INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE FALKLANDS CONFLICT

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE FALKLANDS CONFLICT

Also by Alex Danchev EST ABLISIDNG THE ANGLO-AMERICAN ALLIANCE FOUNDING FATHER: OLIVER FRANKS VERY SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

International Perspectives on the Falklands Conflict A Matter of Life and Death Edited by Alex Danchev Professor and Head of the Department of International Relations University of Keele M St. Martin's Press

Alex Danchev 1992 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published in Great Britain 1992 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world This book is published in the St Antony's I Macmillan Series General Editor: Rosemary Thorp A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-349-21934-6 ISBN 978-1-349-21932-2 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21932-2 First published in the United States of America 1992 by Scholarly and Reference Division, ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-07189-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data International perspectives on the Falklands conflict : a matter of life and death I edited by Alex Danchev. p. em. Based on an international conference organized by the Dept. of International Relations at the University of Keele in Sept. 1990. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-312-07189-9 I. Falkland Islands-International status-congresses. 2. Great Britain-Foreign Relations-Argentina-Congresses. 3. Argentina -Foreign relations-great Britain-Congresses. I. Danchev, Alex. JX4084.F34158 1992 341.2'9'099711-dc20 91-28739 CIP

Contents List of Tables vii List of Figures viii Acknowledgements ix Notes on the Contributors X Introduction: A Matter of Life and Death 1 Alex Danchev 1 The Policy Relevance of the Falklands/ Malvinas Past 12 Peter Beck 2 The Malvinas as a Factor in Argentine Politics 47 Peter Calvert 3 The Chilean Falklands Factor 67 Felipe Sanfuentes 4 The Role of the Falkland Lobby, 1968-1990 85 Clive Ellerlry 5 International and Inter-Agency Misperceptions in the Falklands Conflict 109 Virginia Gamba-Stonehouse 6 The Franks Report: a Chronicle of Unripe Time 127 Alex Danchev 7 Intelligence Warning and the Occupation of the Falklands. 153 Michael Herman v

vi Contents 8 The Falklands War and the Concept of Escalation 165 Lawrence Freedman 9 The Falklands War and British Defence Policy 191 Paul Rogers 10 Anglo-American Relations and the Falklands Conflict 203 Christoph Bluth 11 The Nature of Anglo-Argentine Diplomacy, 1980-1990 224 Guillermo Makin 12 Public Attitudes and the Future of the Islands 238 Felipe Noguera and Peter Willetts Index 268

List of Tables Table 9.1 Costs of the Falklands defence commitments 199 Table 12.1 Percentage approval of steps to improve relations with Argentina 240 Table 12.2 Party choice and support for improving relations, March 1990 243 Table 12.3 Response to the idea of leaseback for the Falklands 246 Table 12.4 Options for the future of the Falklands 247 Table 12.5 British and Argentine willingness to compromise, March 1990 248 Table 12.6 British and Argentine preferred compromise, March 1990 249 Table 12.7 British and Argentine acceptance of each compromise 251 Table 12.8 International problems facing Argentina, March 1990 254 Table 12.9 Reactions to charges of disloyalty 257 Table 12.10 Argentine policy towards the dispute 258 Table 12.11 British policy towards the dispute, March 1990 260 Table 12.12 The rights of the Falkland Islanders 262 vii

List of Figures Figure 1.1 A black-and-white view of the Malvinas past 17 Figure 1.2 Falklands or Malvinas? 20 Figure 1.3 Rival Anglo-Argentine perceptions of the South Atlantic region 34 Figure 6.1 Cartoon by Peter Brooks from The Times, 17 January 1983 137 Figure 6.2 Cartoon by Caiman from The Times, 19 January 1983 137 Figure 6.3 Cartoon by Lurie from The Times, 19 January 1983 141 Figure 6.4 Cartoon by Peter Brooks from The Listener, 27 January 1983 141 The four cartoons are reproduced by kind permission of the cartoonists. viii

Acknowledgements This book grew out of an international conference on the Falklands Conflict, held under the aegis of the Department of International Relations at the University of Keele in September 1990. One of the aims of that conference was to bring together, not only different nationalities, but also different experiences: former participants- witnesses, as it were -civil servants and others still professionally involved, and analysts, academic and journalistic. The debate among these various species is reflected in the following pages. For their advice and encouragement in the planning of the conference I am grateful to Professor Lawrence Freedman and to Peter Hennessy. Dr Anthony Seldon, Director of the Institute of Contemporary British History, was especially helpful at this early stage. Grants from the British Academy and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office secured the funding of the enterprise. Two of my undergraduate students, Robert Foot and Andrew Trehearne, acted as temporary unpaid administrative assistants and gave sterling service throughout, coping magnificently with every contingency and mixing easily with the great and the good around the conference table. Mrs Maureen Groppe provided invaluable secretarial support before and after the event. I should like to thank particularly a distinguished group of commentators on the original conference papers: Peter Hennessy, Michael Herman, Sir Rex Hunt, Admiral Sir Henry Leach, Dr Walter Little, Sir Anthony Parsons, Dr Oliver Ramsbotham, Professor Trevor Taylor, David Thomas and Robert Worcester. Professor Lawrence Freedman and Professor Alan James kindly agreed to take the chair at certain sessions, thereby giving everyone a respite from me. There are perhaps two tests of a successful conference - that it is interesting and even enjoyable to attend; and that it has a long scholarly half-life. The Keele conference appears to have passed the first of those tests. It is about to take the second. Alex Danchev Keele and Oxford, 1991 ix

Notes on the Contributors Peter Beck is Reader in International History, Faculty of Human Sciences, Kingston Polytechnic. His numerous publications include The International Politics of Antarctica ( 1985) and The Falkland Islands as an International Problem ( 1988). He is a member of the Latin American Study Group of the Royal Institute oflnternational Affairs, and has given expert evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs and Education and Science Committees. Christoph Bluth is Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies, King's College, London, where he specialises in arms control and Soviet strategy. His master's thesis at Trinity College, Dublin, was on 'Just War Theory and the Falklands/Malvinas Dispute'. Peter Calvert is Professor of Comparative and International Politics at the University of Southampton. He is the author of The Falklands Crisis: thr> Rights and Wrongs ( 1982) and, with his wife Susan, who is a specialist on Argentine politics, Argentina: Political Culture and Instability ( 1989). Alex Danchev is Professor and Head of the Department of International Relations at the University of Keele. A specialist in military history and international security issues, he has held fellowships in the Department of War Studies, King's College, London, the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington DC, and St Antony's College, Oxford. His latest work is a biographical study of Oliver Franks, Founding Father (forthcoming). Clive Ellerby took a first class honours degree at the School of African and Asian Studies, University of Sussex, where he was awarded the Rose Prize as the best History finalist of 1986. In 1990 he completed his doctoral thesis at Exeter College, Oxford, on 'British interests in the Falkland Islands: economic development, the Falkland Lobby and the sovereignty dispute, 1945 to 1989'. X

Notes on the Contributors xi Lawrence Freedman is Professor and Head of the Department of War Studies, King's College, London, and one of Britain's premier strategic thinkers. Among many other works, he is the author of Britain and the Falklands War ( 1988) and, with Virginia Gamba-Stonehouse, Signals ofwar: The Falklands Conflict of 1982 (1990). Virginia Gamba-Stonehouse is Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies, King's College, London. In 1983-4 she was Research Officer for the former Argentine Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nicanor Costa Mendez. She is the author of The Falklands/ Malvinas War: a Model for North-South Crisis Prevention ( 1987), Strategy in the Southern Oceans: a South American View (1989) and, with Lawrence Freedman, Signals of War: the Falklands Conflict of 1982 ( 1990). Michael Herman, a graduate of the Joint Services' Staff College, was a British civil servant for thirty-five years. He was Gwilym Gibbon Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, in 1987-8, and is now an Associate Member of the College and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow of the Department of War Studies, King's College, London. He has published a number of articles on intelligence matters and is writing a book on the subject for the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Guillermo Makin is the British correspondent of the Buenos Aires daily newspaper Clarin who specialises in Argentine politics and Anglo-Argentine relations. He organised several meetings of Argentine and British politicians in the aftermath of the 1982 war, and has given expert evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. Felipe Noguera is a partner in CEPPA (Centre for the Study of Applied Public Policy) in Buenos Aires, and in SOCMERC, the company responsible for extensive recent public opinion polling in Argentina. He has taken an active interest in the Falklands/Malvinas dispute, through work with the Fundacion Universitaria del Rio de Ia Plata. Paul Rogers is Senior Lecturer in Peace Studies at the University of Bradford and a leading analyst of British defence policy.

xii Notes on the Contributors He has given expert evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Mfairs Committee, and to the unofficial Belgrano Enquiry, published in The Unnecessary War ( 1988) by the Belgrano Action Group. Felipe Sanfuentes, a Chilean national, is an independent researcher specialising in the geographical and geostrategic problems of southern South America. A former international civil servant, his various appointments included service in Washington DC, and Central and South America. He now lives in Bethesda, Maryland. Peter Willetts is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the City University, London. He was Secretary of the South Atlantic Council from April 1985 to September 1988, and continues to be an active member and editor of the Council's series of Occasional Papers.