Sovereignty and Strategy: Milei's Announcement Revealing the Commitment to an "Integrated" Naval Base with the U.S.

The Argentine president toughens sanctions on oil companies over the Sea Lion project in a speech that, behind the scenes, consolidates a long-standing desire of Washington: a strategic base in the South Atlantic.

On the night of September 3, President Javier Milei led a message on national television of about 15 minutes, surrounded by his entire cabinet, the head of the Chamber of Deputies, Martín Menem, and the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich. In this context, he announced three simultaneous measures: a decree to accelerate sanctions against oil companies operating in the Malvinas Islands without Argentine authorization, a Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU) to expand the funds of the Ministry of Defense destined to build an "integrated naval base" in Tierra del Fuego, and the sending to Congress of a draft "Law for the Defense of National Sovereignty" that creates a National Security Council.

President Javier Milei led the announcement accompanied by his entire cabinet.

The announcement combined, in the same discursive package, a legal tool that has existed for more than a decade with an infrastructure and financing decision that does represent a concrete novelty. That combination is what ran through the political reactions of the next day: while the ruling party presented it as an unprecedented hardening against the United Kingdom, a good part of the opposition and specialists in the Malvinas issue pointed out that the sanctions invoked were already in force, and that the real turning point is the Integrated Naval Base of Ushuaia and its link with the United States.

In his message, Milei maintained that the United Kingdom is in a position to extract oil from the subsoil of the Argentine Sea and affirmed that his government will not allow it. He also questioned the right of self-determination of the islanders and reaffirmed Argentina's historical claim to the archipelago.

The president announced that that same night he would sign a decree to "provide greater speed" to the sanctioning procedures imposed by Law 26,659 against those who participate in oil extraction initiatives in territory under British occupation. He specified that the focus is on the Sea Lion project, located in front of the Falklands and operated by the Israeli Navitas Petroleum and the British Rockhopper Exploration, which according to the Government plan to start offshore exploitation in the coming months on certified reserves of more than 1,300 million barrels.

According to the President himself, the Argentine Foreign Ministry had already sent about 180 notes of discouragement to companies and more than 29 countries linked to projects on the islands. The new sanctions aim to disqualify companies from operating in the Argentine mainland – and also their shareholders, directors, suppliers and financial advisors – that participate directly or indirectly in the unauthorized exploitation, and to expose them to lawsuits in absentia.

The three measures announced

The fact that was most repeated by the technical and political questions to the announcement is that Law 26,659 is not a new law. It was unanimously sanctioned in 2011, promoted in the legislative debate by the filmmaker and then legislator Fernando "Pino" Solanas, and already contemplates disqualifications of up to 20 years and prison sentences of up to 15 years for those who explore or exploit hydrocarbons without Argentine authorization on the continental shelf, including the Malvinas. The law reaches not only extractive companies, but also shareholders, logistics service providers and technical or financial advisors.

The Argentine State itself had already applied that law in 2022, when it disqualified Navitas Petroleum for 20 years from operating in the country. Specialists and opposition leaders – including former Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana – remarked that exploration and exploitation activities in the Malvinas already had sanctions provided for in laws 26,659 and 26,915, and that the novelty of Milei's announcement consists of speeding up administrative procedures and expanding the universe of subjects reached, not in creating a non-existent tool.

The questioning of the timing also appeared strongly. The Buenos Aires Minister of Government, Carlos "Carli" Bianco, pointed out that 267 days have passed since Navitas and Rockhopper communicated, on December 10, 2025, their final decision to invest in Sea Lion, without the national government taking effective measures despite already having Law 26,659 as an available tool.

🏗️ The Naval Base as a Strategic "Cover-up"

However, the harshness of the discourse against the oil companies seems to be the smokescreen for a maneuver of greater significance: the consolidation of a U.S. military enclave in southern Argentina.

The announcement of the base comes just months after President Milei received the then head of the U.S. Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, in Ushuaia. That meeting, which Fuegian Governor Gustavo Melella refused to attend, had already sown suspicion about the true destination of the work. On that occasion, Milei defined the base as a "development port closer to Antarctica" to provide logistical support to cruise ships and scientific ships, but subsequent movements indicate a military purpose.

"Integration" with the U.S.

The adjective "integrated" in the name of the base is no coincidence. Opposition sources and legislators warn that Milei's government is negotiating the active participation of the United States in the infrastructure, something that the president himself denied, although his actions indicate otherwise.

• Physical Presence: Richardson's visit in 2024 was the first public step. U.S. civilian and military delegations traveled to Tierra del Fuego.
• Geopolitical Discourse: Milei linked the construction of the base with his new foreign policy doctrine, aligned with the West and with President Donald Trump, who hinted that he will reevaluate the U.S. position on the Malvinas.
• Warnings from the Opposition: Former Defense Minister Agustín Rossi recalled that Milei has already offered the U.S. to participate in the work on two occasions, while Deputy Aldo Leiva warned that "Malvinas cannot be a bargaining chip between Donald Trump and the United Kingdom." Mercosur parliamentarian Alejandro Deanes was more blunt: "Tierra del Fuego cannot be a bargaining chip."

The image of the sharp drop in the shares of the oil companies (Navitas and Rockhopper) contrasts with the discreet but accelerated planning of a base that, for critics, represents an unprecedented cession of sovereignty, hidden under nationalist rhetoric.

The Ushuaia Naval Base, in the southernmost tip of Tierra del Fuego, is the project that the government seeks to accelerate.

Unlike the sanctions, the Integrated Naval Base does represent an element with concrete and recent development. The project was not born with the current management: its antecedents date back to a study financed in 2011 with support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and an initiative presented in the Chamber of Deputies in 2016, which defined Ushuaia as a logistics platform for maritime control of the South Atlantic and support for Antarctic operations.

Effective construction began in 2022, during the administration of Alberto Fernández, with Jorge Taiana at the head of the Ministry of Defense; that year, budget funds were allocated for the dock and equipment, and the foundation stone was laid. With Milei's inauguration at the end of 2023, the budget adjustment ordered by the new government paralyzed a large part of these works.

In 2024, however, Milei traveled to Ushuaia with the then head of the U.S. Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, and presented the base as part of bilateral strategic cooperation, although at that time there were no concrete definitions on U.S. financing. In 2025 it was the turn of Richardson's successor at the head of that force, Admiral Alvin Holsey, who also visited the Ushuaia facilities. During 2026, the government sought to advance a technical and financial agreement with Washington, without there being, until the September 3 announcement, a formally closed financing.

Antarctica, interoceanic routes and the Chinese chessboard

The geographical relevance of Ushuaia – some 1,000 kilometers from the Antarctic Peninsula and on the Drake Passage and the Strait of Magellan – explains why the project arouses interest beyond the dispute over the Malvinas. For Washington, Argentina's extreme south has strategic value due to its projection towards Antarctica, interoceanic maritime routes and as a possible counterweight to the Chinese presence in the region, in particular to the space station installed in Neuquén, which U.S. defense agencies have been monitoring for years.

In this context, the government's decision to rule out the development of port infrastructure in Río Grande with the eventual participation of Chinese capital is also inscribed, a possibility that had generated concern in the United States due to the location of Tierra del Fuego in front of the South Atlantic and its projection towards the white continent. Milei's foreign policy maintained, from the beginning of his administration, a priority alignment with Washington and the rejection of Chinese presence in infrastructure considered sensitive.

Platforms such as the Sea Lion project are the focus of the new sanctions announced by the government.

The presidential announcement itself acknowledged that the DNU seeks to "expand" Defense resources "with the priority purpose" of building the base and increasing the country's telecommunications capabilities, and that the facility will turn Tierra del Fuego into the "most important logistics hub in the South Atlantic." Some media that covered the announcement directly linked the work to U.S. financing, while others remarked that it is an expansion of national funds without there being, so far, a formalized international agreement.

The Ministry of Defense had previously informed Congress that there is no agreement with the United States to build a joint base, that Washington did not provide materials or funds and that there are no plans to cede land or buildings; according to that official response, the project is of "execution and exclusive control of the Argentine State." In the same vein, Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno assured in radio statements that the future facility "will be a completely Argentine base," although he acknowledged that the country today has fiscal space to face the investment without altering the balance of public accounts.

Faced with these official definitions, sectors of the opposition maintain a different reading: they accuse Milei of having offered to share the future base of Ushuaia with the administration of Donald Trump, within the framework of what they consider a broader strategic alignment with the United States and Israel, the two countries that the President himself identifies as his main foreign policy allies. The presidential spokesman himself, Manuel Adorni, had defined the project at the time as a joint initiative framed in the integration of Argentina into the "Western and developed world," although he clarified on that same occasion that there were no concrete definitions on the financial contribution of the United States.

The contrast between the two versions – a "completely Argentine" base according to the government, and a project with a US imprint according to part of the opposition – is, strictly speaking, the core of the public discussion that opened up after the September 3 message, beyond the chapter on oil sanctions.

Within La Libertad Avanza, Minister Patricia Bullrich celebrated the announcements as a defense of sovereignty "with facts." Malvinas veterans also supported the measures and asked to participate in the legislative debate on the reform of Law 26,659.

From the opposition, the criticism was concentrated on two axes. The first, legal: Jorge Taiana and other leaders stressed that the sanctions were already provided for in the legislation in force for more than a decade and that a good part of the announced package does not innovate on that point. The second, historic: Taiana himself recalled that the construction of the Ushuaia Integrated Naval Base began in 2022 during his tenure as head of Defense, with a different objective than the one Milei is now proposing, and that it was the current administration that stopped these works when he took office.

Former Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero said that Milei "had to back down" and resume the diplomatic work of previous administrations. Deputy Victoria Tolosa Paz ironically questioned the discursive turn of the President, who knew how to publicly vindicate Margaret Thatcher, and accused him of opportunism. Other opposition leaders were harsher: they spoke of an attempt to "galtierize" the presidential figure – in reference to the last president of the military dictatorship, who declared war on the United Kingdom over the islands in 1982 – and warned about the risks of using the Malvinas cause to create a National Security Council in terms of military cooperation with Washington.

A discursive turn with respect to history itself

The use of the State's regulatory and sanctioning apparatus to restrict the activity of private companies contrasts with the discourse of deregulation and reduction of the State that characterized the Government since December 2023, a point that different journalistic analyses pointed out as one of the most visible paradoxes of the announcement: one of the main tools recovered by the Executive – Law 26,659 – was sanctioned during a political stage that Milei turned into one of his main discursive adversaries.

The Falkland Islands, at the center of the sovereignty dispute reactivated by the presidential announcement.

The Argentine announcement generated a response from the United Kingdom, which maintains its historical position on the administration of the archipelago and the right to self-determination of its inhabitants, a principle that Milei directly questioned in his speech. The Sea Lion project, at the center of the new sanctions, is pointed out by the Argentine government as the initiative that motivated the acceleration of the package of measures, given the imminence that its operators will move forward with offshore exploitation.

In Chile, the Ministry of Defense has been following the Ushuaia project with public attention since the beginning of 2026, as part of parliamentary consultations on a possible U.S. participation in port infrastructure at the southern tip of the continent, both in the Pacific and the Atlantic. The Chilean authorities have so far ruled out that the project generates a formal alarm, although they acknowledged that the issue is closely monitored due to its relationship with access to Antarctica and with the revision of the Antarctic Treaty scheduled for 2048.

Read as a whole, the message of September 3 combined an announcement of high communicational impact – "new" sanctions on companies operating in the Malvinas – with a substantive decision that had remained relatively in the background of information until then: the reactivation, with expanded funds, of a military infrastructure project that had been stopped since the beginning of Milei's administration and that today advances in parallel to an increasingly close rapprochement with the United States Southern Command.

This asymmetry is precisely what fueled the critical readings: if the sanctions invoked had already been in force since 2011 and the State had already applied them in 2022, much of the "new" news load of the announcement falls on the Integrated Naval Base and the DNU that expands its funds, a chapter with more far-reaching geopolitical implications – link with Washington, position vis-à-vis China, Antarctic projection – than the oil sanctions alone. The government, for its part, insists that it is an exclusively Argentine project and denies the existence of a formal agreement with the United States.

Neither of the two readings is incompatible with the verifiable facts as of the closing of this note: it is true that Law 26,659 pre-exists the announcement, it is true that the Ushuaia work was stopped by Milei's own government between 2023 and 2024, and it is also true that, according to the official information available, there is no closed international agreement that turns the base into a binational project. What the episode leaves in question – and what is expected to mark the legislative discussion to come, both of the reform of Law 26,659 and of the draft Law for the Defense of National Sovereignty – is to what extent the reactivation of the Integrated Naval Base, within the framework of a strategic realignment with the United States, ends up weighing more heavily in the long term than the sanctioning chapter that made the headlines of the day.

🧭 Future Implications

Milei's government presented a draft Law for the Defense of National Sovereignty that includes the creation of a National Security Council. This seeks to articulate Defense, Economy and Intelligence to protect "critical infrastructure." However, ambiguity persists: Will Argentina protect its sovereignty or will it be the shield for a foreign presence?

While the United Kingdom reiterates its "unwavering commitment" to the islanders, Milei's strategy seems to bet that Washington's favor, in exchange for a strategic military base, will deter London in the energy dispute. Sea Lion, which plans to extract oil 220 km from the islands, has become the trigger, but the naval base in Tierra del Fuego is the real long-term bet.

🔍 Conclusion

Milei's announcement is a classic example of modern geopolitics: a discourse of hard sovereignty against foreign interests (British and Israeli oil companies) that hides a tactical move of strategic alignment with the United States. The Ushuaia naval base, a stalled and forgotten project, is now reemerging as the center of a new bilateral relationship that could redefine the balance of power in the South Atlantic. On the chessboard, sanctions are the piece that moves in plain sight, but the basis is the move that really defines the game.

▸ What did Javier Milei announce about the Malvinas oil companies?

A decree to accelerate the sanctions of Law 26,659 against companies that exploit hydrocarbons in the Malvinas Islands without Argentine authorization, with a focus on the Sea Lion project, operated by Navitas Petroleum and Rockhopper Exploration.

▸ Is Law 26,659 a new law?

No. It was unanimously sanctioned in 2011 and already provided for disqualifications of up to 20 years and sentences of up to 15 years in prison. The Argentine State had already applied it in 2022 against Navitas Petroleum.

▸ What is the Ushuaia Integrated Naval Base?

A military infrastructure and logistics project in Tierra del Fuego, with antecedents since 2011 and works started in 2022, designed as a control platform for the South Atlantic and support for Antarctic operations.

▸ Does the United States finance the Integrated Naval Base?

According to the Argentine Ministry of Defense, there is no formal agreement with the United States for a joint base or contributions of U.S. materials or funds. The project is advancing in parallel with visits by Southern Command chiefs and a diplomatic rapprochement with Washington.

▸ Why did the opposition question the announcement?

Because he considers that the sanctions had already been in place for more than a decade and that it was Milei's own government that paralyzed the construction of the naval base when he took office in 2023.

▸ What other measures did Milei announce along with the sanctions?

A DNU to expand Defense funds for the naval base and telecommunications, and a bill that creates a National Security Council made up of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Defense, Intelligence and Economy.

🔍 Sources and References

• El Nacional, "Milei announces sanctions on oil companies in the Malvinas/Falklands and the construction of a naval base in Tierra del Fuego", 2026.
• La Nación, "The integrated naval base in Ushuaia, a very expensive work that stalled during the last few years," 2026.
• La Nación, "Quirno assured that companies that participate in operations in Malvinas will not be able to do so in Vaca Muerta", 2026 .
• BBC News Mundo, "Milei announces sanctions on oil companies in the Malvinas/Falklands and the construction of a naval base in Tierra del Fuego", 2026 .
• El Destape, "Malvinas: criticism and distrust of the opposition in the face of Milei's drastic turn", 2026 .
• Infobae, "What Milei said about the construction of a naval base in Tierra del Fuego", 2026.
• Forbes Argentina, "Milei Effect: Oil Companies' Shares Fall Behind Sea Lion," 2026.
• La Gaceta, "Malvinas Cause: Milei announced the creation of a naval base in Tierra del Fuego and sanctions on oil companies", 2026.
• Diario Popular, "A Mercosur parliamentarian warned that 'Tierra del Fuego cannot be a bargaining chip'", 2026.
• El Destape, "Milei confirmed the construction of the integrated naval base promoted by the U.S.", 2026.

Note prepared with information from journalistic and official sources available until September 4, 2026. The status of financing and the eventual international agreement for the Integrated Naval Base may be modified in the coming weeks as the Government formalizes the DNU and Congress debates the reform of Law 26,659.

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