The Daily Mail, UK
The Falklands War thirty years on
Michael Burleigh
“Today, rightly, those who died defending the Falkland islanders against a murderous fascistic Argentinian junta are being given brief prominence. It is worth recalling that in the course of trying to forge a 'new man' … the clerico-fascist dictatorship murdered around 11,000 people...
One way of making the Argentine 'new man' was to exploit territorial disputes. Brazil was too near and powerful to try it on over the Parana River, ditto Pinochet's Chile over the Beagle Channel. That left the Malvinas as patriotic Argentines call the Falklands. The sovereign power was very remote, and all prior signals from the Foreign Office were appeasing. A culture in which machismo was dominant could not take a female British prime minister seriously either. That was a costly underestimation of Margaret Thatcher.
…
[I]n the late nineteenth century, British investment in Latin America was greater than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. It is an important part of the world, about which recent governments have often been negligent...
Argentina should put the narrow issue of sovereignty to one side so as to jointly benefit with the UK from the vast economic resources of the South Atlantic. Neither country can afford, or needs, another war.... Let's hope commonsense and goodwill prevail three decades later.”
