UK's expensive nuisance

A commercial ­dispute breaks out in the South Atlantic. ­Argentina asserts a hoary claim to the Falklands and takes it to the UN. Britain says push off, you must be joking. Nobody takes it ­seriously as war is inconceivable. ­Downing Street is more concerned with domestic unpopularity.

That was in March 1982. It was also last week. Then the tabloids greeted Argentina's claim as rubbish. Now they are equally nuanced, calling the Argentine president, Cristina Kirchner, Queen Argie Bargy and Old Plastic Face. The Falklands war was a catastrophic failure of diplomacy and deterrence. Now, at least, war is unlikely.

Britain has almost as many troops on the islands, 1,200, as there were islanders at the time of the invasion. It is on guard and the latest row with Argentina is merely over the arrival of an oil rig, the Ocean Guardian, in waters north of Port Stanley. But Argentina regards submarine resources as falling within the terms of its long-standing claim to the islands, which its defeat in the 1982 war did nothing to diminish. Military conquest does not establish legal title.

Anyone who studies the tortuous ­history and law of the Falklands will know that Argentina's claim to the islands was certainly strong. The treaty of Utrecht recognised Spanish sovereignty and this led to 40 years of Spanish occupation of the islands, which was reasserted in 1823 by Buenos Aires after its independence from Spain. Ten years later the islands were seized by force by Britain, and settlers sent out in a crude act of imperial aggression.

Britain's defence is one of "prescription"; that Britons have been in uninterrupted occupation of the islands since the 19th century, backed up by the oft-proclaimed wish of these Britons not to become Argentinian. Such considerations are strong, if not overwhelming, in international law. They were why the UN security council approved Britain's military reversal of the 1982 invasion.

But legal title is not all. The Falklands are the Elgin marbles of diplomacy, perhaps trivial to London but subject of everlasting (if minor) grievance to the people of Argentina. Before 1982 Britain recognised this. The islands lay off the coast of Argentina their obvious link to the outside world. Continuing to garrison and supply them from Britain was an expensive legacy of empire.

Indeed at the very time of the Falklands war, Margaret Thatcher was transferring Hong Kong to China on similar grounds of expediency, and her favourite minister, Nicholas Ridley, was seeking a negotiated compromise on the Falklands with Argentina at the UN.

Argentina has not threatened military action over the Ocean Guardian, nor is Kirchner's protest necessarily a bid for popularity the Malvinas are not a big issue in Buenos Aires politics. Britain's decision to go ahead with drilling, though within the bilateral 1995 Joint Declaration over Oil, was bound to be seen in Latin America as imperial arrogance. The matter may yet be decided by the international court at The Hague.

Too gutless to act

Thatcher thought it was in Britain's interest to negotiate with Argentina in 1982, even when it was a dictatorship. Now that Argentina is a democracy that interest can hardly have diminished. Subsequent British governments knew this, but were too gutless to act on it. The Falklands will remain an expensive nuisance to British diplomacy and possibly trade in Latin America, the more so after last week's vocal support for Kirchner in Mexico.

The best hope for a ­stable and prosperous Falklands under British occupation is a revival of leaseback under UN supervision. The islands must have links with the adjacent mainland.

Britain was very lucky to win the Falklands war. Had a freelance navy occupation of South Georgia not ­pre-empted a planned later invasion, and had America not overtly and ­covertly backed the British task force, Thatcher's desperate gamble might have failed and the Argentine occupation succeeded, like India's seizure of ­Portuguese Goa which it imitated. (It was even called Plan Goa.)

That war is unlikely to be repeated. But this cannot allow us to ignore its causes. Distant colonies are a post-imperial anachronism. Britain will have to negotiate with Argentina because the world, either at the UN or at The Hague, will insist on it. The government and media can bury their heads in the sand, but that will not make the Falklands dispute go away or atone for the dead of the silliest of wars a quarter century ago.