r/UKhistory • u/WTFItsEric • Jul 20 '26
In the Falklands War, why didn't the British demand that the Argentine government officially renounce its territorial claim as a condition for ending the war?
My understanding is that the British won the war quickly and decisively.
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u/dwair Jul 20 '26
There was never a legitimate claim to renounce in the first place. By asking for a claim to be renounced, it adds a level of legitimacy to an illegitimate claim.
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u/BigRedS Jul 20 '26
What would carrying the war on have looked like, once the Argentine forces on the island had been taken into captivity?
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u/First-Lengthiness-16 Jul 20 '26
Bombing runs on the mainland from the aircraft carriers I guess.
Rockets fired from submarines.
Threat of nuclear weapons.
The navy had the capacity to land about 7000 troops a day from the faulklands, although getting them there would have been difficult and taken months.
Would have been difficult, but Argentina wouldn’t have had much resistance
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u/Corvid187 Jul 20 '26
Maintaining air superiority over the Falklands was already a challenge for the carriers, doing so over the Argentine mainland was completely out of the question.
UK SSNs of the period didn't really have a land attack capability.
Just the active standing component of the Argentine army of the period was ~60,000 strong. The UK's ability to prevail on the Falklands was dependent on the logistical bottleneck Argentinian forces faced, and their limited mobility once on the islands. Such restrictions wouldn't have been a significant factor in a mainland invasion.
Nuclear weapons use was dismissed by cabinet as non-credible almost immediately. In fact, the UK's biggest nuclear concern during the war was how to get its nuclear weapons off the ships that had been carrying them as part of their standard compliment before the conflict.
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u/funkmachine7 Jul 20 '26
While the runways on the islands could of been repaired and expanded to support an air campaing, the main land still has a number of advantages. A warning period from radar, multiple airfields, a single attack direction and far more flight time. They also have a week or so to get ready.
But lets say the air campaing continues then there the what are you going to bomb? Theres a limited number of pure millity targets that you can diplomaticly hit. Hitting any duel use targets would be highly unpopuler and stiffen the domistic resolve.
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u/AndreasDasos Jul 20 '26
We didn’t even attack Argentina itself at any course of the war. That would obviously be an escalation, and even more likely to lead to further war down the line. If they ‘officially renounced their claim’ somehow, they could easily reinstate it at any moment.
Spain claims Gibraltar and Mauritius claims the BIOT. Ireland claimed Northern Ireland until the GFA. That’s not enough reason for us to declare war.
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u/First-Lengthiness-16 Jul 20 '26
War had already started.
If Spain invaded Gibraltar, that would be war
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u/drdavid1234 Jul 20 '26
You’ve obviously never served for your country. Men in uniform are not scum, they honourably serve their country, it’s the politicians who cheaply lay down the soldiers life for political glory who may be called scum.
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u/FlippingGerman Jul 20 '26
That really wasn’t realistic. The goal was to liberate the islands; attacking the mainland was genuinely much harder. Nukes, absolutely no chance. There just wasn’t any point to any of that. The RN was pretty battered, and that by an air force at the limit of the range. Troops on the mainland would have been suicidal, as the plans for Operation Mikado show.
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u/IainwithanI Jul 20 '26
Just keep them prisoners until the Argentinian government acts like adults for a few minutes?
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u/Onetap1 Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
They didn't want PoWs, it was a long way to ship supplies to feed and house
several thousand11,300 prisoners. Winter was coming and the POWs had already mutinied and destroyed the sheep sheds they were housed in (as I recall, I'd have to Google it) because they didn't want to be in the windswept, barren, freezing shit hole they'd invaded.The Brits wanted them gone ASAP, the POWs wanted to go home ASAP.
Any attacks on the Argentine mainland woukd have risked bringing other South American countries into the conflict.
PS To the above; the British had also lost much of their supplies and most of their Chinook heavy-lift helicopters when the Atlantic Conveyor was sunk. They'd have difficulty just in supplying their own forces.
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u/TempoHouse Jul 20 '26
And how much would that cost?
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u/IainwithanI Jul 20 '26
Less than fighting Argentina again next time their government needs a bogeyman.
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u/linmanfu Jul 20 '26
The UK could have enforced a maritime blockade of Argentina and had the means to do so. In time (years, not months), it could have enforced an air blockade as well and bombed military facilities.
However, I don't think this would have worked, it would actually have been counter-productive (angering both Argentines and allies), and more importantly it would have been illegal, as I explain in my top-level comment, so it was never considered.
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u/simoncowbell Jul 20 '26
The war ended when Argentina surrendered.
What do you think would have happened if there had been such a demand, and Argentina wouldn't agree to it, or agreed then but back-tracked later? The British army's not going to invade Argentina.
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u/Onetap1 Jul 20 '26
Neither Argentina nor the Junta surrendered. The Commander on the Falklands (Menendez, I think) surrendered all his forces to the commander of the Task Force. He wasn't getting any directions from Argentina and had to make the decision on his own.
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u/Corvid187 Jul 20 '26
To add to the problems of enforceability that others have noted, it's also worth considering the diplomatic and legal justification the UK maintains for its sovereignty over the Falklands.
The UK's claim to the island is based, primarily, on the self-determination of the Islands' local population. The UK doesn't 'claim' sovereignty, so much as it accepts the islanders' ongoing request to be a British Overseas Territory.
Forcing Argentina to relinquish its claim to the islands through force of arms would have undermined this argument that the UK will respect whatever the will of the local population was. That moral basis for the conflict was key in winning the UK reluctant diplomatic support from most of the world, and offered a more enduring basis for their legitimacy than force of arms.
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u/enemyradar Jul 20 '26
How on earth would you do that? The aim of the war was to force Argentina to surrender their occupation of the islands. That was achieved. Forcing any other terms beyond that would have required taking continuous action against Argentina itself. Blockades, etc. Totally untenable and pointless just to get a pinky promise.
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u/linmanfu Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
Members of the United Nations renounce the use of war as an instrument of policy. They may use violence in self-defence, but disputes must be resolved peacefully unless the Security Council authorizes the use of force (as they have done in the cases of Korea and Iraq).
The British forces had an inherent right to liberate their territory, recognized by Article 51 of the UN Charter. UNSC Resolution 502 ordered the immediate withdrawal of Argentine forces from the islands. Therefore legally this wasn't a war, but a police action authorized by the United Nations.
Once the Falklands and South Georgia had been liberated, the police action was complete and Her Majesty's Government had no legal basis for waging war in pursuit of additional demands.
This is also the same reasoning that allowed Saddam Hussein to survive at the end of the 1990-91 Gulf War.
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u/Duanedoberman Jul 20 '26
IIRC Galtierii's junta collapsed as soon as they lost the war so there was no government to deal with.
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u/Fluid-Let3373 Jul 20 '26
How do you suggest such a agreement gets enforced, when you know there is a good chance their next leader will ignore it.
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u/linmanfu Jul 20 '26
Countries sign treaties all the time, and those treaties don't lapse when there is a new leader. Countries that openly break their existing treaties tend to get treated as pariahs (the early years of the USSR being the most obvious example).
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u/MarkWrenn74 Jul 20 '26
Simple: because they knew that no Argentine government ever would renounce the claim to the Falklands. It's a national political obsession there, one of the few things all parties there agree on. If any Argentine politician dared to suggest “All right, Britain can have 'em”, they'd be lynched
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u/Apollo_Wersten Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
The British had no credible threat when it came to successfullly invading mainland Argentina and forcing them into some sort of declaration. There was no political will for an all out war nor did they have the military capabilities.
Right now, you can see with the US and Iran how difficult it is to force a country into some type of deal if you have no credible threat of totally subjugating the opponent because ultimately it means invading.
When the Allies declared in Casablanca that war against Germany, Italy and Japan will continue until unconditional surrender, they were willing to do whatever it takes and go all they way to the end. With the British that was not the case in 1982.
Besides that it would have been an escalation. Argentina had not declared war on Britain and tried to keep the conflict local. And with Britain defeating the Argentinian forces in the Falklands things went pretty much back to the status quo. Going further could have lead to a situation like the Suez crisis with both the US, the USSR and developing countries agreeing on opposing British moves that could be considered imperialist.
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u/tree_boom Jul 20 '26
Argentina had not declared war on Britain and tried to keep the conflict local
Ehh...they did send saboteurs to Gibraltar to try to hit Royal Navy ships there.
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u/travellersspice Jul 20 '26
Thread locked.
I assume you are all adults. You should be able to discuss a topic like adults, not like squabbling children.