Falklands vs Malvinas

[from David Rock's Argentina 1516-1987: from Spanish Colonization to Alfonsín, University of California, 1987]

in both Argentina and Britain the pursuit of principle was a masquerade for a war whose chief purpose was short-term political gain. The Thatcher government welcomed the outburst of jingoism and xenophobia, a doctrinaire nationalism that evoked Britain's defunct imperial grandeur and inspired a patriotism reminiscent of 1956, when Britons had rallied against Egypt during the Suez crisis. The military triumph in the Falklands helped carry Thatcher's unpopular government to a resounding electoral victory – the very prize the Galtieri junta had gambled on in Argentina.

But Galtieri's gamble cost him everything. On 15 June he made his final address to the Argentine people. He blamed the defeat on foreign treachery, citing the "overwhelming superiority of a power supported by the military technology of the United States, a nation that has most surprisingly become the enemy of Argentina and its people." But as Galtieri spoke, popular disillusionment erupted in a wave of violent clashes with the police in the Plaza del Mayo outside the Casa Rosada. Most Argentines now recognized that the junta had used the invasion to manipulate patriotic sentiment in order to recharge the fading Process of National Reorganization.

However inadvertently, Britain had toppled Galtieri's regime and exploded the myth of the junta's monolithic invincibility. Only the air force, which had conducted desperate suicide missions against the British naval force, emerged from the episode with any credit. Anaya and his navy had played almost no part in the conflict, except for the fleet air arm that joined the air force in strikes against British ships. After the sinking of the Belgrano, the navy had remained in port and at anchor, safe from British submarines.

For the military the worst casualty of the war was the reputation of the Argentine army. Argentina's initial invasion force comprised some well-trained, highly professional units. Yet when the British fleet began its preparations, most Argentine army regulars were ordered to remain at their posts on the mainland, a majority in the garrisons facing Chile. Instead, the junta filled the islands with a force of ill-trained teenage conscripts, many from the poor northern provinces and some drafted into uniform only days before. The ill-equipped raw conscripts proved no match for the highly trained British forces, and the Argentina army was unable to master critical reinforcement, resupply, and logistical difficulties. Ex-combatants later complained of widespread abuse and corruption in the rationing and distribution of provisions, and of officers meting out brutal corporate punishment against conscript soldiers. On the fall of Port Stanley, starving Argentine troops had rioted and looted. In contrast to their heroic posturing, the army generals surrendered with scarcely a fight.

All these political and military miscalculations were soon recognized and acknowledged throughout Argentina. As the shell-shocked, demoralized forces returned home, most civilians came to the same conclusion as the junta's leading opponents: the invasion had been "an adventure beyond description. We put at risk the only international dispute we were actually winning." By August, the report by a special commission of the armed forces, chaired by General Benjamin Rattenbach, leaked out. The commission severely criticized Galtieri's foreign minister, Nicanor Costa Méndez, for having so profoundly misread the likely reactions to the invasion in Britain and the United States. The report impugned the entire conduct of the war by its commanders, including Galtieri and Menéndez. In particular, the commission attacked the inadequate preparations for the invasion, the junta's failure to adopt emergency economic measures until well into May, and military's fabricated accounts of nonexistent Argentina victories. . . .

Latin American support for Argentina was almost unanimous. The Sandinistas in Nicaragua offered troops, Venezuela supplies of oil, and Peru replacement warplanes. Only the Pinochet regime in Chile took the contrary line, allowing the British to base commando units in its southern territories. Of course, fear of Chilean opportunism had persuaded the Argentine army to leave most of the its best forces guarding the Andean frontiers – another major strategic blunder in the Falkland Islands venture.