The Falkland Islands: Prepare for War in Peace

The Scotsman, a paper I am rarely inclined to take any notice of, last Sunday reported that "an increasingly anxious UK government is closely monitoring a build-up of Argentinian military strength". My first thoughts were that it wasn't really a surprise. The UK's armed forces have for quite some time been going through a period of "reorganisation" - a government euphemism for cuts. As a consequence there is bound to be a relative depreciation in comparison with Argentina.

Apart from the Argentinian military build-up, it would also appear that the heightened sense of the threat to the Malvinas islands - as they are known in South America and probably the EU - has been gathering for several months as President Nestor Kirchner seeks to further consolidate more power in his own hands.

It is alleged that several Argentinian aircraft have over-flown island airspace in a bid to test RAF defences and a number of Falkland vessels have been seized in waters close to Argentina. This already tense situation has been further exacerbated by the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, a Kirchner ally, who responded to criticism from Prime Minister Blair this month by telling him to "return the Malvinas to Argentina".

Apparently high-ranking officials in the Foreign Office, as well as the Ministry of Defence - which is historically ignored - have confessed to concerns that the changing political situation in Argentina and Latin America, as well as Britain's growing military commitments around the world, are conspiring to undermine the security of the Falkland Islands.

A senior Ministry of Defence source states that:

"This could be termed as sabre-rattling, but when our forces are deployed in so many locations, its potential for causing mischief is magnified. We've been watching a steady build-up of the Argentine air force over the past year. Frankly, they have no need for such a large fighting force, and there is concern in Whitehall as to what this is all about".

I would have thought it was obvious what their intentions were, a defence of their perceived national interests, which is something the present UK Government has a rather poor record on: Gibraltar et al.

The source then added:

"The Argentine air force is at least twice the size of that we fought during the Falklands War and the question has to be asked: how many more aircraft do they need"?

A rather succinct conclusion; the Argentinian's don't actually need that many aircraft to engage in irredentist activities against the British. I also doubt whether the British have the political volition, let alone the military capability, to re-capture the Islands.

I have always believed that the lesson of the original Falklands conflict should have been to remind the British nation of its maritime legacy. For a short period it did inculcate this belief, with the immediate reversal of the Conservative government's misguided 1981 Strategic Defence Review, which would have severely ameliorated Britain's maritime capability. The Falkland Islands conflict didn't only just come to the rescue of Margaret Thatcher and her administration.

Unfortunately nothing has been learnt, and the British nation is still not about to embrace her special peculiarity; the sea, and is seemingly bent on dismissing it. Britain still seems to have lost touch with its instructive past.

Ever since the end of the First World War British governments - Conservative and Labour - have held views and actions that are antithetical to the interests of Britain. The government of the day has believed that foreign relations are best managed through liberal means. It has consistently rejected the idea that a military deterrence and a constant mutual readiness for war were needed to keep prospective aggressors from challenging Britain's world-wide interests. Just because the world is no longer pink, and the Union Jack no longer flies in Hong Kong, it doesn't mean everything has changed. Britain's interests are still inherently global.

Britain still remains a significant maritime power, against the wishes of europhilles, but that fact depends on its sea power and the ability to protect its essential trade routes and communication lines. It is this that holds together Britain's vast maritime empire, and which ultimately ensures its prosperity and survival. The guarantor of that survival, the Royal Navy; however, has been allowed to diminish to a level of strength incommensurate with Britain's global interests.

The virtual atrophy that the Royal Navy has experienced since the end of the Second World War has its roots in the prevelance of welfarism in the 20th century, and the state's illegitimate infringement into daily-life. With the expansion of the British state and its usurpation of the provision of services, which were once provided by private and voluntary organisations, the three Armed Forces have had to compete against not only each other, but other seemingly more worthy causes.

It's an incorrigible fact that the current procurement of a new generation of aircraft carries, which the present Labour government is attempting to achieve with great difficulty, is not only a nuisance to the altruistic Chancellor of the Exchequer, but also to a voter on incapacity benefit. This is especially pertinent if it means a concerted effort by government to cut spurious claimants. You can't really blame them for thinking like that; they are merely products of their own special circumstances. The Chancellor believes that the state can provide the solution to all social inequalities, and the incapacity claimant, having had every independent atavistic trait hermetically destroyed, now believes state support is a right which cannot be repudiated.

It also didn't help that Europe's dependence upon American armed forces during the Cold War only further extenuated the circumstances. American forces effectively allowed Europe - including Britain - to divorce itself of its fundemental responsibilites to its citziens, and to divert resources away from defence to expensive welfare programmes. It is I suppose a moot point to add that it is these welfare programmes that have left Europe so susceptible to vigorous ideologies like Islam, and which threaten the very fabric of European society.

The salient point is that both Britain and the Royal Navy's destiny are intrinsically bound together. The Royal Navy is organic, a mere extension of the state's imperative, it cannot be artificially transformed or rebuilt. For that reason the essential foundation of sea power is a government willing to nourish the state's maritime resources in peacetime. Unfortunately we are in years of relative neglect.

The Government has a peacetime policy, but it goes against all sense of reality: not to prepare for war. At the most generous it could be termed a policy of extemporisation. British Government's must understand that peace is a relatively modern invention, and that war is not a pathology that with proper hygiene and treatment can be wholly prevented; every war-free period is actually an inter-war period.

There now then needs to be a vital awareness as to the importance of sea power in Britain's past, its role in the political, military, diplomatic and economic history of Britain, and the dissemination of that maritime knowledge into the public consciousness.

It was Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, one of the leading intellectual exponents of the British maritime paradigm, who stated that without a conscious appreciation of what and who we are, then "Demos is at the mercy of false leaders and fallacies".

As for the Falkland Islands - they are a prisoner to fortune.