Hi guys, please allow me to join the fray here….
There was a very interesting post above discussing the different geopolitical realities of “de facto” and “de jure” sovereignty rights…
To me this is the whole center of the discussion, the current population’s democratically expressed political desires, or the “historical” imperatives tend to take a back seat to much more mundane aspects such as:
a) “How important/critical politically (as measured both internally and/or externally by each of the contending governments) is the ownership of this particular piece of land at this point in time”?
b) “How much will it cost my treasury to be able to fully guarantee our possession of this particular land”? and finally:
c) “What is the political goodwill to be gained internally and externally by militarily guaranteeing this possession”?
Without having any hard data to support my claim I think that to the “average Briton” (please note that I’m not putting this in terms of the opinion of the “average Kelper”…) ownership of the Falklands is not as important or vital as ownership of the Malvinas is to the “average argentinian”.
The desire for possesion of the islands runs deep in the national subconscious of the Argentinians, while before 1982 most Britons would find it very hard to locate the Falklands in the globe or on a map the same could not be said about teh Argentinians.
There are several books that now claim that the British government was at the end of the 1970s looking for a “way out” of the task and the cost of maintaining these pretty expensive frozen rocks… Economically speaking since the definirive demise of the whaling industry in the XX century the islands simply did not generate a surplus requiring a steady capital flow from London to support it. Turning them over to the argentinians was the basic idea that the British government, specially the Foreign Office was examining at that time. At least the Argentinians had ways to integrate the islands to their mainland generating economic efficiency and development from that.
The radical change in spirit came through strong and competent lobbying from teh Falklands Island Company representatives in the houses of Parliament, from this point ios that the “desires of the local inhabitants” became an important subject of discussion in Britain.
Going back to “de jure” and “de facto” rights as long as the subject of sovereignty claims continue alive, and there is no way it is going away in the near future (even more now with oil being found) our question reverts to how economically relevant will the UK and Argentina be respectively in 25/50/75 years time from now?
It is true that the Argentine Governments of the last 20 or so years seemed to have made every possible wrong economic move they could have done, but the UK has also declined in the relative global economic pecking order continuously as new up and commers assault its economic standing in the global ranking.
The loss of the 82 war followed by the rise to power of some revenge-minded left wing politicians, has hit the argentine military direly and at some point in the future they will have to be recreated, rebuilt, probably from scratch. On the other side, military costs in Britain seems to be spiraling out of control and participation in the “hard to leave” Afghan conflict might prolong the massive financial hemorhage even longer producing deeper and deeper cuts on the British standing military forces. As we all know cutting is always much easier to do than rebuilding those ever more expensive military means…
Having this in mind I think that the Argentines, if they are steadfast they may still in the end inherit the Malvinas back from a cash-strapped, militarily emasculated future United Kingdom…
Coments?
Hammer
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