One of the things about the Falklands War that has always puzzled me: what did the Argentinian government expect Britain would do?
Did they say to themselves: “a worn-out lion - she’ll roar a bit and that will be it?”
Britain has a long tradition of force-projection overseas, and the Falkland Islanders are mainly of British stock. Did the junta simply discount that ?
We’re they caught by surprise by Britain’s response in force?
Galtieri was the “president” in the junta setup. From references in the Wiki.
There was a real question mark over whether the British had the military capacity to take back the islands. Plus, other small colonial possessions had simply been seized by neighbouring states with no effective military response from the colonial power - Goa, for example, was forcibly annexed by India from Portugal in 1961. And of course a strict application of the Munroe Doctrine would suggest that the US could have been expected to favour the islands passing from British to Argentinian control, and so that the US would not support a British military response, and would pressure the British not to pursue one.
I think there was probably a large degree of wishful thinking on the Argentinian junta’s part. But I don’t think there hope that they could get away with it was completely without foundation.
Alas, they created a goddess.
Someone seriously thought they could predict the reaction of Thatcher’s UK in the 1980s based on what Portugal did in 1961? Seriously???
Short answer: The Argentine junta needed a short-term shot in the arm, patriotism wise, and people there had been taught since kindergarten that The Falklands should be part of Argentina. So they figured on protracted diplomatic wrangling. And even if they wound up having to givie them back they could have claimed a ‘glorious victory’ over a major power the whole time.
Well, yes, although as I say there was a degree of wishful thinking involved. But the fact was that British military and naval capacity was pretty depleted by the early 1980s. They had just scrapped the Ark Royal, and with it the Royal Navy’s fixed-wing aircraft capability; the Ark Royal’s (much smaller) successor was not to be commissioned until 1985. The British had to requisition a number of civilian ships in order to mount their expedition, and it wasn’t a given that the expedition would succeed. The US Navy assessment, in fact, was that the British couldn’t do it (mainly due to a massive disparity in available air power in favour of the Argentinians) and in the light of that the Argentinian gamble that they wouldn’t try doesn’t seem completely off-the-wall.
British public opinion could have turned against it very quickly if if was the Argentinians, rather than British, who had sunk a battleship at a cost of hundreds of lives - why were British lives being wasted in an ill-resourced and ill-equipped campaign to defend an isolated territory of no real strategic or economic signficance? Etc, etc - you could see how the discourse might develop. So, this was a risk for the British, and they might have concluded (or so the Argentinians hoped) that the least worst option was to respond diplomatically and commercially, rather than militarily.
People seem to forget that the HMS Sheffield was sunk by Argentina using a (French) Exocet air-launched anti-ship missile.
Why did Argentina buy anti-ship missiles?
It was not a spur-of-the-moment “Let’s notch up the Patriotismm and maybe the people will forget our brutality”.
Absent other cites, I can’t think that the purchase on anti-ship missiles indicates a specific intent to attack the Falklands.
The Monroe Doctrine?
Even if anyone thought a doctrine dating from a decade after the last U.S. war with England, and predating two major wars in which the U.S. and the U.K. were allies, was still a valid doctrine, did no-one notice that it referenced new colonies, and never claimed to challenge any European country’s current holdings?
I can believe the Argentinians believed there would be a lot of bombast and debate and negotiation, ending in … I don’t know, but something besides warships, but I will not believe anyone expected the U.S. to side against one of her strongest allies, in line with a century and a half old policy.
The only reason anyone has ever even heard of the Monroe Doctrine is World War I.
How many “Banana Republics” had such exotica at the time?
Why did the Junta feel obliged to buy very expensive missiles, modify aircraft to launch them and then train the ground and air crews?
This is not a “Saturday night special” (a cheap handgun useful for robbing the liquor store, but as likely to blow up in your face as not) purchase “for protection”.
The obvious (and, almost certainly only) reason for such a purchase was to be able to kill a ship much larger than anything operated by any South American country.
How did the UK military capability in 1984 compare to that of Portugal in 1961?
Granted, this thread probably doesn’t belong in GQ since I doubt anyone knows the factual answer, but if you going to pretend you have one, at least back it up.
The US cited it in the Cuban Missile crisis, which was only about twenty years before the Falklands campaign.
I don’t pretend to have one and, in the context, I don’t need one. The salient question at the time was not how the UK military capability in 1984 compared to that of Portugal in 1961, but how it compared to the requirements of retaking the Falklands by force. The relevance of the Portuguese example is simply that it shows that a colonial power, faced with a military challenge to its colonial position, may decide not to defend its colonial position. Had the British made such a decision, it would not have been unprecedented.
As already pointed out, the US Navy’s assessment of the British military capacity was that it was impossible for them to retake the Falklands by force. The assessment was wrong, as we know, but if the US could make that assessment then quite possibly the Argentinians could also, and they could also think it would be rational in that situation for the UK to make the decision the Portuguese had made twenty-three years earlier. Plus, the UK had taken a number of steps which the Argentinians wishfully read as signalling a lack of commitment to their South Atlantic possessions - depriving the islanders of full UK citizenship, scheduling the withdrawal of HMS Endurance from the region in its 1981 Defence Review, etc, etc. The Defence Review, in fact, gave effect to a decision to concentrate Britain’s (rapidly declining) naval resources on the UK role in NATO, and effectively to give up the ability to act independently outside the NATO area. If that was the British strategic stance, it wasn’t illogical to think that they might not attempt to retake the Falklands by force. (In fact, if the Argentinians had waited another couple of years for the UK to implement its Defence Review in full, it might actually have been impossible for the British to retake the Falklands, and they might not have tried.)
7,000 miles was a long distance.
One also wonders why the Argentines didn’t buy, say, 100 Exocets beforehand.
Never mind direct comparisons with Portugal, the idea was that a 1982 European power would be more likely to do the calculus of utility and decide that it was not worth the treasure and blood to hit back. As pointed out the US Navy did not considet it a slam dunk by any means and Britain essentially had to throw everything it did not have tied up in NATO duty at the Falklands. *On paper *the Argentine fleet and air force should have had plentiful home waters/sky advantage, had they bothered setting up a proper operation to face a counteroffensive. However… once the actual battle is engaged the differences in training, motivation, leadership, tactical and strategic doctrine including flexibility and initiative, command/control/communications, quality vs. quantity of equipment, begin making their difference. . For all the wasteful buying of hardware to show off on parade, the military in Argentina had as its main experience crushing their own citizens.
Politically, Thatcher was unpopular at home, too, and the perception from the Argentinian side was that the fait-accompli of the taking of the South Atlantic Islands would just result in her government falling, not in a rallying-round-the-flag – because, as per the quote mentioned above by** jimbuff314**, they considered the Brits to have become corrupt, weak… one has to bear in mind, in Latin America the discourse about the decadent, corrupt, weak-spirited, materialistic, mercenary, amoral nature of the dominant US/NWEurope bloc was as much a standard propaganda line for the right as it was for the left the whole century.
usedtobe, Argentina was no classic “banana republic”. In the 60s and 70s it was the most industrialized country in South America and it was in a serious competition with Brazil as to which of them would be the Regional Power for the South Atlantic. To that end c. 1980 Argentina and Brazil both had larger-than-needed conventional militaries with operational fleet aircraft carriers (not just little Harrier jumpers, although both rather creaky), and modest fleets of guided-missile destroyers/frigates, submarines, fighter jets – and not all of it old surplus either, they had some some decently current material including Type 42 destroyers of the same class as the Sheffield; but yes, a lot of it was older mark and the way to balance things out at the time was for instance, since you can’t just buy a new carrier in time for next summer, load your fighters with new missiles, or load new missiles in box launchers on your old cruisers (the US did that with their battleships, remember?). Pinochet’s Chile was not too far behind as #3 in shows of martial capability.
But it was not completely exclusive of the would-be regional powers either - Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela themselves were bolting on Exocets or Otomats to their vessels at the time, and buying Mirages and Israeli Mirage-clones and the ocassional Soviet/Russian gear. But let’s pause now and ask how many of those antiship missiles have been fired in anger since 1982 (sadly, the Ecuadoran and Peruvian air forces *have *gotten to use their toys on one another a few times). These military pourchases were mostly intended to keep commanders happy and thinking of new hardware instead of new counter coups. The Argentines in particular did not have an adequate stock of Exocets or Super Etendards to sustain the operation. They launched the invasion *before *most of their order was delivered.
The USSR did not have a ‘colonial’ relationship with Cuba in the early 1800s that predated the Monroe Doctrine.
The U.S. did not have the same relationship with the USSR as with the U.K. in the 1960s.
Cuba was a bit closer to the U.S. than the U.K., Argentina, or the Falklands.
I do not find that a valid comparison.
But it’s an effective refutation that nobody has heard of the Munroe Doctrine since the Great War. As late as 1961 US administrations were taking it seriously enough to cite it in relation to current events. And, yes, Cuba is closer than Argentina, but the Munroe Doctrine is usually stated as applying throughout the Americas. The US considers that European nations should not maintain colonies or interfere with states in either North or South America. This may not be the live issue that it was in the nineteenth century, but the US has never abandoned this position. And, of course, it was a live issue with respect to the Falklands. As it happens, the US didn’t invoke the Munroe doctrine in that context, but it wasn’t completely off the wall for the Argentinians to think of it as factor that would lead the US not to favour a British military response.
Well, demoness…