Falklands War

War between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands, April to June 1982. The Falkland Islands are located east of the southern tip of South America, 272 miles (438 km) off the coast of Argentina. They could be an important springboard for any country seeking to expand its influence in die Antarctic. Britain’s first crisis over the Falklands occurred in 1769 during an ownership dispute with Spain. At that time Samuel Johnson, writing to support London’s efforts to avoid war, described the Falklands as “thrown aside from human use, stormy in winter,rift gold barren in summer, an island which not even the southern savages have dignified with habitation.” Two hundred years later the islands were still of little value to Britain in either strategic or economic terms. The problem was that in the interim they had acquired an English-speaking population of some 1,800 people, and the islanders did not wish to be taken over by Argentina.

The Argentine military junta forced the war. Already guilty of massive civil rights abuses and detested by most Argentineans, the unpopular government sought to stay in power by pkying the “nationalist card.” The issue of the Malvinas presumably would appeal to all Argentineans, especially as the British government had been delaying negotiations regarding the future of the islands. But rousing nationalist emotions also meant that the junta would have a hard time reversing itself when prudence demanded it. Hardly anyone in Buenos Aires or London actually believed there would be a war over the Falklands. President Leopoldo Galtieri and other members of the Argentine junta were confident that the British would not regard occupation of the islands as a casus belli and would merely give way. British intelligence was woefully inadequate; London had no idea of the reality of the Argentine threat until too late. British intelligence dismissed the junta’s statements as mere posturing and a device to shore up its sagging popularity. As a result Margaret Thatcher’s government failed to dissuade the junta by making it clear that it would fight to resist an Argentinean takeover of the islands.

The Argentine military operation was actually launched prematurely when a trivial incident on South Georgia, a dependency of the Falklands 800 miles (1290 kilometers) to the east, caused it to be speeded up. Had the invasion occurred later, as had been planned, some of the British warships involved in the fighting would have been transferred to other nations and, therefore, would have been unavailable for battle.

On April 2, 1982, Argentina landed troops on the Falklands. The British cabinet responded by ordering a task force to the South Atlantic to retake them. Also on April 2, in what came as a considerable surprise to the junta, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 502 demanding Argentine withdrawal. Three days later a British carrier task force sailed from Portsmouth.

The war was short. When it was over Britain had salvaged its honor, the junta was discredited, and much of the world was left wondering what the war was about and why it had been fought. One of the unique aspects of the war was extensive coverage by the Cable News Network (CNN). The war was also somewhat unusual in that it was fought with remarkable decency on both sides.

Winter weather conditions in the South Atlantic were extremely difficult and a major hurdle for the British. The distance of the war from Britain—eight thousand miles—was another problem. In a deliberate campaign of misinformation London bluffed Buenos Aires into believing that the Royal Navy already had a nuclear-powered submarine in place off Argentina when the war began. After the British submarine Conqueror sank the old heavy cruiser General Belgrano on May 2 with a loss of 368 lives,rift gold the Argentine navy stayed in port. In 1984 there was something of a political scandal in Britain, when it was revealed in Parliament that the General Belgrano was actually outside the twohundred- mile exclusion zone proclaimed by the British around the Falklands and was moving away from the islands when it was torpedoed.

In a remarkably short time, the British converted four merchant ships to aircraft ferries with operational flight decks and maintenance facilities. This achievement was especially notable because before the outbreak of war there had been no plans for this conversion. The war also saw the first use of a vertical short-takeoff-and-landing fighter (VSTOL), the Harrier, to engage high-performance aircraft. The Argentinean air force was superb; its pilots flew their French-built Super Entendards almost at wave top and switched on their radars at the last possible moment to attack Royal Navy ships in Stanley (also called Port Stanley) harbor. Had more French manufactured Exocet missiles been available or the Argentinean bombs been properly fused, the war might have ended differently. Even so, the British lost two destroyers (Coventry and Sheffield), two frigates (Ardent and Antelope), a requisitioned Merchant ship acting as a carrier (Atlantic Conveyor), and a landing vessel (Sir Galahad). Ten other vessels were damaged. The British also lost fourteen aircraft to combat and ten in accidents. The British claimed Argentine losses amounted to more than a hundred aircraft. Once the Royal Navy had cut off the Falklands from resupply, British infantry, paratroops, and commandos went ashore to deal with the occupying land forces. The difference was superior British training, leadership, and initiative, even among conscripted troops, rather than superior technology. The Argentine army had not fought an international war in more than a hundred years; morale was low, the men were poorly trained and woefully supplied, and their officers tended to run away under fire. The result was a foregone conclusion. The last of Argentine forces surrendered on June 13. Most of world opinion sided with Britain in the war. U.S. support was extremely important. The war was a great fillip to the British, although the public response was more subdued than that of British leaders. The big winner was Margaret Thatcher. Lost in the euphoria of victory was her failure to avoid the war. What the British public chose to remember was her Churchillian stance when the conflict began: “Defeat—I do not know the meaning of the word!” In June 1983 the British electorate went to the polls and returned the Conservatives to power by an overwhelming margin in the House of Commons. This was attributable in part, however, to the British election system: more Britons, 58 percent, voted against Thatcher than for her, 42 percent. The war also led London to shelve plans, for the time being, to reduce further the size of the Royal Navy. The government ordered four new frigates and announced plans to keep the Royal Navy at fifty-five frigates and destroyers. The aircraft carrier that was to have been sold was also retained.

The war was in fact both absurd and expensive. It cost Britain 255 dead and 777 wounded. Argentina’s exact losses are unknown but Buenos Aires announced a provisional total of 652 men dead and missing in the war. The war cost British taxpayers $1.1 billion. Another $1.5 billion would have to be spent by 1985 to replace the lost Royal Navy ships and aircraft. That was only the beginning. In order to hold the Falklands the British government had to lengthen Port Stanley runway and station a squadron of twelve F-4 Phantoms for air defense. In the long run defense of the Falklands would require a new runway at a cost of several hundred million dollars, one thousand infantry troops, six destroyers, and a submarine. Maintaining the garrison would cost $650 million a year. All this meant that the British “defense of sovereign rights” cost at least $1.5 million per Falklander.