It’s been a while since I’ve updated my blog but recent
events in Argentina have convinced me that it is time to write again. For
months, tensions have been growing between Britain and Argentina over the
sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. However, at the current G20 summit in
Mexico these tensions seem to have reached a new peak. Indeed, Tuesday’s confrontation between the
British Prime Minister David Cameron and the Argentine President Cristina Fernández
de Kirchner is headline news around the world. Each country has long claimed that the islands
belong to it yet it is only over the past year or so that the issue has become
important again. In this issue of my blog I shall attempt to explain their competing
claims of ownership.
Whilst it is true that it was David Cameron who confronted Fernández
in Mexico, there is no mistaking that this is an issue which was created by the
Argentinians. Indeed, for most of the
five years that Fernández has held the Argentine Presidency the subject of
sovereignty over the islands her compatriots call Las Malvinas has been a
dominant one. An illustration of this is Argentina’s Olympic video in which an athlete trains alongside well-known Falklands’ landmarks, the
tagline of which is ‘To compete on English soil, we train on Argentinian soil’,
to see how much the Argentinians believe the Falklands is their rightful
territory.
Fernández claims that as well as the people of her country,
40 nations around the world have signalled their intent to support Argentina at
the UN over this issue. She claims that many more will support them in the
future. The reason, her government argues, is Britain’s inability to shirk off
its colonial past. As her foreign
minister, Héctor Timmerman, says:
‘After years of acting
as a colonial power they have forgotten that they are responsible for the
existence of colonialism, and that it is countries like Argentina that defeated
most of the colonial projects in the world’.
Here, Timmerman highlights his belief that Britain is still
an imperialistic power which is refusing to loosen its grasp on territories
which it has no legitimate right to and where the people do not wish to be
British.
However, Timmerman left out two very important details. Firstly,
by becoming part of Argentina rather than Britain, the Falklands would not be liberated:
they would merely be passed from one quasi-colonial power to another. Secondly,
the issue of sovereignty should not be decided by the Buenos Aires government
but rather by Falkland Islanders themselves. In places such as Argentina (which
formerly fought for independence from the Spanish Empire) and former British
colonies which also fought for their independence, the people of these lands
had a desire to be rid of their colonial masters. This desire is not apparent
in the case of the Falklands. Therefore, if the Falklands do want independence
or do want to be annexed by Argentina, the issue of sovereignty should not be
decided by the Buenos Aires government but rather by Falkland Islanders
themselves.
Indeed, this is a point which the British government seems
to have grasped much readier than their Argentinian counterparts. A Downing
Street Official stated that the envelope, which Fernández gave to Cameron at
the G20 summit and which contained a UN resolution from 1986, referred ‘to the UN
charter [as all UN resolutions do], which enshrines the principle of
self-determination’.
As it happens, a referendum on the future of the islands is
due to be held next year. It is widely
expected that the people of the Falkland Islands will choose to remain British.
It is perhaps for these reasons that Argentina is by-passing calls for
self-determination by claiming that due to its geographical location and the
ethnicity of the people displaced from the islands over a century ago, it
should have control over the islands.
There might, however, be a darker reason behind Argentina’s claimed
desire for the islands. Argentina’s economy is in bad shape. By fighting a
diplomatic war of words with Britain, Fernández’s government has managed to
divert the attention of many Argentinian citizens from the economy. As the
Falkland Islands’ own Merco Press states:
‘By boldly asserting a
territorial claim to the Islands, Cristina Fernández has succeeded in unifying
an otherwise divided Argentine citizenry’.
However, sooner or later her government will have to face up
to its own problems rather than hiding behind the smokescreen of the Falkland
Islands.
A few blog posts ago I sang the praises of Argentine
President Cristina Fernandez. I did, nonetheless, state that she needed to
adjust her economic policies or she could lead Argentina to disaster. Fernandez
seems to have chosen the latter path by masking its problems with an outward
show of aggression which will do nothing to solve internal problems.
The people of the Falkland Islands have shown no desire to
secede to Argentina and therefore Fernández should cease attempting to force
their hand. In the midst of all this diplomatic turmoil, should the people of
the Falklands happen to decide that they would be better off as part of
Argentina than as a British territory then this decision should be welcomed by
both the Argentinians and the British. However, if the referendum shows that
the Falkland Islanders, as is likely, see themselves as British, Argentina
would do well to halt its greedy pursuit of these islands before it finds
itself turning into the ‘colonising power’ it accuses Britain of being.
