From the Falklands to Iraq

28 March 2007

After the Falklands war, stern efforts were made to ‘learn the lessons’ of what appeared to be a failure of intelligence and deterrence. Yet a dense fog still surrounds the run-up to that war. There are few accounts of the war seen from the Argentine side, as defeat is always an orphan. Last year’s official British history by Sir Lawrence Freedman broadly accepted the Franks thesis that the invasion came as a bolt from the blue. It was a spur-of-the-moment response by the Argentine junta to a threatened general strike, capitalising on a visit to South Georgia by some scrap-metal merchants in March 1982. Such an invasion, said Franks in 1982, ‘could not have been foreseen’ and therefore, ‘We would not be justified in attaching any criticism or blame to the present government.’

The truth is that the Argentine invasion was a complex operation that had been long in the preparation. Although plans for an invasion were standard exercises in Argentine navy circles, 1981 was different. The British government was clearly signalling that it had lost interest in its South Atlantic possessions. At the United Nations in New York the Foreign Office had been negotiating to transfer sovereignty over the islands to Argentina and then ‘lease them back’ to enable the islanders to continue as self-governing. These negotiations deteriorated abruptly when Margaret Thatcher indicated to Foreign Office ministers that she was unwilling to pressure the islanders to agree terms. To the intelligence community the result was clear. It meant a seriously increased risk of Argentina staging an occupation, against which the islands had to be better defended, the so-called ‘fortress Falklands’ option.

Thatcher’s desire to appease islander opinion was equalled only by her desire to cut defence spending, best illustrated by the navy review boldly engineered by her defence secretary, John Nott. This embraced the end of ‘out of area’ seaborne operations, the withdrawal of HMS Endurance from its patrol duties in the South Atlantic and even an offer to sell the carrier, HMS Invincible, to Buenos Aires. To Argentina’s naval attaché in London, Gualtar Allara, Britain was pulling in its colonial horns. The Falklanders were not being offered full British citizenship, Rhodesia had gone and Hong Kong was going. The Diego Garcians had been sold down the river.