Through a letter of intent presented by the Argentine Minister of Defense, Luis Petri , the current presidential administration asked to be part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) .
Last Thursday, Petri met with the Deputy Secretary General of NATO, the Romanian Mircea Geoana , at the headquarters located in Brussels. Then, he held a meeting with the Deputy Secretary General for Political Affairs of the transatlantic military alliance, the Spanish Javier Colomina .
“I met with Mircea Geoana, Deputy Secretary General of NATO. I presented the letter of intent that expresses Argentina's request to become a global partner of this organization," Petri communicated through the X social network, adding that "we will continue working to recover links that allow us to modernize and train our forces to NATO standard.”
I would like to thank @Mircea_Geoana for yesterday’s excellent welcome.
It is greatly important to us to take part in NATO’s Global Partnership Program.
Yesterday we took the first step of many to make it possible. https://t.co/FRHF5Sluqd
For its part, Geoana expressed “satisfaction” with “the request to explore the possibility of becoming a NATO partner,” arguing that NATO “works with various countries around the world to promote peace and stability.” as well as "closer political and practical cooperation could benefit both of us."
Currently, there are nine countries that participate as “global partners” of the political-military organization: Afghanistan (suspended), Australia, Iraq, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan . The only Latin American is Colombia, since 2018 .
It is worth saying that to enter NATO with this status, Argentina must have the approval of the 32 member countries, including the United Kingdom and North America.
The most negative aspect for Argentina's sovereign interests has to do with the presence of NATO through the military base located on the Malvinas Islands , the largest in the entire southern hemisphere, where the United States and Great Britain have carried out joint military exercises , including the presence of a North American nuclear submarine .
