Leader: Falklands needs our military assurance

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.