Probably something involving sheep…
You’ve got to realise that the South Sandwich Islands are even further away from Argentina, and have never been permanently settled, except for a whaling station and more recently a research station.South Georgia is even further away.
Not only that, but these islands have not been claimed by Argentina anyway, not until it was all lumped together in much more recent times, and the truth is that these islands are arguably part of the Antartic free zone if anything at all. In fact Argentina did not claim soveriegnty over these islands until 1940, but there really are even fewer grounds since they had been in British possession all that time without any challenge.
Add to this, the 1493 claim, and these islands had their existance been known, would have been within Portuguese hemisphere, not the Spanish.
It’s all a bit rich anyway, since Argentina only came into existance by displacement and destruction of the former inhabitants of those lands, they can hardly claim Britain used military might to kick out Argentina and then claim Argentina is theirs on the very same grounds now can they?
Even the very name ‘Malvinos’ is actually a corruption of the French word for them, you’d think if it was such a Spanish possession that they would be named for some Spanish title, and even that name was only applied in 1722, which is rather later than the 1590 name applied by the British in respect of a British Admiral.
Why has Argentina decided to claim the Falklands anyway, because if it is on the basis of former Spanish possession, perhaps it should seek to reclaim Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia, since these were all Spanish possessions and have more territorial contiguity than the Falkland Islands - and most important, were part of the same colonialist grouping, by rights Argentina has a much better claim over these lands than elsewhere - and it has had some disputes over the years over relatively minor border issues.
There is an alternative history which makes for interesting speculation, what if all these lands had joined up into one state?It is not inconcievable that we might have had something resembling the United States of South America.
Well, from a force perspective, while the Argentinian armed forces are in a deplorable state, I dont think it would cost too much to equip some small speed boats with surface-to-surface missiles, obviously we couldnt fight the RN with that, but we could make life very difficult for oil tankers and off-shore platforms, or, we could get some scud-like big missiles, either by buying them or reactivating the old “Condor” missile.
Off course violence being the last resource of the incompetent (see: Galtieri, Leopoldo Fortunato) that is not a path I’ll care to explore.
<Alan Rickman>Howeeever</AR> that kind of tactics could prove very expensive to fight, surely we can negotiate a settlement, lets say, 40% of oil revenues to be used in infrastructure work in the patagonian regions just next to the Islands… or something like that…
Also, without doing crazy things like the “force” options i mentioned above, if Argentina and it’s South American allies refuse to let ships going/coming from the Islands to dock in their harbors things could get more costly for the Oil Companies doing the extracting, surely we could reach an agreement to share the revenues as I said above.
I should imagine there are a number of possible scenarios, but one major one for Argentina is this, there will be a huge amount of logistical support needed, and that could be a massive boost to engineering and manufacturing, plus the prospect of cheap oil.
That oil has to be refined, plastics and other chemicals extracted. These are all ‘added value’ industries and potentially more rewarding than the oil itself.If I were an Argentine politician, I would be thining about deals, because the leaders who are in office once the revenue starts to flow in to government coffers will probably remain in power for some considerable time.
The companies, if they are successful, are multin-nationals in the truest sense of the wrod, borders and politicans are not overly important to them, they will go where the best deals are, and the thing that i most in their interest islikely to be a stable operating environment. There is not much chance of playing one government off against another in this region, so its going to be better for them to make it work.
If, this makes serious money, the royalties would be immense, you would expect to see islanders moving and taking their new found wealth into the nearest great cities, and this is perhaps the best opportunity for Argentina to demonstrate to them that changing their nationality would not be such a bad thing after all.
Sounds good, obviously it would be more economical for the companies to refine the oil nearby than in Europe or what not.
On the other hand they may en up doing all that on the islands themselves, without any single bit of profit for Argentina.
Why should Obama get involved in this at all? This has nothing to do with us. We’re under no obligation to take the English side.
Yeah, if it wasn’t for us, they’d all be speaking German anyway. 
Well they could invoke the NATO pact against aggression if Argentina invaded again or something like that.
Why didn’t they do it in 1982?, perhaps they did not need to?.
Funny Story: Some people I know insist that NATO could not help the British in 1982 because NATO its the “North Atlantic Treaty Organization” and the islands are in the “South Atlantic”… I wonder what they think about Afghanistan…
Maybe if the Argentinians attack we’d pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan so as to concentrate on somewhere where something British is actually under threat.
See, there’s an upside to everything.
Wouldn’t be a lot cheaper just to agree to share some of the revenues?.
Actually, that’s true. See Articles 5 and 6 of the NATO charter in force at the time:
[My bolding.] Obviously, the Falklands are south of the Tropic of Cancer, and hence not subject to the mutual defense agreement.
Actually, now that I think about it there were Royal Marines at Port Stanley when the Argentines invaded (see last paragraph of Article 6) but I don’t know if a standing garrison constitutes an “occupation force”.
Ouch!, then I was the idiot on that one, Ignorance fought.
Still falls foul of the geographical restriction though (I think, treaty language makes my head hurt).
So it does. I didn’t look at that bit carefully enough.
There’s very little that Argentina can do militarily to force a negotiated settlement, but if the oil down there turns out to be substantial there is the question of what to do with it once extracted. Is there a deep water harbour in the Falklands that can receive very large tankers? If there isn’t, the oil is going to have to be piped ashore somewhere else ie Argentina. So, in exchange for a revenue sharing agreement (40% is pushing yer luck 
), would Argentina be happy to accept this, and the oil terminal development, and give up the claim on the Falklands?
Anyway, Argentina and Britain have a long, mostly peaceful and friendly history together. Our upper classes play in each other’s polo teams for goodness sake! There’s Welsh speakers in Patagonia!
Well 40% was an starting price, we can bargain for sure, but yes , if it was up to me (Frodo I Emperor of Argentina!, Lord of the Esteros, Master of the Pampas, Scourge of the Coimas!), I’ll take a deal like that in a second.
See, I can respect that opinion. I only wish we (UK) had thought the same way about Iraq.
The provincial capital was moved from Port Louis to Port Stanley because it was sited on a proper deep-water harbour which could accomodate heavy naval traffic. Big enough to accomodate oil tankers? No idea.