackout, for one, triggered pot-banging protests as thousands of Argentines sweated in the dark.
The socialist-Peronist government has blown out its budget, watched as price inflation rocketed 26% in December from a year earlier, gotten scolded by the IMF for lying about its inflation data and tightened its grip on the media.
It all just underlines how suspect its missile launches are. Argentina — which still hasn't sorted out its $100 billion sovereign default with all its creditors dating back to 2001 — has absolutely no money to be shoveling out on space programs. It's doing it anyway.
The rocket launch is part of a broader ramp-up of military spending, which goes to $6.1 billion in 2014.
Argentina's defense spending has risen 132% since 2003, according to the Swedish defense think tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, while Jane's reports that that latest defense budget represents a 33.4% increase over 2012.
With no malevolent neighbors, the only purpose of this space jaunt can be to raise pressure on Britain over the Falklands and whip up the shirtless ones to cheer it. We all know how well that turned out for them in 1982.
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