A. I never said no-one has heard of the Monroe Doctrine since the “Great War”; I don’t think anyone on this board is that old.
B. Just because they cited it, doesn’t mean they took it seriously.
C. I’m pretty sure you are mis-interpreting the doctrine; I don’t believe it was intended to challenge the rights of European countries to existing colonies.
D. It was completely off the wall the think the U.S. would support just about any other country in a military dispute with the U.K. in the late 20th century, at least over the Monroe Doctrine.
E. You cannot take anything the USSR and the US said about each other during most of the 20th century seriously; it was primarily bombast and posturing, just like the Cuban missile crisis.
Just throwing some ideas out there, this was after Vietnam, after the Iran hostage crisis, and after USSR invaded Afghanistan, and Im wondering if third world countries mis-perceived Western countries as weak and impotent and with the UK also struggling to maintain peace in its own backyard in Northern Ireland, surely the macho Argentine military junta felt a woman would not dare send her military 7000 miles away just to take a few islands full of sheep.
The whole Munroe Doctrine is bombast and posturing; it is emphatically not the business of the US to have a view as to who should govern any territory that is not part of the US.
But, having said that, it was a strong principle of US foreign policy for a long time. And an Argentinian military junta would be the last group to think that, merely because a stated position is bombast and posture, therefore it won’t influence anybody’s actions or attitudes.
I haven’t suggested, and I don’t think that the Argentinian junta thought, that the Monroe doctrine would lead the US to support them against the UK in a stoush over the Falklands; just that it was a factor which might tend to weight the US more towards discouraging the British from attempting a military retaking of the island.
That begs the question, of whether Argintinia knew of the brits weakness in missile defense…
The brits problem was that they had long range missile detection radar on one ship, and short range missile detection radar on another.
Now with the ships having to be close by, in order to communicate and compare reports, they often crossed paths and blanked out one or both radars…
Did the Argentinians know this was going to be the case ? Perhaps they thought the brits had no such radar. it was new at the time… hence the two different deployments.
Without getting into all the complicated back and forth between France, Spain, the UK, and eventually Argentina dating to the 1760s, they didn’t clearly belong to Argentina either. The US having effectively accepted the UK’s possession since at least the 1840s, it would be difficult to assert the Monroe Doctrine with respect to them in the 1980s.
Granted. But the Monroe Doctrine wouldn’t be infringed by Argentina acquiring or holding the Falklands.
Oh, sure. I’m not suggesting that Argentina expected the US to “assert the Monroe doctrine” and so oppose the UK’s attempts to recover the Falkands - just that they hoped that the considerations which led the US to adopt and adhere to the Monroe Doctrine for so long would also lead the US generally to prefer an outcome in which the Falklands ended up Argentinian rather than British.
The Argentines came pretty close to winning as it is, a few more bombs exploding when they hit British ships and we would not be having this conversation.
The Argentine Airforce nearly won the war and if their Army and Navy had shown a bit more gumption they would have.
Not a reference, obviously, but when I was in High School back then, the American interventionism in Latin America was presented as a continuation of the Monroe doctrine.
As I remember it, basically yes. A lot of people at all levels argued against the use of military force. Many others, including my father, said it was a Fait Accompli and there was nothing to be done.
I doubt that 5% of the British population could have found The Falkland Islands on a map (I couldn’t) and 90% had probably never even heard of them before the Argentinian Government decided to claim them.
The key factor seems to have been the [proposed] decommissioning of the so called Fisheries Protection Vessel HMS Endurance, the only significant military presence in the area. Galtieri, desperate to prop up his failing regime and to placate his military, who no doubt assured him that it would be as easy as America’s invasion of Grenada (An ex British colony) proved to be a year later.
Thatcher’s response was a well calculated exercise in political expediency. By making the attack on The Falklands into an attack on the British way of life, she ensured a Conservative victory a year later.
You are correct in asserting that the Monroe Doctrine would not entail support for Argentina in seizing the Falklands. You are very incorrect in dismissing it as an obsolete relic of a bygone age. The Monroe Doctrine has been an animating principle of US foreign policy for almost 200 years. It was cited and taken very, very seriously during the Cuban Missile Crisis–so seriously, in fact, that the Kennedy administration was willing to go to the brink of nuclear war to uphold it. If China attempts to establish military bases in the Western Hemisphere at some point during the Twenty-First Century, I expect it to come into play again.
Somehow, I’m thinking “No, Galtieri’s fellow military leaders probably did not assure him it would be as easy as America’s invasion of Grenada, a year and a half in the future at the time.”
From memory the British military themselves had doubts whether or not the islands could be retaken. The initial briefings to Thatcher at least were fairly downbeat. I can’t remember his name but only the intervention of one of her Naval Chiefs convinced her that a Task Force sufficient for the job could be deployed.