It is wonderful with what coolness and indifference the greater part of mankind see war commenced. Those that hear of it at a distance, or read of it in books, but have never presented its evils to their minds, consider it as little more than a splendid game, a proclamation, an army, a battle, and a triumph.

—DR. JOHNSON, ARGUING AGAINST SQUANDERING BRITISH LIFE IN THE FALKLANDS, 1771

BRITAIN 6 (Georgia, two airstrips, three warplanes), ARGENTINA 0

—The Sun, 1982

The Falklands—known to Argentineans as the Malvinas—are a desolate chain of islands in the South Atlantic some 300 miles east of the Straits of Magellan. Variously disputed by the major colonial powers until 1816, they were claimed by Argentina upon its independence from Spain, then reclaimed by the British in 1833, when a British naval force evicted the Argentineans. They were thereafter uninterruptedly settled and inhabited by the British, but certainly in no large numbers: In 1982, the Falklands were home to some 1,820 British subjects, 600,000 sheep, and five species of penguins. The islands were of no geostrategic significance: no arable land, no warm-water ports, no strategic raw materials, no multinational fruit conglomerates, nothing—just sheep and penguins.

For 150 years, the question of sovereignty over the Falklands had been one of those endless, low-level diplomatic conflicts of scant interest to anyone. Only weeks before the outbreak of hostilities, British and Argentinean delegates were negotiating placidly in New York and reporting their discussions to be of “cordial and positive spirit.” It is doubtful that at the time the conflict erupted, even one in ten Britons could have located the islands on a map. Britain achieved nothing, materially, by recapturing them. The Falklands victory was of moral and psychological import alone. This is not to diminish the moral and the psychological in history. Without this victory, it is unlikely that the Thatcher Revolution could have occurred—and without the Thatcher Revolution, Thatcher would not matter.

The significance of the Falklands War, Thatcher later wrote,

was enormous, both for Britain’s self-confidence and for our standing in the world. Since the Suez fiasco in 1956, British foreign policy had been one long retreat. The tacit assumption made by British and foreign governments alike was that our world role was doomed steadily to diminish. We had come to be seen by both friends and enemies as a nation which lacked the will and the capability to defend its interests in peace, let alone in war. Victory in the Falklands changed that. Everywhere I went after the war, Britain’s name meant something more than it had. The war also had real importance in relations between East and West: years later I was told by a Russian general that the Soviets had been firmly convinced that we would not fight for the Falklands, and that if we did fight we would lose. We proved them wrong on both counts, and they did not forget the fact.¹¹⁴

Certainly, Thatcher is correct to assert that Britain had come to be perceived as a nation lacking the will to defend its interests by force. The seizure of the Falklands is ample proof of this. To invade the sovereign territory of a nuclear power requires considerable confidence that your adversary has been psychologically neutered. Had those islands been claimed by the Soviet Union and continuously inhabited for 150 years by patriotic Russians, no Argentinean general, however fine he may have believed his nation’s moral claim, would have dreamt of laying a hand upon them. It is no accident that the Japanese never asserted by force their claim to the Kuril Islands, which were in fact seized in 1945 by the Soviet Union and remain to this day in Russian hands.

That the low-simmering Falklands dispute became candescent offers a pointed lesson about the importance of unambiguous signaling as a deterrent to war. Prior to the invasion, the British government appeared to be telegraphing a certain indifference to the islands’ fate. In 1981, facing the severe budgetary constraints imposed by Thatcher’s insistence upon reducing public sector spending, Defense Minister John Nott recommended the withdrawal from the area of the Antarctic supply vessel Endurance, the symbol of Britain’s commitment to the South Atlantic. Judging a massive conventional naval conflict unlikely in the coming decades, he also proposed—with Thatcher’s approval—to scrap an aircraft carrier as well as two assault ships, and to reduce by one-third the number of British frigates and destroyers. In the same year, Parliament passed the British Nationality Act, which denied the islanders British citizenship. The measure was directed at another set of islanders who would have preferred to stay British, those of Hong Kong. The unintended consequence of the act’s passage, however, was to suggest that Britain was no more willing to go to war with Argentina than with China. It is fair to fault the Thatcher government for giving signals to the Argentineans that hinted of irresolution—although it is also fair to note, as Thatcher does, that no one expected them to do something quite so crazy. “Of course with the benefit of hindsight, we would always like to have acted differently,” she remarks. “So would the Argentineans.”¹¹⁵

If Thatcher’s domestic political problems in the spring of 1982 were considerable, General Leopoldo Galtieri’s were still worse. The Argentine junta, which since seizing power in a 1976 coup had presided over the disappearance of 30,000 of its citizens, faced a tempest in its tinpot: The nation was experiencing hyperinflation; in Buenos Aires, the largest anti-government demonstrations since the coup had prompted a crackdown. It is not surprising that under these circumstances Galtieri noted with fascination what appeared to be signals of a deteriorating British commitment to the Falklands. Nor is it surprising that he gambled that Britain would not respond militarily should he take the islands by force. He assumed this would lend him a magnificent propaganda coup with which to buttress his flagging political fortunes. So certain was he of this outcome that his military made no special plans to repel a British counterattack. Events, however, ran away with him, as events so often do. The invasion proved wildly popular in Argentina, so much so that when Thatcher proved dishearteningly cojonuda about keeping them, he could no longer retreat.

On March 19, 1982, a group of Argentine scrap metal merchants landed without permission on South Georgia, a dependent island to the southeast of the Falklands, and raised the Argentinean flag. The offending flag was spotted by a British Antarctic Survey team. Having learned of the incident, Thatcher ordered the Endurance, with twenty-two marines on board, to sail to South Georgia to remove the scrap metal merchants. The Argentines sent one hundred troops to defend them. Outnumbered, the British forces held fire, watching the Argentines warily. Thatcher was unnerved by this turn of events but decided it was an “awkward incident,” rather than a “precursor to conflict.”¹¹⁶

She was wrong. On March 30, she received word that the Argentine fleet was steaming toward Stanley, the capital of the Falklands.

I shall not forget that Wednesday evening. I was working in my room at the House of Commons when I was told that John Nott wanted an immediate meeting to discuss the Falklands. I called people together . . . John was alarmed. He had just received intelligence that the Argentinean Fleet, already at sea, looked as if they were going to invade the islands on Friday 2 April. There was no ground to question the intelligence. John gave the MoD’s view that the Falklands could not be retaken once they were seized. This was terrible, and totally unacceptable. I could not believe it: these were our people, our islands. I said instantly: “if they are invaded, we have got to get them back.”¹¹⁷

The official defeatism of the Ministry of Defense, Thatcher writes, was contradicted by the lone voice of the chief of the naval staff, Sir Henry Leach, who told Thatcher in the same meeting that he could have a task force ready to sail within forty-eight hours. “He believed such a force could retake the islands. All he needed was my authority to begin to assemble it. I gave it him, and he left immediately to set the work in hand.”¹¹⁸

It is not surprising that the prime minister ordered him to assemble the task force. Of course she wished to keep every option open. What is surprising is that she used it. The pessimistic view offered by the Ministry of Defense was grounded in a cold reality: The British navy in the early 1980s was not prepared for a major naval battle in the South Atlantic. It was designed to fight, in concert with NATO, against the Soviet Union in the North Atlantic. It was chiefly an anti-submarine force, ill-equipped for conventional surface warfare or amphibious landings. The British would be fighting with minimal air cover and no missile defense shield. The Argentinean navy, on the other hand, was the best in South America. It had for years been preparing for just this kind of battle with Brazil or Chile. The Argentineans enjoyed a tremendous superiority in aircraft and a three-to-one advantage in ground troops. They could sortie land-based aircraft armed with French Exocet missiles. And they did not have to sail 8,000 miles to reach the combat zone.

The British were perfectly right to declare the invasion an outrage. The basis of the Argentinean claim to the islands was geographic proximity. Since every nation is proximate to another, this is a principle that, if broadly applied, would lead immediately to international anarchy. The British could appeal to a point of much greater relevance, both morally and in international law: The Falkland Islanders did not want to be Argentineans, and this was no mere point of ethnic pride, for the Argentinean regime had an unenviable reputation for throwing dissenters from airplanes into shark-infested waters.

However valid the British case, it is easy to understand why prudent minds in the British government hesitated. If it was humiliating to see the Falklands seized by force, losing a war to Argentina would have been vastly more humiliating. Losing a war to Argentina was a very real possibility.

On April 2, as predicted, the Argentinean task force overran the Falklands. After a brief firefight, the symbolic garrison of eighty British marines surrendered. Photographs of the marines, face-down on the ground, appeared later that day in the British press.

The Argentinean troops reportedly were taken aback to discover that the islanders spoke English and did not welcome them as liberators, but the invaders adjusted quickly to the paradigm shift. Using language that appears to have been inspired by the novels of Graham Greene, they proceeded to issue a series of minatory communiqués to the islanders:

COMMUNIQUÉ NO. 1

Malvinas Operation Theatre Command

The Commander of the Malvinas Operation Theatre, performing his duties as ordered by the Argentine Government, materializes heretofore the historic continuity of Argentine Sovereignty over the Islas Malvinas.

At this highly important moment for all of us, it is my pleasure to greet the people of the Malvinas and exhort you to cooperate with the new authorities by complying with all of the instructions that will be given through oral and written communiqués, in order to facilitate the normal life of the entire population.

Islas Malvinas 02 Abril 1982 OSVALDO JORGE GARCIA General de Division Comandante del Teatro de Operaciones MALVINAS

COMMUNIQUÉ NO. 3

Instructions for the Population

As a consequence of all the necessary actions taken, and in order to ensure the safety of the population, all people are to remain at their homes until further notice. New instructions will be issued. The population must bear in mind that, in order to ensure the fulfillment of these instructions, military troops shall arrest all people found outside their homes.

To avoid inconvenience and personal misfortunes, people are to abide by the following:

1. Should some serious problem arise and people wish to make it known to the Military Authorities, a white piece of cloth is to be placed outside the door. Military patrols will visit the house so as to be informed and provide a solution.

2. All schools, shops, stores, banks, pubs and Clubs are to remain closed until further notice.

3. All infringements shall be treated according to what is stated in Communiqué (Edict) No. 1.

4. All further instructions shall be released through the local broadcasting station which shall remain in permanent operation.¹¹⁹

Some liberation.

On the following day, for the first time since the 1956 Suez crisis, the House of Commons was recalled for a special Saturday sitting. Thatcher addressed a furious, jeering Parliament. The fury was not only with Argentina, but with the prime minister for having failed to deter the attack.

It is worth listening to Thatcher’s speech and her response to the ensuing hostile interrogatory, a session she subsequently described as the most difficult of her career. Manuals on self-defense often suggest that if an adversary’s face is red, he poses no immediate threat; a white face, on the other hand, implies that blood has been diverted to the muscles, so watch out: Violence is imminent. If ever a voice can be described as white-faced, it was Thatcher’s on that day.¹²⁰ This is a voice of cold, controlled, and genuine fury.

Prime Minister: The House meets this Saturday to respond to a situation of great gravity. We are here because, for the first time for many years, British sovereign territory has been invaded by a foreign power. After several days of rising tension in our relations with Argentina, that country’s armed forces attacked the Falkland Islands yesterday and established military control of the islands.

Yesterday was a day of rumor and counter-rumor. Throughout the day we had no communication from the Government of the Falklands. Indeed, the last message that we received was at 21:55 hours on Thursday night, 1 April. Yesterday morning at 8:33 a.m. we sent a telegram—

Here the House erupts in howls, followed by cries of “order.” Thatcher allows the House to spend itself, then continues.

I shall refer to that again in a moment. By late afternoon yesterday it became clear that an Argentine invasion had taken place and that the lawful British Government of the islands had been usurped.

Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the whole House will join me in condemning totally this unprovoked aggression by the Government of Argentina against British territory.

A loud rumbling of “hear, hear.” The mood of the house is changing swiftly as Thatcher harnesses the anger toward her and directs it toward Argentina.

It has not a shred of justification and not a scrap of legality.

She concludes her speech thus:

The people of the Falkland Islands, like the people of the United Kingdom, are an island race. Their way of life is British; their allegiance is to the Crown. They are few in number, but they have the right to live in peace, to choose their own way of life and to determine their own allegiance. It is the wish of the British people and the duty of Her Majesty’s Government to do everything that we can to uphold that right. That will be our hope and our endeavor and, I believe, the resolve of every member of the House.

It is not only with hindsight that a listener would conclude that Thatcher meant what she said. There is no trace of posturing or womanish hysteria in her voice. Some years later, François Mitterrand’s psychotherapist published a scandalous memoir claiming that Mitterrand had confessed to him, on the couch, that Thatcher had threatened to use atomic weapons against Argentina if the French failed to supply Britain with the codes to deactivate Argentina’s anti-ship missiles. Supposedly, Mitterrand said, “To provoke a nuclear war for small islands inhabited by three sheep who are as hairy as they are frozen! Fortunately I yielded. Otherwise, I assure you, the metallic index finger of the lady would press the button.”¹²¹ Did she really say this? Did he? I assume not: This doesn’t have the ring of real speech, and I don’t for a moment believe that Mitterrand discussed these things with his psychotherapist. Nonetheless, if you listen to her voice on that day, you can easily imagine her not only threatening to push the button, but pushing it.

That day, after a feverish round of lobbying, British diplomats persuaded the UN Security Council to pass Resolution 502, calling for the immediate withdrawal of Argentine troops. Thatcher and her cabinet decided to dispatch the task force. Again, this was an obvious decision, if only to strengthen the British negotiating position, and again, the surprise is not that it was sent, but that it was used.

Over the next several days, the aircraft carriers Hermes and Invincible set sail, followed by amphibious ships, specialist vessels, and some fifty ships requisitioned from the commercial fleet, as well as two rapidly refurbished cruise ships, including the Queen Elizabeth 2. The luxury ocean liner famed for its crisp white linens, sparkling crystal, and impeccable but unobtrusive service was swiftly refitted with three helicopter pads. Its lounges were transformed into dormitories and its carpets covered in hardboard.

In total, 110 ships carrying 28,000 men sailed south—all in a matter of days.

Interviewer: Mrs. Thatcher, you’ve stated your objective very clearly, you’ve staked your colors to the mast and you are determined to free the Falklands, if you fail would you feel obliged to resign?

Mrs. Thatcher: I am not talking about failure, I am talking about my supreme confidence in the British fleet . . . superlative ships, excellent equipment, the most highly trained professional group of men, the most honorable and brave members of her Majesty’s service. Failure? Do you remember what Queen Victoria once said? “Failure—the possibilities do not exist.”¹²²

Some of the ships were superlative and some of the equipment excellent, to be sure. But when you are obliged to commandeer the QE2 to supplement your fleet, you are most of all talking about “supreme confidence.” A violent winter was arriving in the southern hemisphere, with sixty-foot swells and Antarctic gales. The Argentineans were piling men and materiel into the Falklands. Many have suggested that if Thatcher had had any military experience at all, she would not have been so confident.

But she hadn’t.

Her Foreign Office was seized with the vapors, warning of a backlash against British citizens in Argentina, the ire of Britain’s allies, the risk of Soviet involvement, charges of colonialism. “All the considerations were fair enough,” she later wrote.

But when you are at war you cannot allow the difficulties to dominate your thinking: you have to set out with an iron will to overcome them. And anyway what was the alternative? That a common or garden dictator should rule over the Queen’s subjects and prevail by fraud and violence? Not while I was Prime Minister.¹²³

This passage would sound vain and boastful were she not describing precisely what transpired.

None of her other problems had meanwhile disappeared. On April 8, this interchange was recorded in the House of Commons:

Mr. Cunliffe: What Easter message can the right hon. Lady give the three million unemployed in this country? How does she suggest that they share the joys of Easter in the unprecedented atmosphere of despair and hopelessness in which they find themselves? In addition, is it not a scandalous indictment that for thousands of Easter school leavers their first job will be to sign on at an employment exchange? Does the right hon. Lady not feel that that is a scandalous state of affairs and that she must bear some responsibility for this shameless episode? Does she still believe and insist that life is better under the Conservatives?

The Prime Minister: The best hope for future job prospects is to continue to try to reduce inflation.¹²⁴

Failure in the Falklands would have been the end of Thatcher, Thatcherism, and the rollback of socialism in Britain. Her confidence under these inauspicious circumstances was, surely, a miracle of Providence. Leaders who become legend almost always display this strain of preternatural confidence. In all of history, the number of women who have both possessed it and achieved the power to exercise it may be counted on one hand.

The United States initiated a frantic round of shuttle diplomacy. On April 8, Thatcher received Secretary of State Alexander Haig and his entourage at Downing Street. Thatcher opened by showing him her portraits of Nelson and Wellington, then steamrollered the nervous, chain-smoking Haig, rejecting entirely his proposal to establish an interim authority in the archipelago under multilateral supervision. It was out of the question, she told him, instantly likening the idea to the appeasement of Hitler. The scene is wonderfully described by the American diplomat James Rentschler:

La Thatcher is really quite fetching in a dark velvet two-piece ensemble with gros-grain piping and a soft hairdo that heightens her blond English coloring . . . Dinner in the cramped, wood-paneled private dining-room is a very pleasant affair of overcooked British beef and quippy conversation, at least until coffee, when the PM gets down to the nut-cutter nitty-gritty. Thatcher, you see, just ain’t buying our “suggestion” for a diplomatic approach to the crisis . . . High color is in her cheeks, a note of rising indignation in her voice, she leans across the polished table and flatly rejects what she calls the “woolliness” of our second-stage formulation, conceived in our view as a traditional face-saving ploy for Galtieri: “I am pledged before the House of Commons, the Defense Minister is pledged, the Foreign Secretary is pledged to restore British administration. I did not dispatch a fleet to install some nebulous arrangement which would have no authority whatsoever. Interim authority!—to do what? I beg you, I beg you to remember that in 1938 Neville Chamberlain sat at this same table discussing an arrangement which sounds very much like the one you are asking me to accept; and were I to do so, I would be censured in the House of Commons—and properly so! We in Britain simply refuse to reward aggression—that is the lesson we have learned from 1938.”

“Tough lady,” concludes Rentschler with some understatement.¹²⁵

The prime minister concluded the evening on an arch note. “I do hope you realize how much we appreciate and are thankful for your presence here,” she said, “and how the kind of candor we have displayed could only be possible among the closest of friends. With everyone else we’re merely nice!”¹²⁶

Haig and his entourage returned the next day to Argentina, where vast, chanting crowds had assembled in the Plaza de Mayo. “AR-GEN-TIN-A! AR-GEN-TIN-A! THATCHER PUTA! GUERRA! GUERRA!” Rentschler, observing this scene, despaired of Galtieri’s position. “Given the pitch of jingoistic sentiment whipped up hereabouts,” he wrote, “I can’t possibly see how he’s going to walk this cat back.”¹²⁷

Haig delivered the news to Galtieri: Thatcher was intransigent. Galtieri, suspecting for the first time that he had liberated a genie he could not master, played the obvious card. He threatened to turn to the Soviet Union for assistance. Haig sent a cable to President Ronald Reagan from Buenos Aires:

Galtieri, face-to-face with the prospect of war, leveled with me. He said he could not withdraw both his military and administrative presence and last a week. If the British attacked, he explained, he would have to accept the offer of full support made by the Cuban Ambassador, who just returned after more than a year’s absence. The Cubans implied they were speaking for the Russians, and even insinuated that the Soviets had offered to sink the British carrier (with Prince Andrew aboard), leaving the British and the world to believe an Argentine sub had done it. I doubt that such an offer was actually made by the Soviets, but we cannot discount it altogether.¹²⁸

Haig added that the time for Reagan to intervene personally with Thatcher was at hand. “Good luck, Al,” Rentschler remarked dubiously to his diary.

The American entourage flew back to London, where Haig relayed the Argentine hard line. Thatcher’s home secretary, Willie Whitelaw, chewed his nails with anxiety. A wintry gust of air, Rentschler noted, blew through the room from an open window as Thatcher stared fixedly down the table:

“I am afraid that this news fully reinforces the correctness of the course on which we are now embarked,” sez she—“the fleet must steam inexorably on” . . . the Iron Maiden is really toughening up her already robust talk, especially on the question of the fleet standing off: “Unthinkable, that is our only leverage, I cannot possibly give it up at this point, one simply doesn’t trust burglars who have tried once to steal your property! No, Al, no, absolutely not, the fleet must steam on!”¹²⁹

And the fleet steamed on.

The war that ensued was the largest and longest naval battle since the great Pacific campaign in the Second World War, and one of the most logistically complex in history. The British fought with an 8,000-mile logistics pipeline in a combat arena 4,000 miles from their nearest air base on Ascension Island, halfway between South America and Africa. It was not a walkover. In the words of the commander of the task force, Admiral Sir John Woodward, “It was a lot closer run than many would care to believe. We were on our last legs. If they had been able to hold on another week it might have been a different story.”¹³⁰

On April 12, as British submarines arrived in the Falklands, Britain pronounced a 200-mile exclusion zone around the islands, declaring that Argentine forces found in the zone would be subject to destruction. The main task force departed from Ascension Island on April 17. British nationals were advised to leave Argentina. A despondent Haig abandoned his shuttle diplomacy.

On April 23, a small British commando force attempted to land on a glacier in South Georgia. High winds and heavy snow forced them to abort. A second attempt resulted in two helicopter crashes. When Thatcher was apprised of this news, it was not yet known if the crews had survived. Not long afterward, Thatcher was informed that all had been daringly rescued, but she allows in her memoirs that for a moment, she gave in to despair, wondering “whether the task we had set ourselves was truly impossible.”¹³¹

Her moment of doubt did not last long. On April 25, the commando force retook South Georgia.

INVASION!

The Sun, reporting the British recapture of South Georgia

Thatcher and her defense secretary, John Nott, delivered the news to the press. The conference may be viewed on YouTube.¹³² As Nott reads the prepared statement, Thatcher flushes with obvious pride and, one assumes, overwhelming relief, although one would not know from her face that she had ever suffered a moment’s anxiety. Nott, in his horn-rimmed glasses and slightly overlarge suit, looks slouched and haggard; it is clear that he is suffering from the strain. Thatcher, impeccable in a navy ensemble and pearls, is ramrod straight, her chest thrust out, glowing, her hair stiff and shining like a bronze carapace. When Nott reaches the words “So far, no British casualties have been reported,” her lips curl into a slight, triumphant smile, which she quickly suppresses in favor of a more dignified expression. Nott then reads the text of the cable reporting the recapture: “Be pleased to inform Her Majesty that the White Ensign flies alongside the Union Jack in South Georgia. God Save the Queen.” Thatcher cannot contain herself. She beams. Dimples appear in her cheeks.

Thatcher’s enjoyment of the moment is spoiled when reporters seem more concerned with Britain’s next step than delighted by the news. A journalist quite reasonably asks, “What happens next?”

“Just rejoice—at—that—news,” she booms, her voice resonating from the chest, the force of her indignation causing both her defense minister and the assembled reporters to step back as if blown by a sharp wind. “And congratulate our armed forces and the marines.”

A small voice is audible over the clicking of the flash bulbs. “Are we going to declare war on Argentina, Mrs. Thatcher?”

“Rejoice!” she repeats, and flounces off.

On April 30, Reagan announced America’s support for Britain. On May 1, British forces landed on West and East Falkland, and the naval bombardment of Port Stanley began. British Vulcans—after a flight that required five mid-air refuelings—bombed the runway of Port Stanley airport.

A PUNCH UP YOUR JUNTA!

Sunday People, reporting raids on Port Stanley

The Argentines claimed to have shot down British airplanes. When the war cabinet met on the following day, it was advised that an Argentinean cruiser, the General Belgrano, was sailing on the edge of the exclusion zone. It was believed to be armed with Exocet missiles. “It was clear to me what must be done to protect our forces,” Thatcher recalls.¹³³ On May 2, the Conqueror sunk the Belgrano, with the loss of 323 lives, leading the Argentines to order their ships back to port for the duration of the conflict.

GOTCHA!

The Sun, reporting the sinking of the Belgrano

It was and remains the only ship ever to have been sunk by a nuclear-powered submarine. Subsequently, the commander of the Conqueror, Chris Wreford-Brown, stoically remarked of the event that “the Royal Navy spent thirteen years preparing me for such an occasion. It would have been regarded as extremely dreary if I had fouled it up.”

The loss of life shocked opponents of the war out of their torpor, domestically and abroad. Thatcher now came under intense diplomatic pressure to accept a peace plan proposed by the president of Peru and endorsed by Al Haig. But on May 4, an Exocet missile hit the British destroyer Sheffield in waters southeast of the Falklands, killing twenty and severely wounding twenty-four more. It sank several hours later. It was the first Royal Navy ship lost in action since 1945. There was no chance, after this, that anything short of complete Argentine surrender could be sold to the British public, not that Thatcher had ever considered such a thing.

STICK IT UP YOUR JUNTA!

The Sun, urging rejection of the Peruvian peace proposal

Three days later, the Argentines bombed the destroyer Coventry, which sank with the loss of nineteen of its crew. The Atlantic Conveyor was sunk by an Exocet, killing twelve. Thatcher’s cabinet ordered the assault to continue. “Steadily but surely we are gaining ground,” she assured her countrymen. “Our men and ships are there also that others may mark and learn that land they take by force they shall not hold.”¹³⁴

On May 21, under cover of darkness, British paratroopers and marines landed on the western coast of East Falkland. On May 26, British paratroopers headed south from East Falkland to mount a surprise attack on Darwin and Goose Green. The BBC World Service announced, prior to the action, that a British parachute battalion was poised to take Goose Green, destroying the element of surprise. The commander of the battalion ordered his men to attack nonetheless. Outnumbered three to one, they won the battle, although the commander was killed in action. The residents of Goose Green, who had been imprisoned by the Argentines, were released.

KILL AN ARGIE AND WIN A METRO

—Private Eye

Reagan feared the destabilization of the whole region, leaving it vulnerable to communist opportunism. He tried in vain to persuade Thatcher to embrace a settlement. She could now claim military victory, he told her; her honor had been restored. She scorched the phone lines in response to the suggestion. “Just supposing Alaska was invaded,” said Thatcher. “Now you’ve put all your people up there to retake it and someone suggested that a contact could come in. You wouldn’t do it.”

“No, no, although, Margaret, I have to say I don’t quite think Alaska is a similar situation—”

“More or less so. I didn’t lose some of my best ships and some of my finest lives to leave quietly under a ceasefire without the Argentines withdrawing.”

“Oh. Oh, Margaret, that is part of this, as I understand it—”

“Ron, I’m not handing over the islands now. I can’t lose the lives and blood of our soldiers to hand the islands over to a contact. It’s not possible. You are surely not asking me, Ron, after we’ve lost some of our finest young men, you are surely not saying, that after the Argentine withdrawal, that our forces, and our administration, become immediately idle? I had to go to immense distances and mobilize half my country.”

“Margaret, but I thought that part of this proposal . . .” Here Reagan ceases to form complete sentences. “Margaret, I . . . Yes, well . . . Well, Margaret, I know that I’ve intruded and I know how . . . ”

“You’ve not intruded at all, and I’m glad you telephoned.”¹³⁵

Click.

HERE IT COMES, SENORS!

—The Sun, caption to a photo of a missile signed Up Yours, Galtieri!

The final assault began soon thereafter, with heavy bloodshed. A British force of 8,000 men fought their way over the island and the ring of mountains around Stanley in fierce hand-to-hand combat. One by one, the Argentine positions fell. Then, on June 14, with British troops poised to take Stanley itself, the Argentine commander surrendered. The announcement took Thatcher and her cabinet by surprise. The commander of the British land forces immediately sent a message to London. “The Falkland Islands once more are under the government desired by their inhabitants. God save the Queen.”

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

—Newsweek

In total, 255 British lives were lost, as well as six ships, thirty-four aircraft, and £2.778 billion. The Argentines lost 649 servicemen, many of them teenage conscripts. Three civilian islanders were killed.

What was gained? Many wondered.

Yeah. And then it was a case of no empire no longer. So after World War II, the whole world was going, “Come on, Europe, give these countries back. Come on, we just had a bloody war; let’s give ’em back. Britain?”

“Wha’?”

“What’s that behind your back?”

“Oh, it’s India and a number of other countries.”

“Give ’em back.”

“Oh, all right. There’s that one there, and there’s that one . . . ”

“Falkland Islands?”

“Oh, we need the Falkland Islands . . . for strategic sheep purposes.”

—Eddie Izzard, “Dress to Kill,” 1999

Dr. Johnson’s remarks about the Falklands conflict of 1771 remained apt: “Let us now compute the profit of Britain. We have . . . maintained the honor of the crown, and the superiority of our influence. Beyond this what have we acquired? What, but a bleak and gloomy solitude, an island, thrown aside from human use, stormy in winter, and barren in summer; an island, which not the southern savages have dignified with habitation; where a garrison must be kept in a state that contemplates with envy the exiles of Siberia; of which the expense will be perpetual.”

Defending the interests of the 1,820 British subjects who lived in the Falklands and wished to remain British was a noble goal. Of course it was. But for the cost of the war, every last one of the islanders could have been airlifted to the Welsh countryside and resettled with a stipend so handsome they would never have needed to shear a sheep again. This could have been achieved without the loss of a single life.

Yet there was a gain beyond ensuring the self-determination of the Falklanders. The gain was to British credibility and prestige—and to Thatcher’s, in particular, both at home and abroad. The words “credibility” and “prestige” may be abstract, particularly contrasted with the real and immediate horror of the loss of young life. But this credibility and prestige prompted events that were momentous.

At the outbreak of the conflict, Thatcher’s colleague Enoch Powell had intimated, in the House of Commons, his suspicion that Thatcher was not up for the task:

The Prime Minister, shortly after she came into office, received a soubriquet as the “Iron Lady.” It arose in the context of remarks which she made about defense against the Soviet Union and its allies; but there was no reason to suppose that the Right Hon. Lady did not welcome and, indeed, take pride in that description. In the next week or two this House, the nation and the Right Hon. Lady herself will learn of what metal she is made.¹³⁶

In the wake of the victory, the skeptical Powell became glowing effusion itself:

Is the Right. Hon. Lady aware that the report has now been received from the public analyst on a certain substance recently subjected to analysis and that I have obtained a copy of the report? It shows that the substance under test consisted of ferrous matter of the highest quality, and that it is of exceptional tensile strength, is highly resistant to wear and tear and to stress, and may be used to advantage for all national purposes.¹³⁷

This was a view widely shared. Great crowds gathered in London to sing “Rule Britannia” and cheer the woman who had led Britain to triumph. Thatcher’s government won a massive victory in the 1983 general election—a victory that was by no means certain beforehand and indeed unlikely. She was returned to power with an increased parliamentary majority, empowering her to sweep ahead with the reforms that have now come to be associated with her name.

The relationship between the United States and Britain became closer—Americans love a winner—resulting in a more confrontational policy toward the Soviet bloc, a period known now as the Second Cold War. On June 23, little more than a week after the surrender of the Argentines, Thatcher traveled to New York to address the General Assembly of the United Nations, which had gathered for a special session on disarmament. “There is,” she said,

a natural revulsion in democratic societies against war and we would much prefer to see arms build-ups prevented, by good sense or persuasion or agreement. But if that does not work, then the owners of these vast armouries must not be allowed to imagine that they could use them with impunity.

But mere words, speeches and resolutions will not prevent them. The security of our country and its friends can be ensured only by deterrence and by adequate strength—adequate when compared with that of a potential aggressor.¹³⁸

Margaret Thatcher is presented with a commemorative coin to celebrate the Falklands victory. “We adored her,” recalled Major General Julian Thompson, Brigade Commander during the Falklands war, “and would have done anything for her. In all my years’ service, I have never seen anything like it . . . we all loved her for her calmness . . . her enthusiasm, and dare one say it, because she is an extremely handsome lady. We appreciated that, too.” (Central Office of Information)

These words clearly conveyed to the Soviet Union a great deal more seriousness than they would have had Thatcher not recently proven herself prepared—to the point of recklessness—to live by them.

Galtieri was placed under house arrest on June 18. He was convicted of mishandling the war, stripped of his rank, and imprisoned. The junta collapsed.

In one of those strange twists of fate suggesting that if nothing else, the Master of the Universe has a fine sense of irony, it now appears that the Falklands just might be sitting above a hundred billion barrels of oil. Recent technological advances in deep-sea exploration, specifically the development of controlled-source electromagnetic surveying, have led investors to wonder if the Falklands could be rather more valuable than they look. They have found nothing yet, but if their theory proves correct, the islanders will become the wealthiest people in the world. I stress that this was not suspected at the time and could not reasonably have been suspected: The relevant technology had not yet been invented.

There is a nice story about the penguins. Some 25,000 land mines, mostly planted by the Argentineans, remain in the no-go areas of the Falklands. Fortunately, the penguins are too light to set them off. But the presence of the mines has ensured that the area is now a conservation zone, one where harsh penalties await those tempted to violate its integrity. The squawking penguins waddle about happily; conservationists are delighted by the protection of lands that had previously been overgrazed by sheep. There is a suspicion that other forms of bird and amphibious life have similarly profited, but no one is quite sure to what degree. As the director of Falklands Conservation, Grant Munro, remarked, “It has really not been looked into, for obvious reasons.”