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Since the announcement at the beginning of 2024 of the purchase of 24 F16 fighter jets from Denmark, it has been striking that there has been almost no criticism of the decision to prioritise defence spending over addressing Argentina’s urgent social needs.
According to Chequeado, the purchase of the jets from Denmark represents a cost of about 301.2 million dollars, plus 44,694 million for infrastructure works between 2024 and 2027. The United States Embassy in Buenos Aires also stated on its Facebook page that the total package amounts to 560 million dollars.
The purchase of the jets from Denmark, which are manufactured in the United States, had been authorised by the Donald Trump administration and will allow the Nordic country to renew its fleet with more modern aircraft. For Argentina, the cost includes the 24 jets, pilot training, maintenance, and support.
The government’s argument for going against President Javier Milei’s early claim that “there is no money” is the need for air defence equipment with deterrent capacity, meaning that Argentina should be prepared for a highly unlikely military threat in what is a peaceful and democratic region such as the Southern Cone.
News coverage of the recent arrival of the first jets from Denmark showed an incomprehensible level of enthusiasm. The few criticisms that did appear focused superficially on why the government did not choose cheaper, newly manufactured planes from the Chinese dictatorship, or on arguments that the F16s would not be useful in a potential armed conflict over the Malvinas Islands, which in that case would imply support for a non-peaceful solution to the dispute with the United Kingdom.
Unlike Denmark, a developed and transparent democracy that guarantees equal opportunities and social inclusion, Argentina continues to witness cases of children dying from hunger or dehydration, suffering from preventable diseases, and living in areas without access to healthcare, education, drinking water, electricity, or gas.
Against the backdrop of alarming multidimensional poverty in the country’s interior, a situation rarely discussed and scarcely addressed by public policies aimed at guaranteeing economic and social rights for the most vulnerable, the frivolous coverage of the F16s’ arrival and the social insensitivity of much of public opinion are both striking.
Liberal economic logic argues that needs are unlimited and resources are scarce. This is true. Yet the way a government chooses its spending priorities, whether to alleviate the suffering of the country’s most disadvantaged people or to satisfy the preferences of an elite detached from social reality, says a great deal about the human quality of the political leadership making those decisions.
On International Human Rights Day, it is important to stress that guaranteeing economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights should be the highest public policy priority in a democracy like Argentina, where levels of extreme poverty and deprivation remain high.
As Raúl Alfonsín said during the 1983 electoral campaign, in defending the idea that human rights are indivisible and interdependent: democracy, understood as the guarantee of civil and political freedoms, is what allows people to eat, receive medical care, and access education. But this requires capable, honest, modest, and compassionate political leadership that alternates in power, a critical press, an active civil society, and compassionate citizens.
