Argentina vs. Britain over the Falklands … still?!

The Falklands are little more than a bleak and desolate cluster of rocks dotting the South Atlantic Ocean some 8,000 miles from Britain. Therefore, when British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher dispatched the Royal Navy there in 1982 to oust Argentine forces, I thought she was acting pursuant to some quixotic, neocolonial notion of extraterritorial sovereignty.

It never occurred to me that she went to war in the Falklands for the same reason US President George W. Bush went to war in Iraq two decades later; namely, oil. And even though it took British prospectors decades, they finally found “black gold under them there rocks” and just this week began drilling for every drop.

To their credit, Argentines (who jingoistically refer to these islands by their Spanish name, Malvinas) have always charged that mining the islands’ hydrocarbon deposits was the prevailing casus belli.  This is why the British striking oil has only added mounds of salt to the wounded pride that has been festering among Argentines ever since they were ousted.

But even though wounded, their pride has never been, and will never be, so foolish as to cause them to attempt to avenge their defeat on the battlefield. Instead, they have chosen to engage the British in a war of words for control, or at least an equitable share, of the reported 60 billion barrels of oil that is due to be extracted.

In fact, Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is even deploying Churchillian rhetoric by vowing that her country’s sovereignty over these islands “would never be surrendered.” Unfortunately, this smacks of the feckless machismo we’ve come to expect of blowhards like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez; especially since it’s demonstrably clear that Argentines do not have the balls to back up her words with “blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” 

Frankly, Argentina would be better served by her crying the following ironic, perhaps even hypocritical, symmetry in the court of public opinion:

Just as Iran seems determined to develop its nuclear program despite restraining UN resolutions and legitimate legal challenges (proffered by US and backed by most Western powers), Britain seems determined to drill for oil despite restraining UN resolutions and legitimate legal challenges (proffered by Argentina and backed by the 32 countries of Latin American and the Caribbean).

We are absolutely clear this is legitimate business in Falkland Islands waters and we will continue to reiterate our position that we have no doubt about our sovereignty over the Falkland Islands and the surrounding maritime areas.

(Chris Bryant, minister British Foreign Office)

Except that serial admissions by other Foreign Office officials over the past 100 years make the legitimacy of this drilling business anything but clear. Here, for example, are two that were cited on the question of sovereignty in a 1987 report by Lieutenant Commander Richard D. Chenette, USN, for seminar on “War in the Modern Era”:

[I]t is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Argentine government’s attitude is not altogether unjustified and that our action has been somewhat high-handed.

(Head of Foreign Office’s American Department 1927)

I must confess that … I had no idea of the strength of the Argentine case nor of the weakness of ours.

(British Ambassador in Argentina 1929-1932)

Mind you, this is not to say that the legitimacy of the Argentines’ claims is crystal clear.  It’s just that they are not only the plainly aggrieved party, but now hold the moral high ground for having properly referred this international dispute to the United Nations for resolution.

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to note how categorically inconsistent Bryant’s statement (quoted above) is with the right of Falkland Islanders to self-determination….  But given all the British have invested in these islands, not least the loss of over 250 soldiers during that 74-day war in 1982, who can blame them for declaring such a prideful, even if neocolonial, claim of sovereignty?

They will have to forgive some of us for inferring, however, that this high-risk, high-reward investment explains why they’ve been giving short shrift to undisputed UK territories in the Caribbean in recent years.

After all, the vestiges of their colonial involvement in these islands can fairly be characterized as low risk for even lower reward (i.e., no prospect of drilling off our pristine shores even if oil were found beneath our Caribbean Sea).