The French government were very helpful, providing performance information on the Exocet. The Argentinians tried to buy more Exocets on the open market, but MI6 agents bought the ones available. The French also provided aircraft similar to those used by the Argentinians for the RN to practice against.
The US released their strategic fuel stores held on Ascension.
And gave us access to the new all-aspect mark of sidewinders for the Harriers. That was one of the key factors in victory. Longer range and unlike the version used by Argentina did not have to be fired from behind the target.
At the very beguinning of this thread I said that the opinion of the Falklanders is the end of this issue for this Argentinian. I now wish to clarify my position. You see Sean Penn backs our position and that is the end of it. And every day more support keeps coming. Just this morning, the Rotary Club of Greenbow Alabama said, and I quote, “The Malvinas are Argentinian”. Now Obama will have to support us and all the might of the US Navy will drive those pirates back to Dublin (London, of course, will be oblitararted).
I told Frodo that our President was and idiot and a bitch and this incident with Sean Penn more than confirms it.
That being said, the position of many dopers is also not correct. The fact is that the Falklands (Malvinas) are a 100 miles away from our shores. And it is also a fact that there is a dispute over those islands that go back almost 200 hundred years.
At the end of the day Argentina will have to grow up and realize that there are only two ways to get those Islands back. The first one is war, our military ar in no position to wage it and the population won’t support it. The second one is if the islanders want to become Argentinians. Good luck with it.
But the UK goverment, and the islanders, will also have to grow up. There is no way in hell that an Argentinian goverment will renounce it claims without major concessions by them. We need some kind of modus vivendi. The problem is that most Argentinian politicians are both idiots and crooks and, for what I saw, the UK politicians are also idiots (I don’t know if they are also crooks). Someone has to make the gesture. And no one is willing to do it.
In the meantime, the economic prospects of Argentina are not as good as Frodo claims. Our foreign policy is not the only policy in this country that is run by crooks or clowns. Our economy is single handedly run by a man called Guillermo Moreno that is the latest, and one of the most remarkable, self taught economy manager that this country has ever seen. You see after a decade of killing fat cows (literally) our goverment find itself out of funds. So Moreno has discovered that the only way to grow our income is to choke our imports. But Argentina is a modern economy and he is starting to find out that most of our exports needs our imports. But for the time being our foreign commerce is almost stopped and our economy is loosing lots of cash.
The recent train wreck in Buenos Aires is only the latest sign that our miracle economy is no miracle at all. The goverment spent millions of dollars in subsidies for that very train that was spent by shady Unions, crooked politicians and buisnessmen. The last Transport Secretary even got a jet plane as a gift from the very same man that owns the train line involved in last week accident. In the meantime the common citizen travels like cattle and dies like cattle.
But las Malvinas son Argentinas.
Why the UK? It tried.
Argentina flounced out of resource-sharing agreements because sovereignty was off the table (although as Argentina has no more claim on the islands than they do on The Moon I reckon the UK was making a serious gesture in entering such arrangements).
Accept it is off the table - that’s the gesture that is needed. So long as any arrangement or gesture is going to be interpreted as a foot in the door it’s difficult to see what the UK could do.
This is not a fact.
To clarify, West Falkland/Gran Malvina, the nearest of the two main islands, is 251 miles from Argentine shores.
In your pig-dog Imperialist miles, yes. 
As usual I agree mostly with what Estilicon says about the Islands and the related diplomatic affairs.
While some of the things you say here are right, there is a long loooong way from that to the imminent collapse and military coup that ralph124c predicted.
The Argentines used those they already had on hand to deadly effect, but there was an immediate European arms embargo imposed after the invasion that, as far I know, the French respected. It was, for the Argentines, a “come as you are” war.
Indeed, Argentina tried everything they could to get more.
There has probably never been a more shockingly effective conventional weapon ever deployed in a modern war; **the Argentines had just six missiles **and with them sank or disabled three ships. Had they had 36, they likely would have won the war.
The Argentinian weapons were amazingly effective. But a large share of that effectiveness was based on a fluke. Argentina bought weapons from NATO countries. And British defense equipment was all set to defend against Soviet weapons.
So a lot of equipment that was suppose to identify and jam incoming attacks didn’t work properly against the Argentinian weapons. The British equipment registered them as friendly weapons and had to be manually overrode (and France helped Britain by giving them technical information that allowed the British to reprogram their defenses).
Argentina probably got better results from six Exocets than they would have gotten from thirty Bazalts.
Clearly the actual interview isn’t available yet, but if he said what he is reported to have said then, well, Mr Waters I am very, very disappointed in you.
Well Roger Waters is pretty much the angriest man in the world, doubly so in situations regarding armed conflicts. I love his music but I wouldn’t take him seriously in terms of international conflict and diplomacy. His early life experiences have skewed his worldview, which is a source for his great art but not a foundation for a balanced foreign policy.
I mean, what notice would the Argentinians take of Morrissey commenting on their meat-packing industry? they may consider him just a tad biased. (bonus points awarded for spotting the Floyd reference here)
Are they anonymous?
How do you expect to get your pudding if you don’t eat your meat?
This, X 100.
They stormed off in a miff, after losing the war, and now they’re all butthurt they can’t engage the Brits in a dialogue about sharing resources.
And the proximity argument is just hilarious. (Imagine if the US tried that with Cuba, what fun would ensue!) The residents have been proud British subjects for generations, and wish to continue to be. Accept it. Oh, and you lost the war, deal with it. And it’s the Falklands, not the Maldives. Maybe try asking the residents, if you’re unsure.
If the Argentine’s want anyone to take them seriously, they need to grow up and face the hard facts. Trying to deny them makes them look like a deluded, insecure, banana republic, (which I’m certain they are not!), within the international community.
Malvinas, not Maldives. Different ocean. I suspect the Argentines will stop calling them the Malvinas about the same time you stop calling Deutschland “Germany”.
[Ninja’d. Damn you Really Not All That Bright]
They may be the Falklands, but certainl they are not the Maldives.
Las Malvinas is the Spanish word for them, unless you’re proposing we call Germany Deutchland or China 中国. Maybe try asking the residents if you’re unsure.
Snark aside, the failure of the successive Argentinian governments to acknowledge the Falklanders as the key element in this discussion is a gigantic problem.
Agreed. Peevishness like this is also not going to help persuade the Brits, or anyone else:
[QUOTE=The Guarniad]
…The Argentinian government on Tuesday instructed the country’s 20 largest companies to stop importing British products. In a nationally televised speech a day earlier, Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner declared the islands “one of the last remaing [sic] colonialist enclaves in the world”.
The industry minister Débora Giorgi has instructed companies to replace British imports with alternatives from other countries. Argentina imported products worth an estimated £400m from Britain in 2011.
The virtual import embargo came a day after two British cruise liners were turned away from the Argentine southern tourist port of Ushuaia under a new law in the province of Tierra del Fuego prohibiting all UK-flagged ships from docking there…
[/QUOTE]