本周封面故事 | 乌克兰和平谈判：棋局还是陷阱？

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Cover Story

How we chose this week’s image

Our two covers this week feature an interview with the free-market maverick remaking Argentina, and an analysis of how Ukraine and its allies should approach talks with Russia.

Javier Milei relishes his status as the bad boy of anarcho-capitalism (though you have to wonder if it has many good boys). Speaking to our Latin America correspondent, Kinley Salmon, Argentina’s president said that he considers “the state to be a violent criminal organisation that lives from a coercive source of income called taxes, which are a remnant of slavery”.

He campaigned wielding a chainsaw, but his economic programme is serious and one of the most radical doses of free-market medicine since Thatcherism. What is more, a year after he was elected, it seems to be working.

Mr Milei is enjoying his best moment since taking office. Brandishing that chainsaw, he has lopped off a third of public spending in real terms, halved the number of ministries and cut through the red tape. Inflation spiked at 25% a month after he devalued the artificially and unsustainably strong peso. It is now under 3% per month. The JPMorgan country-risk index, an influential measure of the risk of default, has fallen from around 2,000 when he became president in December 2023 to about 750 now, its lowest in five years.

The chainsaw is a bit cartoonish, however. Although Mr Milei is a larger-than-life character, running an exceptional country that has suffered more than most from a dysfunctional and predatory state, he has lessons for the world.

Here he is belting out his message. Mr Milei is often lumped in with populist politicians such as Donald Trump or Viktor Orban. In fact he comes from a different tradition. A true believer in open markets and individual liberty, he has a quasi-religious zeal for economic freedom.

We favoured an image that does less to distract from our use of one of the interview’s many arresting quotes as the title. The left detests Mr Milei and the Trumpian right embraces him, but in fact he is at odds with both. He has shown that the continual expansion of the state is not inevitable. And he is a rebuke to opportunistic populism, of the sort practised by Mr Trump. He believes in free trade and free markets, not protectionism; fiscal discipline, not reckless borrowing; and, instead of spinning popular fantasies, brutal public truth-telling.

Much could go wrong in Mr Milei’s Argentina. Poverty is growing, the peso is overvalued and the president is a mercurial and explosive character. But, just now, Mileinarianism is worth watching.

Donald Trump has made clear that, as president, he will be impatient for the shooting to stop in Ukraine. At the same time, Russia’s grinding advance has exposed weaknesses in manpower and morale that could eventually lead to a collapse in Ukraine’s lines. In a conflict that once looked like a stalemate, peace talks beckon—and the common worry is that Mr Trump will use them to impose a disastrous deal on Ukraine.

Our first ideas sought to convey the arrival of diplomacy. In one, the missile is morphing into a fountain pen. In the other, two presidents are balanced on a shell.

The hawk of peace gets this message across, but it feels remote. The tank at a crossroads suggests a moment of decision is afoot, but it points to the battlefield rather than negotiations.

Capitulation to Mr Putin is not inevitable, nor even the likeliest outcome. It would be a public defeat for America and it would spill over into Asia, where the next administration is focusing. And Mr Trump would surely want to avoid the humiliation of being known as the man who lost Ukraine by being out-negotiated by Mr Putin. It is in his own narrow interest to forge a deal that keeps Ukraine safe for at least the four years of his term. In that time Ukraine can accomplish a lot.

To thrive, Ukraine will require political and economic stability, both of which will depend on being safe from Russian aggression. That is why the talks will turn on how to devise a credible and durable framework for Ukrainian security.

Here is the negotiating table. It is cold and wintry. Ukraine, sitting across from Russia, would be alarmingly exposed.

A ceasefire would present two competing visions of Ukraine’s future. Mr Putin’s calculation is that he will win from a deal because Ukraine will rot, Russia will re-arm and the West will lose interest. But imagine that, with Western backing, Ukraine used the lull to rebuild its economy, refresh its politics and deter Russia from aggression. The task is to ensure that this vision prevails over its grim alternative.

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