The Falklands - some silliness within the silliness

To paraphrase the author of this article on the Falklands in the London Review of Books, I can't say that I have ever had a strong opinion about said islands. The article (by Jenny Diski) did have two aspects that I found notable, however.

The first of these was the author's referencing of the manner in which Mrs Thatcher exploited the Falklands War in order to boost her re-election chances in '83. The jingoistic use of the islands in '83 is (as I read it) put forward as a debating point to reinforce the correctness of the current Argentine position – what is not considered, it seems, is the possibility that Mrs Kirchner is using the islands in an equally exploitative manner. The Argentine economic situation is not wholly rosy, with falling growth and rising inflation (up to 25% by some estimates) which the government has had to pull some dubious tricks in order to keep on top of (nationalising private pensions, allegedly cooking the inflation statistics, and so on). Conditions, then, not dissimilar to those faced by the Tories thirty years ago (or, indeed, by the Argentinian Junta at that time also). The use of international issues to gloss over the domestic is a classic political move - why only pick up on one side's use of it though? (Particularly if, as the author does, you are going to propose a potential, but very unlikely, use in the future by one side (i.e., Cameron doing a Thatcher) whilst ignoring the actual ongoing use by the other.) To do so marks one out as rather parochial to my eyes.

The second point is the credulous acceptance of the Argentinian position that the sea around the Falklands (i.e., the South Atlantic) are 'their shores'. This was interesting to me not so much because of the political particulars of this case but because of the presupposition of what could be described as nationalist essentialism.

Under international law the Falklands are not in Argentinian waters - to propose that they are, then, requires the idea that the boundaries of countries are somehow natural. The Falklands are closest to Argentina therefore they are a natural part of the entity that is 'Argentina', and that the distance makes them an unnatural part of 'Britain' (the islands forming Britain presumably being the natural extent of the latter entity).

However, nations are not natural entities - they are man-made constructs, the boundaries of which are entirely arbitrary. Thus a country that includes some islands thousands of miles away is no less unnatural or absurd than a country that stops at this river rather than that one (for example). This should be especially obvious in South America where all of the countries are fairly recent constructs of some cartographer's pen. The idea that nations are somehow natural entities is where nationalism in part stems from, and that dangerous ideology should be avoided as much as possible.

This is all not to say that there aren't arguments for the transfer of the Falklands to Argentina, just that they aren't based on silly things like the perceived righteousnesses of one party or the idea of national essences.