Kirchner’s Falklands Folly

In thinking about Argentina’s unpopular President Kirchner and her present actions over the Falklands I’m minded of some lines from Henry IV Part II, the deathbed scene where the old king is giving advice to his son;

Therefore, my Harry,
Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out,
May waste the memory of the former days

Oh, how she is attempting to busy the giddy minds, not just in Argentina, but right across the whole giddy Latin American world. She has wisely eschewed any form of military action, counting instead on regional solidarity and diplomatic pressure. At a wave of the wand the solidarity has been conjured up: she has won the support of the leaders of thirty-two countries in the Caribbean and the Americas, another grand and bogus gesture.

As it says in a leader in The Economist, Argentina is convinced that it has geography, history and international law on its side; that the position should be returned to 1833 when the British ended what in their terms was an illegal occupation. Yes, by all means let’s go back to 1833. Then Patagonia was independent under its own indigenous leadership and Argentina was little more than an enclave around Buenos Aires. Let’s go back to 1833 across the whole Continent, let’s kick the hornets’ nest! But, as I said in my previous Falklands blog, none of this matters. Here history and geography count for nothing. All that matters is the wishes of the people of the Falklands, and as yet they have no desire to be placed under the management of the incompetent Kirchner.

For Kirchner oil’s clearly the thing, not the right of the inhabitants of the Falklands to self-determination, a greater right in international law I find difficult to imagine. But while she may do wonders for the domestic Botox industry she’s not quite so good when it comes to the black stuff. There is a strong possibility of a big oil-strike in Argentine waters but she and Nestor Kirchner, her husband and predecessor, have pursued policies so hostile to private initiative in the energy industry that Argentina’s output of oil and gas has fallen for three years in succession.

This is just part of the country’s economic decline in the hands of the Kirchners. Inflation, once again, is taking off; Argentina, once again, is slipping into the third world, is slipping into the kind of situation that brought the generals onto the streets in times gone by.

The crazy thing is this woman, much given to empty political posturing, is clearly too blinded by short term political considerations- her own tenure of office - to understand that a major oil strike in the Falklands would be of enormous indirect benefit to the Argentine economy. Incurring none of the capital costs involved in exploration, Argentina could become the main onshore base for the Falkland’s oil industry. Its own weakened energy industry could only benefit from the know-how this would create. But, no; bring on the machismo, bring on a tantrum tango and let’s see how far she gets with that particular dance.

If oil is discovered, and discovered in quantity, there’s one other possibility. In 1771, shortly after the very first fracas over possession of the islands, Dr Johnson wrote a pamphlet called Thoughts on the late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Island, in which he said that a colony here could never be independent because it would never be able to maintain itself. At last that situation may be about to change.

To have and to hold

I enjoyed William Langley’s profile of President Cristina Kirchner of Argentina, the Botox Evita, in the Sunday Telegraph. Actually I think the parallel here should not be with the great Evita but more with Juan Peron’s second wife, Isabel, also one-time president of Argentina, the unlamented Isabelita. Or, considering her present posturing over the Falkland Islands, she might best be seen perhaps as the Botox Galterei.

I’m exaggerating, of course; nobody could possibly be as stupid as Leopoldo Galtieri, the man who embarked on an ill-advised military adventure to shore up the crumbling popularity of his murderous military junta. I don’t honestly think that the people of Argentina have the stomach for another fight, no matter how they shout about Las Malvinas. But Kirchner, increasingly unpopular, has decided on a spot of Argentinean machismo, imposing what amounts to an economic blockade on the Falklands.

Yes, she is drawing on a sense of grievance, on wounded national pride. The 1994 constitution, created after the end of the dictatorship- for which they have the British to thank – declares the recovery of ‘Las Malvinas’ to be “a permanent and unrelinquished goal of the Argentinean people. Recovery; that’s such an emotive word, don’t you think? Irredentism, the argument that lands should belong to the country to which they are ethnically or historically related.

There was a brief and questionable Argentinean occupation of the Falklands in the late 1820s, when a penal colony was established; but that’s it, that’s all. More than that, there is absolutely no ethnic link with any native Patagonian settlers; there never was. Besides, many of the natives of Patagonia itself were wiped out in the 1870s in an episode known in Argentinean history as the War of the Desert, by which control spread southwards from Buenos Aires to the areas adjacent to the Falklands. The very use of the word ‘desert’ gives some idea of how the native tribes were perceived.

Still, this is all quite arcane, really only of historical interest. The simple fact remains - a point I made on another blog - that the people of the Falklands are British and wish to remain British. British soldiers fought and died preserving their freedom from a brutal foreign aggressor, good at killing its own people, not so good at fighting wars. As long as the people of the Falklands want no change in their present status it is our duty to stand by them, no matter how much hot air is generated in Buenos Aeries. The only lift Kirchner is likely to get is from her continuing use of Botox.

Fighting for the Falklands

It's an historical oddity that the Falkland Islands, remote, wind-swept, with little strategic importance and no mineral wealth, have taken England to the threshold-and over the threshold-of war some five times; with Spain, with France and with Argentina. In fact it was the 1770 'crisis in a tea cup' that begins the whole sequence.

English sailors first caught sight of the Falklands in the late sixteenth century. In the following century the government was to make a half-hearted claim, though under the Treaty of Tordesillas they fell within the Spanish orbit. It was only in 1748, with the report of Admiral Lord Anson, that London began to give the matter its serious attention, sounding out the Spanish on the question of sovereignty. This only had the effect of drawing up the battle lines, though the matter was put to one side for the time being. An uncertain equilibrium might have remained but for the unexpected intervention of a third party-France.

After the conclusion of the Seven Years War, the French, attempting to improve their position in the South Atlantic, landed in the Falklands, establishing a base at St. Louis, now Port Stanley. At the same time, the one unbeknown to the other, the British made their own landing at Port Egmont in the west. Responding to Spanish objections, the French handed over Port Louis, now renamed as Port Soledad, though neither party was as yet aware of the proximity of the English, until a chance sighting of some ships in December 1769. And now we have a little overture to what was to come just over two hundred years later.

In June 1770 the Spanish governor of Buenos Aires sent five frigates to Port Egmont, landing some 1600 marines. The small British force present promptly surrendered. When Parliament assembled in November, the MPs, outraged by this insult to national honour, demanded action from the government. The Spanish attempted to strengthen their position by winning the support of France, invoking the Pacte de Famille between the two Bourbon crowns. For a time it looked as if all three countries were about to go to war, especially as the Duc de Choiseul, the French minister or war and foreign affairs, was in a militant mood. But Louis XV took fright, telling Charles III that "My minister wishes for war, but I do not." Choiseul was dismissed from office, and without French support the Spanish were obliged to seek a compromise with the British.

In January 1771 the British were allowed to restore the base at Port Egmont, although the whole question of sovereignty was simply sidestepped, a source of future trouble. The best verdict on the little fracas was passed by Samuel Johnson in his pamphlet Thoughts on the late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Island, looking at the British problem in holding such remote islands against a hostile mainland, "...a colony that could never become independent, for it could never be able to maintain itself." And so it remains today.