Leader: Falklands needs our military assurance

Published on Monday 30 January 2012 00:00

ARGENTINA government has been loudly rattling and waving sabres at Britain’s continued possession of the Falkland Islands, or the Malvinas, as the southern Atlantic remnant of the British Empire is named on Argentine maps.

While a second military attempt to invade and reclaim the islands by the Argentines looks unlikely, the increase in tension is both unwelcome and worrying.

Now General Sir Mike Jackson, a former head of the British Army, has warned that if there was such a successful invasion, he doubts whether our armed forces have the capacity to retake the islands.

Given that command of the air by carrier-based aircraft was essential to the 1982 retaking of the Falklands, but we now lack that capacity, his warning carries some weight.

Against that, defences on the Falklands are immeasurably better now than they were then. The islands have a fully equipped and well-defended military airfield, including some recent reinforcements.

Any Argentinian assault, while it might eventually succeed, could only do so at a much greater cost in lives and equipment than the 1982 invasion, which succeeded with hardly a shot being fired.

Nonetheless, since the seabed around the islands appears to have valuable oil and gas deposits, the stakes in the disputed ownership of the Falklands are now much greater. The islanders, whose wish to remain British cannot be doubted, deserve to know that British military capability is sufficient to protect them in all circumstances.

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McThuselah

Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 02:52 PM

Alicia, everyone knows that the Falkland Islanders are staunch British subjects. Therefore any UK Government’s exhortations that they are free to change their loyalties, (implication being to Argentina), is nothing more than diplomatic hot air. They are all of British (English, Welsh and Scots) ethnic origin and speak English and not Spanish and are well mindful of the political heritage of Argentina. There has also been some inward immigration from the UK since the 1982 war. All UK government(s) during and since 1982, have stressed the "self determination of the population” as the reason UK defends the islands to draw attention away from the real issue, which is territorial sovereignty over the land and the surround sea area, plus of course our territorial claims to Islands to the south and a slice of Antarctica itself, some of which the incompetent Blair government signed over to the Scottish Parliament in the Scotland Act 1998! I am not going to go into the rights and wrongs and history of the sovereignty claims, but I do take exception at your using this article to introduce yet more invective on Scottish cessation.

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samcoldstream

Sunday, February 12, 2012 at 12:49 PM

This storm in a teacup is an opportune distraction for the listing Tory-led Coalition ship of state which is facing more and more opposition to its programme of legislation. In 2010, we rid ourselves of one very disappointing administration only to be landed with another one. Like the Royal Yacht, it hasn't taken long for the gloss to peel off the Cameron Tory - LibDem Coalition

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Alicia Murray

Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 12:50 AM

Spoken like a true unionist. The right of the Falklands people to self determination is to be fought to the death for, but if the Scottish people ask for the same consideration, every unionist comes out from under their rock to threaten us, lie to us, legislate against us, steal from us and any other dirty underhand trick they can think up. The Falklands can keep Westminster and we will trust our future to our own people in our own parliament in Edinburgh.

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