A strategist. A true institutional suicide. That tacit, yet ironclad, pact between all parties —progressives and liberals, populists and conservatives, democrats and revolutionaries— structured the most costly complicity in our history: the material, moral, and cognitive helplessness of the Argentine Republic. The State—captured by an ideologized elite—voluntarily renounced its national power. And without strategic leadership, all of this will be merely cosmetic. Because without real strategic intelligence, no strategic leadership is possible. Period. It remains, yes, to complete the triad: Defense, Security, and Intelligence. The SIDE—rebranded a thousand times but never transformed—remains an impregnable territory for strategic logic, still occupied by profiles who know nothing of national intelligence, many of them mercenaries of secrecy, extortion managers, opportunists, political operators nested in confusion.
Finally—and for the first time since the twilight of the 20th century— the ominous political pact of the '80s has been broken. That pact, under democratic appearances, deliberately designed the gradual demolition of the Nation's Military Instrument. What we, professionally trained in Defense, Security, and Intelligence, claimed for decades, was more of a demand than an insistence: it was a matter of basic, elementary strategic logic: without a professional military power, there is no sovereign State; without structural security, there is no Republic; without intelligence, there is no valid strategic decision. Today, with the appointment of Lieutenant General (R) Claudio Presti as Minister of Defense of the Nation, President Javier Milei has put an end to that decadent anomaly: he has returned leadership of the Ministry to a defense professional. For the first time since 1983, those who integrated, studied, and served the Defense System see rationality restored. And with it, perhaps, the hope of becoming a power again.
A captured service. A soldier. And here lies the still intact knot. Not a political administrator. A professional disgrace. I hope this change arrives there too. History does not forgive States that renounce their National Power. Today, at least in Defense, the Republic returns to reason. Not a manager of spreadsheets and per diems. A leader. This milestone, added to the promising appointment of Monteoliva in Security, constitutes a true beginning of an era change for the national strategic system. A taken-over house. The planned disarticulation of the Defense System, the defunding of Internal Security, and the doctrinal marginalization of Strategic Intelligence were not a mistake: they were a decision. Without Armed Forces there is no deterrence; without deterrence, there is no sovereignty. Not a militant civilian.
