Cite that the United States government has ever claimed title to the Falklands?
Tell me if you ever visit Buenos Aires and you,**Estilicon **and me can try to organize a B.A. minidopefest!.
Googling, it appears that the Argentines busted some guys for taking seals in their waters, and some USA diplomat wanted to kick their ass anyway possible.
Someone will come by with something better soon, I am sure.
That’s what I got too. I’m uncertain as to how the US wishing to kick ass (as we do so often) because some other country objected to the actions of our citizens (as they do so often) means that we made a claim to the Falklands.
It’s a Captain Kirk thing.
“Give me my people back, or I’ll phaser your sorry ass computer back to the stone age!”
Except they didn’t phasers back then, so “or I’ll take your stuff!”
Ah, but according to Argentinia, pretty much the entire population of the islands is Argentine: the islands belong to Argentinia, and according to Argentine nationality law, anyone born in Argentinian territory is a citizen of Argentinia.
Yeah, but beyond political rhetoric, nobody actually believes that shit, right?
I must say I do find the argentine politicians’ word choices to be really tiresome and not likely to encourage talks anywhere in the near future, when, for instance, they describe Prince William’s arrival on routine deployment as thus:
FFS, he’s a serving office in the RAF! That kind of statement is only ever going to get a big FU from the British Government.
Politician makes stupid statement that will go down well with local voters, shocker.
The entire concept of citizenship is political rhetoric. It’s just a question of whose you choose to believe and whether they have any power to enforce it.
You know, considering the value of the oil, and the fact that whatever the UK does it’s going to get stick for it from Argentina and it’s neighbours, I say we just go for the sheer entertainment factor option. Station a serious amount of hardware on the islands, build a submarine dock, and then announce a new round of exploration licenses for the local waters.
Then sit back, wait for the indignation, and reply with “and what are you going to do about it”. Let’s be honest, there’s no way any sort of reasonable settlement is going to happen in the next twenty years, so we might as well just use the oil revenue to fund some serious investment in the Navy and Airforce, and wind people up properly.
Sadly Argentina is having some success in getting other countries to withdraw services, docking and landing facilities. A South American boycott will at the very least, hugely increase oil exploration and extraction costs. Apart from the ongoing economic hit on the islands.
Also you can bet your last dollar should there be huge profits to be made the oil companies will be using their influence to get whatever solution gets them those profits. And the smart money there would be on a South American solution.
With ongoing military cuts in the UK it is increasingly unlikely that we’ll be in a position to militarily defend Falklands sovereignty against a determined assault. No aircraft carriers, no sea borne fighters. The only effective weapon would be submarines.
Government trolling, Gary, I like it.
Not really. All that has been done so far is token, as has been mentioned:
"Q. Can Falkland Islands vessels just swap flags and sail into port under another country’s banner?
A. Yes. The vessels have the right to fly both the Falkland Islands’ ensign or the British ensign and all they need to do is swap flags as they come into port. So in reality, the ban is mainly symbolic."
If they want to gear up for Falklands expeditions, the various operators and service companies will probably charter 2 or 3 container ship runs to the falklands and drop off all the kit they plan to use. As it’s a deepwater exploration, most of the kit will have to come from Europe and the US anyway, so it’s going to have to be shipped in either way. Suitable drilling rigs would also have to travel down either way, but again they do that as a matter of course. All in, there’s very little Argentina can do to force the issue.
Well come on, if you’re going to get crap for something whatever you do, you might as well enjoy it as much as possible. If Argentina is determined to keep banging on about us being evil conquerors and invaders, we might as well get some spiffy uniforms made up, establish our evil headquarters and bases, and make load nyah nyah nyah nyah-nyah noises in their general direction (whilst milking the oil for as much as we can)
I very much doubt a bit of flag swapping will be allowed to get in the way of a determined boycott. And I suspect you greatly underestimate the added costs of a boycott and the willingness of companies to bear those costs. Is the Uk going to build a massive harbour and oil terminal? Can it without access to south American resources? Is it going tomaintain a credible air deterrent? Can it maintain a large garrison of troops? Can it do any of these things when we are facing a decade of greatly reduced expenditure?
Don’t get me wrong - I hope you are right. As far as i’m concerned Argentina can frack right off and the UK should defend the islands. I’m just not very sanguine about our ability to or the willingness of multi-national companies to put the UK’s desire to retain sovereignty ahead of short and medium term profits.
And I’m also not at all convinced the USA would be on our side in any meaningful sense.
As each year goes by the UK armed forces are going to shrink. We cannot now mount a 1982 style expeditionary force. While we get weaker and Argentina gets diplomatically and militarily stronger - and with oil at stake - I can easily envisage an Argentine seizure of the islands.
Loathe as I am to post a qoute from the Daily Mail but:
Another war in the Falklands is ‘unwinnable’ because of defence cuts, says former head of Army
We have two warships, 4 fighters and 500 army personnel there. That’s a fine tripwire but it will trip nothing.
I like the suggestion of making the Falklands part of the UK. Giving them parliamentary seats etc. Bring NATO into play.
Bottom line for me is the Falklands have been British for a long time and they want to remain British. I don’t care what happened in the past or whether Argentina tells its kids stories about them. They can still frack right off and we should consider an attack on the Falkands to be an attack on the UK mainland and respond in kind.
Then I’m French?
Ah, crap.*
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It’s not a determined boycott. As stated, the boycott is so far pretty much symbolic. The odds of Argentina’s neighbours joining in on a full on boycott, including inspection of ships flying international flags, etc, are not good
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No, really, I’m not underestimating anything. Oil exploration is already going on in the sector, and will continue to do so - the boycott is not going to stop exploration rigs going to the falklands. Production costs will be huge, but they always are. The likely outcome of Falklands productions was always going to be an FPSO (floating production, storage and offloading) on site, offloaded by tankers. Oil tankers routine travel huge bloody distances, this is nothing new. An FPSO can be built anywhere, and then sailed into place. To give an example of a development I worked on, Total’s FPSO for Angola was built in Korea, and then sailed into place.
nvm
Argentina is not getting militarily stronger, the discredited and widely mistrusted Argentina military is not getting enough money to even dream about seizing the islands. (To the point that **Estilicon ** says, and I suspect he’s right, that our military is practically ineffective right now).
From what I hear and see around here, while 99% of Argentinians are convinced that the Islands should be Argentine territory, support for another military adventure is low, Argentinians are not a warlike people (we have had about 5 wars in 200 years of history, and that’s counting the Independece war).
Eventually, IMHO, the best solution would be for the UK to throw some minor concessions to Argentina, something for our pride (I dont know what exactly), something economic (like, for example a “most favoured nation”-like status for commerce with the islands), perhaps some territory? (a few of the nearby inhabited islands?).
Then the Argentinian government could accept that is never getting the islands but can tout the concessions as a victory and we can stop bickering about this.
Off course you would say that the UK is in the right (and they are, at least in respect to the Islanders wanting to be UK citizens and their right to self-determination) but I’m presenting a realpolitik argument, not an ethical one.
Economic cooperation zone, revenue split for production, and I’d suggest some sort of boon for the Islanders (automatic visa scheme or similar) so they can travel to Argentina easily and start to build good relations/feelings for their neighbours.
That’s the annoying thing here. There’s absolutely no bloody reason to make this a sore point between the various sides. The fact that hundreds have already died in one stupid war is embarrassing enough for both nations. The idea that we can’t actually find some common ground here to strengthen relations is just depressingly typical of human nature.