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Britain is likely to lose a second Falklands War
If the Argentines try again to take the islands, new UK policy means there will be little resistance
THE FOREIGN OFFICE is up to its old tricks, according to reports reaching The First Post. As the great Yogi Berra put it, it's like deja vu all over again. They are telling the coalition government that while they don't want to give the Falklands away exactly, if the Argentines were to try again to take the islands off us, as they did in 1982, they don't think we should fight to regain them.
This has emerged from a position paper for the new Strategic Defence and Security Review, due to be unveiled late next month as part of the programme of massive defence cuts which will cut the defence budget by 30 per cent and the armed forces by 40,000.
The review is being prepared by the new National Security Council (NSC), run by the former head of the Foreign Office Sir Peter Ricketts, and largely staffed by Foreign Office officials.
The view of the NSC is that Britain should no longer be involved in such adventures as Iraq and Afghanistan, into which New Labour led us under Tony Blair's banner. Instead, Britain should use its forces for containment and 'layered deterrence' in the mantra of Defence Secretary Liam Fox.
Taking the case history of the Falklands, the NSC apparently has outlined the measures of layered response, involving no doubt the despatch of the odd nuclear hunter killer submarine, as David Owen did in 1977, and half a squadron of Typhoon fighter-bombers.
And if that should fail? It seems likely there would be no further physical response.
The MoD and the Foreign Office, ably abetted by the Treasury, look on the armed forces as a hangover from some military antiques roadshow. For them Afghanistan is an embarrassment because UK's core business is with the US and Europe - little realising that unless the UK and its limited but capable military can help in Afghanistan, it is no good at all to Uncle Sam.
It is all eerily reminiscent of where we were in 1981. The Defence Review of that year under John Nott aimed to withdraw the Antarctic patrol ship Endurance and flog the pocket carrier Invincible to Australia, which made it clear there would be little left in the Royal Navy locker to defend the islands.
The interesting debating point is that if the Argentine junta had attacked the islands in August instead of April 1982, the UK might have been incapable of mounting a credible response at all.
In November 1980, the islands had been visited by Nicholas Ridley, a junior minister at the Foreign Office and a Thatcher favourite. His mission was to persuade the islanders to get real and settle for a leaseback arrangement with mainland Argentina, along the lines of the Hong Kong deal of the late 19th century. Reports of this proposal, along with the withdrawal of HMS Endurance, persuaded the last-gasp military junta under Leopoldo Galtieri that if they grabbed the Falklands and South Georgia, Britain wouldn't react.
For both the Argentines and the UK the symbolism of the Falklands is way out of proportion to the prosaic facts on the ground of that bit of windswept bogland and rock in the South Atlantic. It is part of the iconography of the Conservative Party of the the past 50 years, too.
Former defence chiefs and academics who have had a look at the preliminary workings of the Strategic Defence and Security Review, now some six weeks off, are alarmed at the poverty of forward-thinking revealed in it so far. "It's not policy-led," said one, "it's slash and burn in an almost nonsensical way."
With all the scrapping and mothballing, and the P45s for 40,000 fighting servicemen and women, it might be just too tempting for the Buenos Aires regime to try to redeem their honour in the Malvinas. If not next year, why not exercise strategic patience and go for the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War in 2012 - and probably on national independence day, May 25?
Where would this put Thatcher's political grandchildren - Cameron, Hague and Osborne? If they're not careful, they'll be heading for terminal strategic blunder, or as the mild-mannered John Major might say, a very considerable tactical banana skin. ·
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And what on earth is Britain doing claimimg land so many thousands of miles away, off its own continent? Only the most diehard,tunnel visioned, colonial minded British person would really believe that Britain should lay legitimate claim to the Falklands. Time to wake up to the 21st century folks! It is a good thing that economic reality is likely to prevent another adventurous foray into far away lands.
The Malvenas are NOT and have never been British. No more than Scotland, Wales or Ireland are. Time for England to give up it's last few remaining remnants of it's 'great' colonial empire.
I find this very hard to believe, David Cameron as a member of the Conservatives will not allow a conflict that was led by a previous conservative leader go to waste, irrelevant of the coalition. Its sad that we can even contemplate peoples lives that were lost as a waste and futile. Nevertheless, I would like to know where this information has come from considering the fact that nothing from the Defence and security review has been released yet, theres only been one official leak, and that caused uproar, let us just wait shall we and not jump to conclusions like the media wants us to do. For the record, prior to the coalition, Defence Ministers reitterated that there will be no nagotiations as there are British people who are proud to be both of Falkland and British origin, we have a duty to those people and its stated that anything will be done to defend the islands, which at the time Mr Cameron agreed with.
@Peter Gardiner: That's not the answer. What we actually need are politicians that do not kurtow to America in the same snivelling manner our past New Labour fiasco did.
Hopefully our troops will be pulled out of the American led fiasco of Afghanistan and returned to our shores where they can be used in a domestic theatre should that be necessary.
Lets hope the Defensce budget is slashed so hard and so quickly that British agression on foreign soil is terminated. It does a lot of damage which will take generations of peace to repair and has nothing to do with defence or security.
If the argentines want to try it, they will get the same as last time.Do not under estimate the brit's,because they will not let it happen. The coalition has nothing to do with it,the british people will not let it happen and woe betide any party who would give up the Falklands
Don't forget the oil.
To say that Britain can no longer defend the Falklands from foreign invasion is, in a sad sort of way, laughable.
It's laughable - and sad - because over the last 20 years Britain - in common with most of western Europe - has contracted such an extreme case of Political Correctness Disease that it has lost the will to defend even itself - let alone the Falklands - from invasion by millions of foreigners, mostly undesirable and in a great many cases illegal too.
Britain is now heading blindly but steadily towards being turned into an Islamic theocracy.
It will take only a few decades, but en route to that fate, it is inevitable that Britain will become unstable - like the Balkans, or Pakistan. It may even experience civil war.
I reckon the Argentines will "repatriate" the Malvinas sometime between 27th July and 12th Aug 2012 when the UK, and in particular, London, will be otherwise engaged. Or maybe earlier that year, when Prince William gets married.
The coalition is failing because it has developed an superior and ignorant attitude to the electorate.They are doing evrything the wrong way.In other words there is not a leader in its senior ranks.If Cameron doesnt get a grip and get rid of Osbourne we are done and so is he,
Simple - we have a nuclear deterrent yet to be fired in anger; we can zap the Argentines from far away. No problem there:
"Action stations, set condition 1 SQ for strategic launch.
WEO, the keys please"
"Aye Sir, ready to proceed - to launch depth"
"Aye Sir.'
"Target designated, ready to shoot -open 1 and 16; flood and balance."
"Ready to shoot, sir"
"Very good WEO, on your command"
"Shoot1, Shoot 16.............and goodbye Buenos Aries"
"No joy sir, they're still in the tubes - won't fire because they're British Made!"
The Falklands will fall the same way Crete did - with the lose of its key airfield. Its far to obvious a choke point at the end of an over extended supply line. Its also naive to think that the Argentine military doesn't dream every night of winning the next war.
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We seemed to have totally misjudged the Argentine (and wider Latin) mindset - that of great pride and passion - not necessarily tempered with a grasp of the facts on the ground or reality, but, nevertheless, a passion which dictated that the "Malvinas" belonged to Argentina - that misconception led to the unnecessary conflict of 1982; I fear that our Foreign Office floppy haired ex-public school boys, ably abetted by our Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer of the same ilk, are again guilty of underestimating (or ignoring) the passion of the Latin temperament.
Since the outset of the recent round of wanton and ill-judged defence cuts, I have become increasingly concerned at our manifest inability to offer any credible and longer term defence of the Falkland Islands/Malvinas - it is all very well to talk about Britain's "determination" to hold the Falklands in the face of any future aggression - with what assets? Four Typhoons will not hold out forever, neither will the latest type 45 Destroyer, HMS Dauntless, technologically advanced as those assets undoubtedly are; It doesn't take much stretch of the imagination to read the minds of the Argentinian military planners who have, no doubt, prepared eleborate and feasible re-invasion plans for the islands - undoubtedly, those plans will have prioritised the early elimination of the Typhoons on the ground, or the (perhaps) temporary closure of the military airfield at Stanley - that will allow the Argentinians a virtually unopposed and overwhelming landing in more than one place on the main island - a bloody but, ultimately, futile clash might take place - simply to try to salvage some credibility for the fighting reputation of Britain's armed forces.
If I were still a serving soldier in the Falkland Islands under the above outlined scenario I would feel mightily betrayed by the current incumbent of No 10 who, flying in the face of experience and reason blithely ignores reality, recklessly gambles with our nation's security and instructs our very able Generals to "do the fighting" while he does the "thinking"; I predict an attempt on the Malvinas by the passionate, Latin, Argentinians, with the likely outcome that No 10 accepts the "facts on the ground" - i.e. that we are no longer able or willing to attempt, for the second time, our own re invasion and that the Falkland Islands must be surrendered, together with their population, to an uncertain future under Mrs Kirchner's regime.
With equal confidence, I predict that Cameron will express "surprise" that the Argentinians were "mad enough" to call Britain's bluff - again, and with equal confidence, I predict (with grim pleasure) Cameron's and Osborne's dsswift departure from office!