Man in a Shed: Threat to the Falklands again

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Threat to the Falklands again

I hope the article I found in the Scotsman in Feb is alarmist about the build up of Argentine forces. But you get a cold feeling about it.

Just at the time that Britain gets rid of its Sea Harriers - what capacity is left to retake the Falklands after another successful invasion ?

Does anyone really think the Americans or French will help us out.

This has the makings of a national disaster ...

Update - see BBC post on issue raised by Liam Fox here..

4 comments:

Ellee Seymour said...: Do we have any spare troops left for Argentina, Iran,wherever..
Do we always want to be fighting?; 4:26 pm
Man in a Shed said...: My concern here is to stop any fighting taking place. Remember the last war came about as the then Argentine Junta didn't believe Britain would or could do anything about an invasion. An impression the Foreign Office encouraged.

It would be far better to reinforce the Falklands now - and prevent the threat of invasion, rather than be put back in the position of having lost them again. Remember our government has just decommissioned the only fighter defence our fleet has getting rid of the Sea Harriers to save money. It will be 10 years before the UK has equivalent naval aviation again - its a weakness the increasingly nationalist Argentine government may be tempted to take advantage of.l; 4:39 pm
Anonymous said...: I believe there is no way the United states could not give its support this time, particularly after Iraq.

I think Argentina knows this too. Besides our amred forces are on such a different level to what they were in 1982, despite the scrapping of the sea harriers.

The US would have lent the UK an aircraft carrier in 1982 if ours had been sunk.

Do you not think that with the closer military ties between the 2 countries, the very least the US would do in an emergency would be to lend us a carrier for the new EF Typhoons to launch from?; 10:28 pm
Man in a Shed said...: On the US lending a carrier I wouldn't be too sure. Remeber in Suez the US pulled the rug from under the British and French. I suspect getting Typoons ready for naval operation of a steam catapult carrier and the associated training would take of the order of 6 months.

The military options would be blockade by submarine - but whether the British government could sustain that approach politically must be in doubt. Remeber the sympathy over the sinking of the Belgrano - even in Britain - regardless of the rights and wrongs of the action.

I've been reading Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins excellent book "The Battle for the Falklands" and will post on it soon as it adds a lot of context here.; 3:31 pm

Post a Comment

The pound in your pocket

"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists." James Callaghan

“The trouble with theoretical economists is that they don't understand that when you have a deficit, you can only finance it by borrowing, and you've got to persuade people that it's worth lending money to you and that they'll get their money back... there's no way of escaping it.” Dennis Healey during the 1976 Stirling Crisis.

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of over-turning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." John Maynard Keynes, 1920.

"To preserve [the people's] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America,1801-1809.

Inflation is taxation without legislation .. Milton Friedman