At some point an acceptable settlement may be available, but the war which Argentina provoked narrowed everybody's options
There is no more irrational influence on human affairs than numerology. Why the mere passage of a certain number of years should prompt reflection, trigger memories, and even sometimes drive policy is ultimately rather mysterious. So it is with the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands, the 30th anniversary of which falls on Monday. Partly in anticipation of that moment, the Kirchner government in Buenos Aires has been working itself into a lather from late last year, attempting to organise a ban on Falklands-flagged vessels in Latin American ports and releasing a report on Argentinian military mistakes in 1982 in a way that may suggest it wants the idea of force to be bobbing about, albeit distantly, in the background.
Britain added fuel to the fire by dispatching Prince William to the islands in his role as an RAF pilot, as well as by sending a particularly powerful warship to the South Atlantic. Prince William is now home, and the British government says the ship is on normal rotation. But the row sputters on, half serious and half comic, in a manner characteristic of the Falklands from the beginning.
Those who actually fought in the Falklands do indeed have a reason this time to be specially conscious of a conflict which in many cases has profoundly shaped their lives. Men who were in their 20s then are now into middle age, asking with particular urgency why they were spared when others fell, and why their countries sent them to war. Each month a special flight from Argentina lands another group of veterans at Mount Pleasant airport where, before setting off to try to find their old foxholes in the bleak turf, they can take a sideways glance at the military arrangements supposed to prevent any fresh Argentinian descent on the islands. Mount Pleasant is the pivot of a system supposed to funnel reinforcements of men and planes to the islands. Nobody knows whether it would work, and nobody, no doubt including the Argentinians, wants to find out.
This newspaper was opposed to a military solution 30 years ago, arguing for a diplomatic settlement up until the last moment when it was possible to do so, in part because the cost and the risk were deemed too high, and in part because it did not believe the Falklands would be viable even if we won. We wrote of "the bleak, costly and intractable future that faces the people of the Falklands after the Union Jack flutters once more from Port Stanley". That was wrong: the Falklands have in fact enjoyed a rather prosperous time since the war, with a substantial income from fishing and riches ahead in the shape of oil revenues, and with only limited harassment by Argentina. The Falklands are viable, perhaps not for ever, but well into the future. As a result, Britain has to shoulder a defence burden that is less than crippling but more than nominal, suffers some diplomatic disadvantages in Latin America, and retains access – how much is not yet clear – to broader South Atlantic resources.
The charge of colonialism is a red herring. The central colonial acts in the Americas were the dispossession of native peoples and the enslavement of Africans, begun by metropolitan masters and continued by white settlers. What followed in the shape of territorial rows between settlers was akin to a quarrel among thieves and deserves no moral stature.
The Falklands are an anomaly, but far from the only anomaly in the Americas. One has only to mention Puerto Rico, Greenland, or the Carribbean and Canadian islands that are provinces of France or parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, to show that the American political map is not a tidy one. At some point a settlement acceptable to all may be available, but the war which Argentina provoked 30 years ago narrowed everybody's options. Its consequences, including the continued existence of a separate Falklands political entity, will be with us for a long time to come.