Authors: Patrick Robinson
And if they could throw the Great One out, they could sure as hell throw him out. “Jock,” the Prime Minister had said, “let me have a nice little memorandum, would you? One that mentions there are popular rumblings in Argentina about renewed military action over Las Malvinas. But in your opinion there is not one shred of hard evidence on any of the diplomatic grapevines to suggest any such thing has a basis in reality.”
“Well,” replied Sir Jock, “that is more or less true.”
“Absolutely,” replied the PM. “But it gives me a bit of cover if everything blows up and we’re caught unaware. You will not regret this, I assure you.”
From this Prime Minister, that last statement meant one thing:
Sir Jock, old boy, stand by for an elevation to the peerage in the next Honor List.
Lord Ferguson of Fife, that’s got a fine ring to it,
thought the JIC Chairman. That memorandum, the one that would partly exonerate the Prime Minister, was tucked away in a desk drawer in Downing Street, in readiness for the day when it might be needed.
Driving swiftly through the suburbs of West London, the chauffeur had the head of the British government home in his official residence before 11:30 p.m. And when he arrived, there were three further shocks awaiting him.
First, the Argentine Marines had pressed on to both of the major oil-drilling rigs on East Falkland, to the north of Darwin Harbor, and to the south of Fitzroy. According to the message from ExxonMobil in Rio, they had arrested every last one of the British and American oil personnel and flown them out in an Air Force C-130 to Rio Gallegos. No one thought they would be returning any time soon.
Just as malevolent was news of a further Argentinian Marine landing on the island of South Georgia, another purely British protectorate 1,100 miles southeast of the Falklands. South Georgia was the Alps of the South Atlantic, a far-flung remnant of the British Empire, a forbidding land of glaciers and towering mountains, the last resting place of the legendary British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.
None of the above, however, prevented the Argentinians from raising their national flag above the islands, when they landed there in 1982, and it took a very determined group of Great Britain’s finest to recapture it.
The British Prime Minister was right now staring at a message from government house in Buenos Aires informing him the Argentinians had not only done it again, they had arrested all U.S. and UK oil personnel working on the gigantic new South Georgia natural gas strike zone, which ExxonMobil and BP had been organizing for the past eight months.
To make matters infinitely worse, there was a disgruntled message from the President of the United States, requesting a call-back to discuss what Great Britain planned to do in order to rectify this disgraceful military aggression against the citizens of both countries.
The Prime Minister retreated immediately to his private office and put in a call to the President of the United States. And, as communications between the two allies went, this one was not encouraging.
The President recommended immediate negotiations with Argentina. He did not recommend a war, but he wanted a deal done over the oil. In the event the Westminster Parliament felt they needed to declare some kind of war against the military occupiers of this British colony, the U.S. President stated his country would help and assist all they could, but they would not send in troops.
“The Falklands are British islands. And if you guys really want them back, that’s up to you. As friends we’re here to help. But I will not take my country into someone else’s war in someone else’s country unless the reasons are overriding, as they were in Iraq.
“If you want ’em back you’ll have to go get ’em on your own,” said Paul Bedford. “We’ll do what we can. But we do want a deal over that oil, hear me? You better speak to Pedro whatsisname in Buenos Aires and see what you can agree.”
The British Prime Minister was highly skeptical about Pedro whatsisname. Like most of his Cabinet, the PM had never had a proper job in the private sector, where money and results count. He was essentially a politician, a bureaucrat, paid for from the public purse, and used to spending enormous amounts of government money, living high on the hog, surrounded by spin doctors who tried to manipulate the press in his favor, day after day.
A down-and-dirty powwow with a South American President, ex-military, ex–cattle rancher, and horse trader from way back—well, that was not really the PM’s game. He knew nothing of the cut and thrust
of big business, preferring obscure, abstract speeches about saving the starving children of Africa, and AIDS, and democracy. Stuff where you can’t get caught out.
This was different. This was a one-on-one with a military hard man, some fucking Napoleonic figure from the pampas who’d just conquered 300 British islands in about ten minutes.
Jesus. What the hell did Bedford want from him? And what if he took the country to war? And what if the British lost? What then? This was probably the worst day of his life. He’d always wanted a place in someone’s history book. But not like this.
And where the hell was South Georgia? He remembered, vaguely, from back when he was a student, that a group of Argentinians had somehow landed there in 1982 and raised their flag. He could not remember whether they were civilians or military, or whether they had finally fled or been forcibly removed. But it all seemed much more difficult now.
The memorandum from Buenos Aires suggested today’s raiders were trained professional troops, and that like the assault on the Falklands, the operation had been planned in great detail and carried out with absolute ruthless efficiency. The PM did not like it. And the prospect of all these damn Argentinian flags being raised all over the place quite frankly gave him the creeps.
A further note on his desk reminded him that a few weeks ago an angry crowd in Plaza de Mayo had carried in a huge cardboard banner showing him, with a black patch over his eye, and scrawled across it the words…
Bandito de las Malvinas.
The PM did not speak Spanish but he got the drift of that one, and he had been none too pleased to hear the crowd had set fire to it, chanting whatever was Spanish for “Public Enemy Number One.” The crowd, of course, had no idea whatsoever that he was actually their best friend, and it was his swinging cuts to the British military and Royal Navy that would make the reconquest of Las Malvinas darned near impossible.
And now what? Every member of his government knew what they had done. Though they would all duck and dive out of harm’s way when the blame began to be hurled at them. Damn cowards. He’d see about that. He was not prepared to take the rap for this. No. He most definitely was not.
And in the back of his mind, there was one most terrible dread. What happens when the media nails some high-ranking military officer who says flatly, “We warned this damn government dozens of times, it was emasculating the Army and the Navy, and now for the first time in four hundred years we are unable to answer a bullying foreign aggressor, some common garden dictator, with a military response of our own.”
At that point the Prime Minister of Great Britain understood very clearly the roof would fall in. The right-wing section of the press, which had been gunning for him for years, would finally have the ammunition they craved. And they would be utterly merciless. The prospect of the headlines that would appear in the next forty-eight hours filled him with ice-cold horror.
And the trouble was, everything was way out of his control. The world news was breaking from Buenos Aires, and the global media system would be consumed with the devastating victory of the Argentinians. He, Great Britain’s Prime Minister, was a bit player at the scene of his own potential destruction.
The press would want to know exactly two things from him. Should someone have known this was about to happen? What was he going to do about it?
To the former, the answer was plainly yes; and the most junior reporter would take about fifteen minutes to prove it. To the second, the answer was a plain, simple, unequivocal God knows.
By ten minutes to midnight, his colleagues were arriving. The Foreign Secretary, Roger Eltringham, was first, followed by the Minister of Defense, Peter Caulfield. He had taken the time to call in the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Rodney Jeffries, and the Chief of the Defense Staff, General Sir Robin Brenchley. The Home Secretary was there, plus the Transport Secretary.
Peter Caulfield, however, had considered it a waste of time to invite people like the Education Secretary and the Minister of Health. But he did request the presence of the Lord Chancellor and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, both of whom could be counted on to have a joint heart attack at the very mention of war with its attendant expenditure.
The Prime Minister mentioned to Peter Caulfield that he may have
gone beyond his brief to summon the Navy and military. But the Defense Minister replied, “Sir, we’re talking war here. We have been attacked. And we may be obliged to hit back. We need the military for advice and assessment.”
“Very well,” replied the PM, who had himself invited one press secretary and three of his personal political advisers. He called the meeting to order and opened by stating, “As you all now know, Argentina has attacked the Falkland Islands, apparently with some success, and now declares the islands,
las Malvinas,
free of British rule for the first time in one hundred eighty years.”
Roger Eltringham immediately informed the Cabinet members he had sent the strongest possible protest to the United Nations, demanding the Security Council take action of censure against the Argentinian Republic. It had been nothing short of a pre-emptive and brutal military strike at a peace-loving sovereign people, loyal to the British Crown, who now stood under the jackboot of a South American dictator.
The Prime Minister nodded his thanks and turned to Peter Caulfield, who said, “I think you should perhaps decide whether or not you wish to retain the possibility of a military response, in which case I think we should first hear from Admiral Sir Rodney, and General Sir Robin. I say this because they may consider a military response is impossible, in which case your options are very narrowed.”
The Prime Minister visibly winced at being asked to consider the possibility of going to war, and at the prospect of being lectured first by the General and then by some bloody battle-hardened Admiral.
Slowly, he turned over the pages of the notes in front of him and then said, in a statesmanlike way, “No country with our traditions and position in the hierarchy of the world’s nations can afford to dismiss the possibility of a military response to an attack on its people. But before I make any decisions, I think Roger should enlighten us to the likely reactions of the rest of the world.”
Foreign Secretary Eltringham looked doubtful. “So far as I can see,” he said, “most of the world will be damn glad not to be involved. Our nearest neighbor, France, has, of course, sold the Argentinians practically every piece of military hardware they own, particularly their Mirage fighter jets, the Super-Etendards, and the Exocet missiles. And
they will mostly hope to sell them more. They probably hope we will be defeated.”
“I thought we already had,” interjected Admiral Jeffries.
“And just to conclude,” added Roger Eltringham, “the only other nation with any real interest in this conflict is the United States. I can state right now they will not want to fight alongside us. But neither will they want to lose that oil situation down there. Like last time, they’ll help. But they won’t join us in a ground or even a naval war.”
“I spoke to President Bedford a short while ago,” said the Prime Minister, “and he said more or less what you just outlined…I suppose the question I must ask is, do we have the capacity to fight a war in the South Atlantic, eight thousand miles from home?”
“Rather more pertinent, Prime Minister,” said General Brenchley, “is whether or not you have the courage to stand up in the House of Commons and tell them we don’t.”
The Prime Minister bridled. “General,” he said, “you are here to offer military and naval advice, perhaps you would restrict yourself to those areas. And perhaps you would answer my question. Do we have that capacity?”
“No, Prime Minister,” said the General gruffly, glaring at the professional politician he utterly despised. “We don’t. And if we went, we couldn’t win.”
The Cabinet room went silent. “Surely there’s some course of action open to us?” said the PM.
“How about surrender?” grunted the General.
Admiral Jeffries chuckled, at the perfectly hideous but ultimately inevitable way all of their chickens had come home to roost; the defense cuts year after year, the reductions in recruits, equipment, ships, aircraft, regiments, and in the end morale.
Like General Brenchley, he sensed the onrushing feeling of power. If the military chiefs said no, there could be no armed response to the Argentinian assault. They both knew that. So did the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues.
In the end, it was General Brenchley who stood up, towering over the table of professional politicians, not one of whom had ever served in the military, not one of whom had ever had a proper job, outside of political parties, trade unions, or general public rabble-rousing. Maybe
a couple of lawyers, specializing in human rights, or some such bloody nonsense. All of them, in the opinion of the military, were, generally speaking, either beneath contempt or hard on the border line.