Wednesday, February 17, 2010

We need to watch the Falklands a bit closer

There are a number of things combining to make this a very dangerous time for the Falklands:

  1. Economic crisis in Argentina make banging on about colonial claims to Las Malvinas good Argentine politics.
  2. UK forces are stretched, and the navy reduced.
  3. The Argentine airforce has re-equipped, and challenges UK airspace regularly - including over flying.
  4. The UK is heading to a time of political crisis with its upcoming general election.
  5. The Oil reserves of the Falklands are now considered to be massive, and a very tempting target for Argentina, as well as the potential to claim the rest of the British possessions in the South Atlantic.
Argentina is setting up a sort of partial-blockade right now.
In the short term the government needs to give clear and unequivocal support to the Falklands by:
  1. Sending nuclear subs south.
  2. Up the Royal Naval surface patrols.
  3. Up the RAF aircraft numbers and supplies in place.
  4. Giving clear political support.
But in the medium term some sort of solution should again be searched for. Remembering that the UK objective has been the freedom, nationality and self determination of the Falklanders.

Something like Falkland Islander autonomy within Co-dominion might work if it became the settled will of UK & Argentina. The Falkland Islanders would have full control of internal affairs - especially immigration, but resource exploitation etc would have to be by agreement of the two sovereign powers.

Other ideas should be tried also, but any aggression should be met with the full spectrum of UK military response ( including Nuclear ).

The worry is with the Labour government so weak and distracted it will not give this the attention it needs. As the poster says "We can't go on like this", or at least if we try the results could be very bloody.

5 comments:

DaveP said...

Spot on. Send the nuclear subs, etc. in now; but will they? Could be a bit of a vote winner for Gordon if he does. Whilst he probably doesn't give a shit about the islands, the thought of extra votes from a just cause, could motivate him. We will see.

Anonymous said...

There have been rumblings around the Falklands for some time now and you're quite right, we need to send a message that is quite clear.
But we won't because our troops are elsewhere and we have no money.

Anonymous said...

There is nothing to discuss on this one. The Falklands is British and always has been. We do not negociate away parts of our Kingdom. Would we, for example, hand over Norfolk to a foreign power? The answer is no. The solution is to integrate the Falkands within the UK proper and give it devolved power and an MP for Westminster.

But I agree that we need to send a clear message to the Argies on their disruptive behaviour.

Anonymous said...

It is just tender and warming reading your comments but my question is : Why haven't you reacted with the same energy with Israel which has forged british passports for the Dubai Hit? Sure not, for that issue you would just urinate into your pants.
Oh, please continue being so brave and never do change.

Man in a Shed said...

@Anon - The straight answer is that its not clear the Dubai hit was Mossad. ( Its also very embarrassing for the UK govt as the new passports are supposed to be hard to forge and this argument underlies the ID card project which a lot of political as well as tax payer capital is tied up in ).

My guess is that there are things afoot in the Middle East much bigger than this issue.