President Milei of Argentina, like the beloved toro that he is, is making a second entrance into the Turtle Bay china shop. On Wednesday he fired his foreign minister, Diana Mondino, for siding with the vast majority of United Nations members in condemning, for the 32nd time, America’s embargo on the Cuban dictatorship. The Assembly’s is a tired, if empty annual ritual. Mr. Milei, it turns out, would rather break UN consensus than side with tyranny.

The resolution on the “necessity of ending the economic, commercial, and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” was supported by 187 countries, including some of our best allies. As in previous years, only Israel and America voted nay. Were it up to Mr. Milei, Argentina would have made it a trio. It didn’t. With no public explanation, Ms. Mondino was fired soon after Argentina voted yea.   

“Our country is categorically opposed to the Cuban dictatorship, and it will remain firm in promoting a foreign policy that condemns all regimes that perpetuate the violation of human rights and individual freedoms,” Mr. Milei’s office said in a statement. That also has traditionally been a pillar of America’s policy. Since Fidel Castro conquered the island in a 1960 revolution all our presidents have maintained the embargo. Congress insisted.

President Obama tried so hard to please the dictators that he rescinded a bunch of restrictions on Cuba. While he couldn’t fully undo the embargo, his UN ambassador, Samantha Power, pleased the communists when, in 2016, she became the first American envoy to abstain in the annual UN vote to condemn America’s policy. Is Mr. Milei alone in noticing the absurdity of siding with a failed tyranny over the UN’s largest benefactor?

We’re not suggesting that Mr. Milei is perfect. “Would you trade with an assassin?” he fulminated while running for office about doing business with Communist China. Since then, Mr. Milei has changed his tune a bit, the Financial Times reports. He now calls Beijing, as the FT quotes him, a “super-friendly partner.” It’s hard for America to criticize him trading with China. We take it as a sign that he’s a principled man who’s doing as much as he can. 

In September, as world leaders descended on Turtle Bay for their annual parley, our Benny Avni reported that Mr. Milei took on the UN “like almost no other before him.” The world body was “thought up as a shield to protect the reign of men,” he said. Yet, it “became a leviathan with various tentacles purporting to decide not only what each nation state should do, but also how all the citizens in the world should live.” 

In its early days, the Cuban regime relied on Moscow to buy sugar cane the Soviets didn’t need in exchange for bases on America’s shores. Following the USSR’s demise, another sugar daddy, Venezuela, subsidized the island’s energy, while Cuban doctors and hired thugs enforced Chavista diktats. Now Caracas is bankrupt, and Cuba is out of electricity. “Long live freedom, goddamnit,” is how Mr. Milei ended his September speech. The UN was shocked.