The tone over the Falkland Islands dispute has been sharpening in Argentina from well before President Javier Milei’s late-night national address on sanctions earlier this week.
It’s tempting to see a visual representation of the tension in the jubilant Argentine players celebrating their hard-fought win over England at the Fifa World Cup this summer holding a banner which read “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” – the Falklands are Argentine – in front of their deliriously happy fans. However, the ill-feeling has been fomenting for much longer.
President Milei began his Thursday address with a brief history of the Falklands, very much from the Argentine perspective. He repeated the refrain at the heart of their position: the islands “rightfully belong” to Argentina. The British had invaded and colonially occupied the islands in 1833, he said, violently wrestling the territory from Argentina’s hands.
The UK Government would say he conveniently overlooked a few details: the islands – over which the European powers had interchanged control throughout the 17th and 18th centuries – were uninhabited at the time the British reoccupied the land. The Argentine settlement had been forced out two years earlier, not by the British but by the Americans. A warship, the USS Lexington, destroyed a fort established there in December 1831 amid a dispute over local fishing and sealing rights.
Still, if the Americans had a hand in forcing the Argentines out two centuries ago, they may now play a central role in strengthening the Argentine claim. President Milei certainly thinks so.
“Winds of change” were blowing, he assured the Argentine people, after President Trump said he was “re-evaluating” the US position on the Falklands.
That position has traditionally been one of neutrality – albeit while recognising Britain’s rule over the territory. “Neutral” is relative, of course, given that President Reagan provided material support to Margaret Thatcher during the Falklands War in 1982 – an act which reinforced the long-standing alliance between London and Washington in times of conflict.
For Trump, however, that mutual support – the “Special Relationship” – was eroded by Sir Keir Starmer when the UK Government chose not to join the US war on Iran.
“You weren’t there to help me”, the president retorted in an interview with GB News this week. The Falklands were “a long way away”, he said. The Falkland Islanders – who voted almost unanimously to remain a British overseas territory in 2013 – would point out that distance from London to the Falklands is fractionally shorter than the distance between Washington DC and the US territory of Guam, in the western Pacific.
Still, Trump’s words have undoubtedly galvanised Milei. As have the opinion polls. He urgently needs a boost ahead of a presidential election next year in which one of his challengers, his former vice-president, Victoria Villarruel, has presented herself as a tougher defender of national sovereignty and attacked Milei’s diplomatic approach on the Falklands as failing.
Domestic politics can rarely be ruled out of the equation when the Falklands issue flares back up. However, Buenos Aires argues that the matter has become urgent: “A clear and urgent danger”, as Milei put it.
With two energy companies – the Israeli-owned Navitas Petroleum and Rockhopper Exploration from the UK – due to undertake exploration work on the Sea Lion oilfield off the Falklands coast within two years, the issue has new impetus. Argentina “cannot allow” the companies to “appropriate the oil reserves under our sea”, he said. “We will not stand by with our arms folded,” he added.
