President Trump is threatening to side with Argentina in its historical dispute with the U.K. over the Falkland Islands and tilt to Morocco in its standoff with Spain over imperial remnants in north Africa. He strongly signaled the shift following refusals by both NATO allies to support U.S. and Israeli air strikes on Iran and help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. (RELATED: Trump Delivers Europe’s Much-Needed Wake-Up Call) Trump’s posturing is consistent with his policy of realpolitik aimed at consolidating U.S. control over the Western hemisphere while aligning with new regional players in the Middle East, Africa, and eastern Europe at the expense of legacy allies, whose value he has long questioned and who have proved their unreliability by failing to turn up in the Persian Gulf. (RELATED: Trump’s NATO Dilemma) Britain and Spain, once Europe’s greatest overseas empires, now ruled by delusional leftist cabals wanting to oppose Trump at any cost and go Green. While casting off century-old ties to embrace untested new alliances carries risks for the U.S., it could spell disaster for Britain and Spain, once Europe’s greatest overseas empires, now ruled by delusional leftist cabals wanting to oppose Trump at any cost and go Green. When in 1982 Argentina invaded the remote Falkland Islands, which Britain had absentmindedly kept following a failed 19th-century attempt to invade Argentina, the Reagan administration was initially divided over a response. U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick advocated strict neutrality, citing international legal arguments favoring Argentina’s claims on the small archipelago 200 miles from its mainland. But the “Special Relationship” prevailed, and Secretary of State Alexander Haig, a former NATO supreme commander, told the Argentines that the U.S. would side with the U.K. if it came to a war. U.S. satellite intelligence was key to securing the quick victory needed by overstretched British forces. A surreptitious U.S. supply of what were then recently developed shoulder-fired Stinger heat-seeking missiles enabled British paratroopers to repel Argentine air attacks while moving inland. British warships and long-range bombers were fueled and provisioned at a joint base in the Azores. Even so, Argentina’s single squadron of Mirage jet fighters sank a number of British frigates and transport ships but lacked the fuel capacity to hit the aircraft carrier and deal a decisive blow to the British task force. “It was a close-run thing,” admits Royal Marine general Julian Thompson, who commanded British land forces in the Falklands. Any military operation at such scale would be impossible today without substantial U.S. support, which might now go to Argentina. Invoking his “Donroe” doctrine in favor of Buenos Aires could be a masterful stroke for Trump that would align all of Latin America behind him and even gain continental backing for his bid on Greenland. (RELATED: The ‘Donroe’ Doctrine at Sea) Argentina’s conservative populist president, Javier Milei, is close to Trump and, unlike the ruling generals’ junta of the 1980s, has been twice elected by large majorities. He is undertaking a military buildup to correct past deficiencies, greatly expanding the air force with large purchases of American F-16s and acquiring midair refueling tankers from Israel. (RELATED: Milei’s Isaac Accords Expands Pro-Israel Networks) When Keir Starmer was refusing to send even a minesweeper to the Strait of Hormuz, Argentina’s navy was in training exercises with the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the South Atlantic. While Argentina has been building up its military, the British have been breaking theirs down. A bloated woke-mod bureaucracy primarily concerned with enforcing DEI and gender-based promotions has reduced the army’s size by about half since the Falklands War. The legendary British Royal Navy that once ruled the waves has become a pathetic caricature of its former self, shrinking from over 70 vessels in 1982 to about two dozen today, with more admirals than ships. Its latest generation of frigates, supposedly designed to replace quantity with high-tech efficiency, hardly work. Two recently built aircraft carriers can’t get to sea without repeatedly going back for repairs, and all three Trident nuclear submarines were stuck for servicing at harbor while Russian frigates recently probed British waters. When war erupted in the Falklands, Britain’s admiralty stunned the Argentines by mobilizing a full naval task force to the South Atlantic in 48 hours. It’s now taken two weeks to move a single destroyer to the Mediterranean in response to Iranian drone strikes on the British air base in Cyprus. A government in such a vulnerable position would be seeking negotiations with Argentina over the Falklands ASAP, begging Trump to mediate. But common sense does not seem to prevail on Britain’s current Labour bosses, given the vitriol from some of their chief spokespersons over Iran. The group running Britain today that just got hammered in local elections and prefers buying oil from Norway than tapping its own North Sea reserves to stay “Net Zero,” would probably recoil at a deal with “Fascist” Milei, who never misses a chance to deride their globalist agenda. They may prefer to go down in some woke crusade draped in the rainbow flag and legalistic arguments about the rights of 5,000 or so Falklanders, dragging what’s left of British power and prestige down with them. (RELATED: The Fall of Britain — and the Warning for America) A similar situation is developing with Spain involving a longstanding dispute with Morocco over Ceuta and Melilla, two castle-walled city enclaves on the Moroccan coast. Morocco claims them as its territory, and Spain, with significant Spanish populations residing in both port towns, garrisoned by regiments of its prideful Legion, can’t give them up. America’s close relations with both contenders diminish the chances of an aggressive Moroccan move, which would be unthinkable while the U.S. operates strategic naval and air bases just across the Strait of Gibraltar in a treaty alliance with Spain. But leftist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is now changing that. (RELATED: What’s Wrong With Spain? It’s Pedro Sánchez.) His reckless embrace of radical Islam by backing Hamas against Israel and shutting down U.S. access to its Spanish bases for any operations against Iran has triggered Trump’s calls to expel Spain from NATO. Senator Lindsey Graham recently suggested closing the U.S. bases in Spain, publicly remarking that, by the way, “Ceuta and Melilla are not Spanish.” The U.S. just conducted major military exercises with Morocco, whose absolutist King Mohammed, closely aligned with Saudi Arabia’s pro-U.S. line against Iran, could offer to host U.S. bases just across the narrow waterway from Spain. While Spain maintained past military superiority over Morocco, the balance has recently shifted with substantial new Moroccan acquisitions of military hardware and technology from the U.S. and Israel. Back in 1975, the U.S. winked at Morocco’s mobilization of a “Green March” (nothing to do with climate change) to reclaim Spanish Western Sahara. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, at the time, pressured the Spanish government, then in the throes of transitioning from the Franco dictatorship to a constitutional monarchy, to hand over the largely uninhabited phosphate-rich desert expanse to King Mohammed’s wily father, Hassan. Trump could now repeat the exercise over Ceuta and Melilla, with far deeper and more serious political consequences for Spain and its fragile monarchy under King Felipe, while reaping substantial benefits in Africa. Conflicts that inevitably develop between allies are usually resolved when all sides act within a rational strategic framework. But if policymakers place capricious, self-destructive, lab-induced ideologies above their own self-interest, problems become intractable and can result in tragic consequences. READ MORE from Martin Arostegui: The Barcelona Censorship Club, Hosted by Pedro Sánchez Trump’s Pakistan Card and Iran’s ‘Paranoid Inertia’ Ahmad Vahidi Is Now Calling the Regime’s Shots