Falkland islands
 

Im suprised no one has mentioned it, whats you opinion on this situation.

I believe this is one of the few places we never took by force? and there were no natives living on them previously?

Im believe no one wiill offer the uk any support, even chile has switched sides, i think we will be backed in to sharing sovereignty.

Re: Falkland islands
 

You forget about the Yanks and their love of the "Black Gold".

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Our islands as they have been for the last 300 years on the most part. Argentina has no claim over them. And compared to 1982 the islands have a far better defence force while the argentines have nothing that they could realistically use in an attack. I ant really see the americans sitting out of it either especially with the new US free americas block on the cards.

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I personally think that the people of the islands should get to choose who they are governed by. Having had family members spend time over there I am very confident that they would choose to be ruled by the British not the Argentinians. This is a similar situation to 1982, trouble in the Argentine homeland, us drilling for oil gives them a good option to deflect their troubles and people's attention elsewhere. As for what Hugo Chavez said about the days of the Empire read above, if they wish to remain British then who is to tell them that simply because of their geographical location that they should not be allowed?

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Agree, the islanders opinion should count.

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One of the documentary on for the 25th anniversary had interviews with the islanders and i can remember them saying that they wanted to be part of britain

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As far as I'm concerned it should only be up to the residents and AFAIK they want to be part of Britain.

Druid

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I've been there twice, 87 and 88. I can say that while I was there the "locals" were definately proud to be British.

Re: Falkland islands
 

you gotta fight

for your right

for a windswept cold iiiiisssslllaaaaannndddd

I'm suprised it hasn't been mentioned, I didn't want to start a thread as I'm not so clued up on the history of the previous conflict, but it was big enough news that my mate and I talked about it all day when the news first broke some time last week

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Why do you think we went in their in the 1st place? Bugger all to do with sovereignty, they knew back then about the oil reserves that's why the Yanks wanted to get involved all them years back.

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...and your evidence for this is...

We 'went in' there because the Falkland Islanders are British. It was nothing to do with oil. I seem to remember that the US was not very keen on offering support at the time.

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My dad has just been to Port Stanley last week. He says they are the most British people he has ever met, could do with a few of them back over here.

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ooooohhhhh no, not a ban/shortage on corned beef again. them Argentinians will do anything to raise prices.

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Re: Falkland islands
 

Due to my Dad having fought in the war I have always taken an interest in it etc. Been reading up and like some have said, the vast majority of islanders consider themselves British and have no desire to be part of Argentina.

From a historical point of view, the islands have been under French, Spanish, British rule as well as having been ruled by "political" positions such as the guvernor of various mainland ports.

This current issue is solely about oil and oil only. However, until modern times it wasn't about oil. It was originally held by each country and ultimately Britain due to it being an ideal staging area for ships going around the Cape. Over recent times there have been many hundreds of minor oil explorations with very little success. However, they now believe they have found large oil reserves.....hence the new drilling rig. Even so, will take numerous years to begin production....I think I read somewhere 4-6 years.

My personal view.....the islanders want to be British, Argentina have never really had a claim (other countries arguably have) BUT.....for me.....I think if there are genuinly makor oil fields then we should fight tooth and nail for it......fed up with being bent over backwards by other countries who control major oil production (as North sea just doesn't generate a significant global amount....I believe???)......

LET'S GET READDDDYYYYYYY TO RUMMMMMBLE!!!! :D

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Its been pretty common knowledge among the forces that we were there for the black stuff. Many many service personel said that while I was in the forces, which was 5 years before oil was officially found. They knew it was there they just had to find it. Id be quite happy to guess that this had a lot to do with the whole reason for the conflict... What other reason could there really be??

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Oh FFS, more of this 'war for oil' BS...

The reason was all to do with the islanders' strong desire to be British.

Suppose that Norway claimed the Shetland Islands, or Ireland claimed the Isle of Man, or France claimed the Channel Islands (Jersey is only 12 miles from the French coast)... or Canada claimed Alaska, or Turkey claimed Symi or Kos...don't you think that in each case the respective parties would wish to protect their sovereignty?

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Whether it was or was not due to oil.....is only knowwn by others......

However, my understanding was that at the time, the military Junta in Argentina were looking to stamp there authority on all desputed areas.....mainly, because the US had remained silent over the Junta and it was the Argentine military's belief that if they showed their power, the US would back them.

As well as the Falklands, they were having long standing dispues with Chile, Uruguay and others.

As another thought on oil.....the actual full discovery of oil only took place in the mid 90's following seismic exploration. If oil had been known to be there all along, we would have had platforms in right from the very end of the war would we not? Why wait nearly 30 years?!?!?!?

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Yes, Galtieri needed to boost popularity but, remember, so did Maggie. Poor poll ratings with an impending election suddenly turned around by a successful military campaign and subsequent outpouring of national pride back home.

Crikey, wouldn't things have been different if she'd lost in 83.

An aside to your discussion on oil but an interesting one, worth mentioning, I think.

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Yeah true.....the war came at an ideal time for Maggie, low polls, poor image and was nearly on the brink of loosing the next election.......nowt better than a popular soverign grabbing war to appease the voters.

Unlike modern wars on foreign soil that appear to be increasingly unpopular with the public.

Anyway's back to oil. Root of all eveil and all that.

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Its british should stay that way, but we'll probably give it away like the gas fields, After all it would be racist if we didnt:rolleyes:

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Oil? And here is me thinking that the Argies landed on the Falklands, arrested the locals and the claimed the land as theirs. Which as you can image would not be popular by the british public as there are british held captives, hence...War! The dispute of the islands as been going alot longer than sodding oil hunting, read your history...Ever since the re-establishment of British rule in 1833 Argentina has claimed sovereignty.
Some people tut.
Ste.

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Other than offering us a fleet, and ensuring that the Argentinians didn't get any more exocets?

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And strangely enough, when she stood up in the Commons and said that she was going to send a taskforce, there was only one dissenter, and that was Ray Witney - the (Conservative) MP for High Wycombe at the time.

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They're actually Danish.

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On the whole (actually, wholeheartedly), I'd agree with that, but (playing devil's advocate here) does that also hold for the occupied territories in Israel/Palestine? The Settlers say that they want to be part of Israel, but to everyone else, it's illegal. Just because someone is there, doesn't give them the absolute right to say what's what.

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Then that may mean that there would be a very much better supply of tasty pastries, so I'm all for it.

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A US built radar on the Islands during the war and US built A4 jets knocking holes in Brit ships. But they did help out with information from my reading around the subject.

No respect for Argentina. A government even more bent than ours which takes some doing...
We were too soft with them in 1982, nuclear subs should have had free reign to knock holes in anything Argentinian at sea. Limited risk to British assets, bargain.

I know there's a current increase in naval force around the Islands, but I doubt the current regime has the stones to do anything about it if Argentina actually has a go.

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The falklands never had an indigenous population, the people there choose to be British, hold Brit passports and are not of Argy ethnic origin.

The Isreal/Palestine thing is a racial/religious occupation by force bordering on genocide. This is a simple territorial dispute :-$

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That's a fair point :-)

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And the 1982 conflict was basically a happy slapping because Galtieri needed to look hard in front of his mates.

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Back in the 90's oil was only about $10 a barrel, so with the difficulty in extraction it wasn't worth it. But with the sky rocketing prices now and more modern techniques in extraction its more financially viable. The original surveys where done by Shell, and I imagine they are not interest now as Argentina have said anyone drilling in that area will loose any rights to drill in Argentinian areas, hence the little British company drilling.

I don't think it was about oil back then as it was worth naff all.

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It would have been so much easier if they had just had Galtieri & Thatcher slap each other.

I would say less so his mates and more so the US......they had been asking for US backing of the junta for a long time pre the war.

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And waiving the 1823 Monroe Doctrine which states that any efforts by countries to colonize land or interfere with states in the scope of the Americas would be viewed by the United States of America as acts of aggression requiring US intervention. Basically, they agreed not to come and kick us out when we got shot of the Argies. Quite a ballsy move, actually. This was, I believe, the first time it had been waived and gave Britain the unspoken authorisation to commit her forces.

I served there in 1991 and, like FG1, found the Bennies to be extremely proud to be British and fiercely loyal to the Crown - unlike some people in THIS country.

Just as an aside, around 60% of the Islanders are of Australian or New Zealand extraction due to the relatively high numbers of sheep shearers from those countries going there to help out with the shearing.

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You could argue that the Monroe doctrine would only be applicable if we had invaded Argentina, which other than being pointless would be totally impractical.

AFAIK they did embargo arms to Argentina but they did that long before anyway in protest of the junta. They also provided Ascension Island with huge quantities of fuel for us to run the V bombers on.

Re: Falkland islands
 

The other point here is that the United Kingdom and Argentina had a treaty by which any oil revenues would be shared - I D/K in what proportions - Argentina unilaterally renounced it in 2007.

So this is not a dispute about oil.

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The US supplied us with fuel and an airbase on Ascension Island to work from. Without either of these, the conflict would have been long over before we could get there.

Good book for those interested - Vulcan 607
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vulcan-607-R.../dp/0593053915

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Absolutely cracking read, otherwise termed "operation; skin o tha teeth"

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This was actually a really tricky one for the Americans at the time.Besides the Munroe issue,Argentina was a USA client state and had been supported extensively by them for many years.I was in Argentina before the war and there were plenty of American military there training and equiping the junta's forces.This during their "dirty war"when the junta murdered thousands of the opposition.You still see groups of elderly women standing outside government buildings in Buenos Aires asking what happened to their "disappeared ones".The Americans tried to mediate to prevent the war,but eventually gave Britain their tacit support to retake the islands.They even offered military support to us,allegedly on the understanding it would be declined to save their embarrassment.The rest is history and the Argentines have no real claim to the islands other than that they are the nearest country.By the same token France should have Jersey and Spain Gibralter.Best to ask the inhabitants,especially if there is no dispute amongst them.

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Yup. Cracking read. Real "flying by the seat of your pants" stuff. (no pun intended!!) The airbase on Ascension, as with Diego Garcia, is owned by Britain. It is, however, manned and administered by the USAF. I belive it was used as an alternative landing site for the space shuttle before it was found that most of Florida was a more cost effective option.

As for YC's point about the Monroe Doctrine - yeah, you could argue that but the point I was making was that they waived it.