On the morning of Sunday, Jan. 25, the online community noticed something unusual on flight-tracking apps. A US Air Force Boeing C-40 Clipper was on its final approach to Ushuaia–Malvinas, an international airport in Tierra del Fuego, a gateway to Antarctica at Argentina’s southern tip. Before either government said a word, a photo of the landing had gone viral.
Onboard was a bipartisan delegation of US House Energy and Commerce Committee members, who, the US Embassy would reveal the following day, had flown to the world’s southernmost city to discuss topics including critical minerals and mine management.
The visit fueled immediate controversy, not only because the initial secrecy around it broke with protocol but also because it took place days after far-right Argentine President Javier Milei seized control of the Port of Ushuaia from the opposition-led provincial government.
“No explanation seems genuine,” Tierra del Fuego’s Governor Gustavo Melella told local journalists. “We don’t know the real reason for this decision, whether they want to keep the dollars the port generates or open the door to the United States.”
Months later, it remains a sore spot.
Andrés Dachary, Melella’s secretary for the Malvinas, Southern Atlantic Islands, Antarctica, and International Relations, told Inkstick that he does not personally believe the visit was coordinated with the port takeover, but understands the province-wide alarm. “It was bad timing. You have to understand the sensitivity of a province that has spent decades living through geopolitical issues.”
The visit crystallized mounting tension amid a growing conflict among global powers for influence over Antarctica. “We have somehow become protagonists of a major geopolitical moment, one in which a town like Ushuaia has become a flashpoint in a territorial dispute,” Juan Carlos Amado told Inkstick. Amado is an activist with InSURgentes, a local organization whose name plays on the Spanish words for insurgency and people in the south. “We question government power and try to offer alternative policies,” he says.
Ushuaia sits at a chokepoint on the only alternative to the Panama Canal for Atlantic-Pacific transit. Its port is vital to exploiting Tierra del Fuego’s potential mineral wealth, including critical minerals which the Trump administration has made a cornerstone of its National Security Strategy.
Amado spoke while holding the edge of a banner reading “Sovereignty means NO to the Yankee base, NO to the English radar, NO to the intervention in the port.”
He stood surrounded by fellow protesters, who’d gathered on Malvinas Day to champion their cause. Malvinas Day commemorates the 1982 war in which Argentina sought to (re)take the British-administered Malvinas (or Falklands in the UK) islands. The conflict ended in Argentine defeat after 10 weeks of fighting and more than 900, mostly Argentine, deaths.
Argentina still claims the Malvinas as part of the Tierra del Fuego province, and the islands have become a powerful national symbol of resistance to foreign interference in the Global South.
For Amado and the other protesters in Ushuaia, the symbol is gaining new life as the US casts its sights on this small Argentine city.
In September 2025, Milei — a Trump ally — bypassed Argentina’s parliament and signed an emergency decree, widely criticized as unconstitutional, authorizing US armed forces to participate in Argentine naval exercises, including in Ushuaia.
The move caused an uproar, especially because Milei signed the decree just days after meeting with Trump to negotiate a bailout for Argentina ahead of the country’s midterm elections. Many analysts saw the $20 billion currency swap as a lifeline for Milei’s party, which faced an uncertain electoral outcome. Trump made the stakes explicit: “If he wins, we’re staying with him; if he doesn’t win, we’re gone.”
Still, the US military push in Ushuaia predates Trump’s relationship with Milei. In April 2024, Milei met with then-SOUTHCOM chief Gen. Laura Richardson in Ushuaia to review progress on an integrated naval base, which Argentina’s US embassy described as a joint project. “The best way to defend our sovereignty is to strengthen our strategic alliance with the United States,” Milei told the crowd, adding later that “[the base] will make our countries gatekeepers of the white continent.”
In the months after, Milei’s administration walked back that language. But rumors of US financial support persist, even though Washington has remained silent on its role in the construction of the $300 million port.
Even so, Richardson’s successor, Adm. Alvin Holsey, visited the naval base a year later in April 2025. These visits and the rhetoric around the port worry the regional government.
“Even if [claims of US involvement] aren’t true today, they could very well become true,” Dachary says — pointing to Milei’s aggressive courting of Washington and the port’s strategic location. “We don’t want any foreign base on our soil. It is Argentina’s own challenge to be able to guarantee its own territorial integrity.”
Inkstick reached out to SOUTHCOM, the US embassy in Buenos Aires, the Argentine embassy in Washington, DC, and the Argentine Ministry of Defense. As of publication, only SOUTHCOM responded.
“SOUTHCOM and Argentina enjoy a longstanding and active bilateral defense partnership, working together to strengthen regional security, ensure freedom of navigation in crucial international waterways, promote mutual interests, and support shared goals,” a SOUTHCOM spokesperson told Inkstick over email, without addressing the question about financial support but emphasizing that there is currently no US personnel stationed in Ushuaia, nor are there plans to do so.
Ushuaia sits approximately 1,000 km (621 miles) from the Antarctic Peninsula, the theater for a simmering global power race. Controlling a slice of the last uninhabited continent, nearly twice the size of Australia, could give nations access to the continent’s potential mineral wealth, exclusive economic zones, and territory vital to commercial and military space infrastructure.
“Antarctica is an insurance policy,” Doaa Abdel-Motaal, visiting professor of Polar Studies at Sciences Po in Paris, and author of Antarctica: The Battle for the Seventh Continent, told Inkstick. “Everybody wants to be there for a slice of the cake.”
In theory, the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) holds countries back from scrambling for this proverbial cake. Built on a 1959 agreement now signed by 58 countries — including the US, China, Russia, and Argentina — it bans military bases, weapons testing, and, under a 1991 protocol, mineral extraction.
“Antarctica, in my view, is the last bastion of international law — the only place left on the planet where it is still respected,” Dachary says.
But in 2048, the treaty’s mining protocols can come under review, and in practice, the system’s outdated mechanisms are already under unprecedented strain.
About 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Ushuaia, the US-owned LeoLabs radar officially serves to track space debris. But in 2023, Argentina’s Defense Ministry concluded that the radar posed a national security threat because it can also track military satellites and hypersonic missiles.
LeoLabs is a classic example of dual-use technologies, which makes it difficult to draw a clean line between scientific and military activity. This radar is a particular sticking point for locals because its parent company has strong financial and management links to the defense sector in the UK, which Argentina continues to see as the sovereign occupier of the Malvinas.
“The company signed an intelligence-sharing contract. Who do you think it signed with?” Dachary says. “The UK Ministry of Defense. That was the last straw.”
Argentina revoked the radar’s operating permit after the security threat designation, but did not dismantle the facility. Moreover, Dachary told Inkstick that their requests to the federal government for an audit have gone unanswered, leaving its status uncertain. US officials are pressuring Milei to reopen LeoLabs permanently, according to reporting by regional news media.
LeoLabs is not unique. China, Russia, and even Australia have increasingly invested in dual-use facilities in and near Antarctica. In fact, the dual-use problem is older than the ATS itself: icebreakers, military aircraft, and military-trained personnel are all standard features of any research station operation.
“[Dual-use technology] is about intention,” Abdel-Motaal says. “Science and presence in Antarctica often require military equipment. But the question is: is military equipment being used only for scientific goals or are there military goals? I think nobody’s naive.”
Perhaps what’s new is the certainty with which countries accuse each other of violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the ATS while signaling their willingness to do the same. This change became apparent around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Western nations, under financial strain from the pandemic, scaled back scientific budgets; Russia and China did not. Russia’s state-run geological surveyor Rosgeologia even conducted a seismic survey of Antarctic offshore areas — explicitly to assess oil and gas reserves, despite the mining ban.
And when Western nations re-engaged with the region, they did so largely outside the ATS. The UK intensified military exercises on the Malvinas and upgraded its military base there. Australia invested $800 million into its Antarctic strategy, but allocated just 2% to science, pouring the bulk into infrastructure and dual-use technology. And, even as the US withdrew its last dedicated Antarctic research ship, it began to expand its military presence in gateway cities like Ushuaia.
And as this competition grows more intense, opinions are split. Nationally, 70% of Argentinians polled in 2025 oppose the idea of a US military presence in Ushuaia in exchange for an economic agreement, while only 21% support it.
Daniel, a local retired police officer who asked Inkstick not to use his last name for fear of reprisals, says he prefers the US over China. “It seems to me that US presence could be a positive thing — it never hurts to have a strong ally.”
But Amado, whose protest banner specifically called out the LeoLabs radar, rejects the binary US-versus-China framing as a false choice. Referring to a framework used after Argentina’s dictatorship, in which the military’s state terror and guerrilla violence were presented as two equally culpable evils, he says, “they trap you in it — it’s like the two demons game, always forcing you to choose.”
