Falklands: are we ready for the latest threat from S America?

THE FALKLANDS remain a national obsession in Argentina – more important even than football. Weirdly, for most of Argentina's history they hardly appeared on the radar. But in the late 1940s the unscrupulous General Juan Peron placed the 'Islas Malvinas' at the heart of the history and geography curriculum of every Argentine school. He began the process of brainwashing that culminated in the islands becoming a kind of national G Spot – stimulated by every shady politician and strongman since.
 
Look at the photographs of the crowds outside the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, on 2 April 1982 as they came to adore President Galtieri, conqueror of the Falklands.  Educated, civilised people as well as toughs from the slums of the villas miseria (shanty towns) encircling the city screamed and sang hysterically with glee.

They knew full well that Galtieri was a brutal alcoholic ruling alongside some of the most sinister moustachioed types ever to infest a military junta.  They knew that they had killed and tortured thousands to stay in office and that some of their victims were drugged and thrown - while still alive - from aircraft far out to sea.
 
But still they cheered.
 
Juntas may have come and gone but the Malvinas syndrome goes on even today under democratic rule.  It is as if modern German schoolchildren were still being taught some of the geographical fantasies of the Fuhrer.
 
David Cameron is right – we do not have to be able to retake the Falkland Islands by force to make our military strategy in the South Atlantic coherent and convincing. The garrison there is probably enough to see off an invasion provided that we get some strategic warning of Argentine military intentions.  With extra Eurofighter Typhoons flown in and the despatch of an attack submarine we should be able to keep hold of the islands. No sane British prime minister would risk losing the Falklands… again.

But is the military threat the one we should be concentrating on? Are we falling into that classic military trap of fighting the last war?
 
It was clear in 1982 that we could not leave British subjects under the rule of a fascist military junta without a fight and most of the civilised world agreed. But Argentina is now a democracy. Its President Cristina Kirchner is a democratic leader of great popularity and skill who begins her second term as president on 10 December after winning a landslide last month.  Her human rights credentials would impress the most unruly student demo.

She and her late husband, Nestor, who was president before her, put the boot into the comfortably retired bullyboys of the military junta. Between them they jolted Argentina into a more activist stance on previous crimes – repealing a series of dubious laws which let the killers of the military regime off the hook.  
 
One recent consequence was the imprisonment for life on 27 October of Alfredo Astiz, the Blond Angel of Death, and chief torturer at the Naval Mechanical School outside Buenos Aires where thousands of 'dissidents' were imprisoned and murdered. He is better known to the British as the commander of the Argentine garrison on South Georgia.
 
Kirchner is definitely mutton-dressed-as-lamb with a little botox thrown in – ridiculous to the English sensibility. But she is great friends with both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who are sympathetic to her claims on the Falklands.  
 
She is also a hit with other Latin American leaders. The new president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, paid a state visit to Argentina within weeks of coming to office. It's in this relationship that we see the strategic balance tilting away from us before our very eyes.

Argentine aircraft fly regularly off Brazil’s aircraft carrier the Sao Paolo and they share intelligence and military hardware. Brazil is currently developing a nuclear-powered submarine. Argentina already has a pair of diesel electric submarines, the largest and most sophisticated built in Germany since 1945. Within a few years Brazil and Argentina will command the seas around the Falklands.
 
Naked force by such nations against us seems less likely. But it is a stated aim of the foreign policy of a number of Latin American countries to mould their continent into a powerful political bloc whose voice and economic prowess will be felt in the wider world.
 
If we want the Falklands to remain free under the crown, we should prepare not for invasion but for a Cold War in the South Atlantic. Aggressive Latino diplomacy coupled with strong naval forces, indulged by the United States, will make our position there difficult and dangerous.  

The contest will run for many years, if not indefinitely, testing the sea-keeping abilities of the Royal Navy in stormy southern waters against the navies of nations growing all the time economically stronger. British prime ministers in London will have to discover and then display on a regular basis some of Mrs Thatcher’s steel and judgment. Are we up for it?  ·