Thursday, February 18, 2010

Gordon Brown's weakness risks disaster in the South Atlantic

Over the years I've done a number of posts on the Falklands. I've tried to point out how Labour's defence policy is driving us to a bloody disaster.

Today we have confirmation that Labour is doing nothing to counter claims over UK territory. The next logical step for Argentina is to stop the oil rig moving south to the Falklands.

This will be easy for them. After all Labour's politically correct Royal Navy with equal opportunities and iPods for all has failed on every challenge recently:

eg The HMS Cornwall humiliation and the kidnap of the British couple from their yacht - floating right next to a Royal Navy vessel equipped with Royal Marines.

This sort of craven weakness invites aggression.

Here are a number of past posts on this subject:

Thursday, April 13, 2006 Threat to the Falklands again
Monday, April 17, 2006 The Battle for the Falklands
Tuesday, June 27, 2006 Blair dangerously weak on the Falklands
Friday, July 14, 2006 The Economist article on the Falklands ( War of words )
Monday, October 16, 2006 The decision to scrap Sea Harrier now comes back to haunt Blair
Saturday, March 31, 2007 We need to decide what were about.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007 Lest we forget 25 years ago
Sunday, April 29, 2007 Spanish Ambassador stabs Britain in the back
Argentina pushing its colonialist and aggressive claim to sea bed between Falklands and South Georgia
Wednesday, March 19, 2008 National security - but no mention of the Falklands
Tuesday, July 08, 2008 A threat to the Falklands ?
Sunday, December 07, 2008 Does Gordon Brown want the Falklands to be invaded again ?
Sunday, January 17, 2010 Military manoeuvres
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 We need to watch the Falklands a bit closer

Lets be clear any weakness will be punished by disaster and we have the weakest dis-functional government this country has had in living memory.

We really can't go on like this !

6 comments:

Bill Quango MP said...

Seeing as we can't actually defend the Falklands against a proper Argentine assault, unless the USA 2nd fleet is with us, aren't we better to come up with some diplomatic solution? Our carriers won't be ready for a decade and who knows what a/c they will deploy.

Not advocating surrender or anything, but oil terminals in Argentina makes a lot of sense. Some sort of investment scheme?
We would never be able to escort convoys of tankers. The harbours at Stanley aren't going to be big enough if the scale of oil is as they say, and they won't take a fleet as a long term base. The airfields can't handle 100 eurofighters, which we have in mothball, but not the facilities to operate them.

Some sort of carving up now? We keep the rights, they get some juicy contracts?

Man in a Shed said...

@Bill

I read that Argentina pulled out of a production sharing agreement in 2007.

My guess is they think they can get the whole thing.

We are entering a world constrained by raw resources and the Falkland and British Antarctic territories are the key to a vast amount of resources.

With Gordon Brown's record we can expect him to lose them if he stays in office.

Remeber it was the Falkland's War that saved Britain and well as the Falklands ( and arguably Argentina also ).

Its worth reading "The Razor's Edge" account of the Falklands war to get a good understanding of the Argentine mentality.

Yes negotiation / compromise would be good - but i don't think the Argentines can handle that.

DaveP said...

Send in a sub., if there isn't already one there. Any aggressive Argentine warship might think twice about disrupting shipping if they knew there was a hidden enemy. Think Belgrano.

Have the Spanish got a navy? They have a big fishing interest in the Falklands. Might want to protect it.

Man in a Shed said...

Subs are good.

Of course what is often forgotten is that once the Falklands emergency kicked of last time the Foreign Office played a blinder in gaining support of defusing opposition in the world. ( OK their performance up to that point had perhaps created the crisis ).

We can't rely on Banana Boy and Grumpy Gordon to lead the diplomatic effort and we might have hostile countries where once we had neutral or friends.

Also I suspect Obama harbours very strong anti-British sentiment.

We need to nip this one in the bud - and do some work on resolving the dispute with Argentina.

Bill Quango MP said...

I have read razor's edge. An excellent book despite the publishers best efforts to portray the 'illegal war' line {with MRs T depicted as a pirate on the cover IIRC} the author makes the point as well as its ever been made that Argentina was a Dictatorship and there was almost no difference between the Juntas actions and Saddam's land grab in Kuwait.
The risks the Tories took, in purely political terms, were enourmous.
There was a very,very good chance that the task force would be defeated.Imagine the Labour parties glee at that.

But you know all this Mr Shed. Its how we would ever hope to hang onto the Falklands, without USA active assistance, that is the worry.

James Higham said...

I just said that at Donal's - can you imagine him running a war? for a start, he'd sell off the ammunition at rock bottom prices.