Bridgehead revisited: the literature of the Falklands

LAWRENCE FREEDMAN'

My objective in this article is to provide a survey of the material now available for a serious study of the Falklands War of April-June 1982. Although my survey covers only material available in Britain, this is, as will soon be seen, substantial; in certain important areas the serious study has begun. As any visitor to a bookshop will be aware, the size of the Falklands literature is now enormous. Even when one excludes books whose impact is primarily visual,1 a large amount of shelf space has to be taken up. Readers of military journals have been receiving a digest of first hand accounts and evaluations of weapon performance. And so intensive has the publishing effort been that a full survey of the literature should even include some of the better reviews.2 The flow of publications has yet to be stemmed.

There are three obvious explanations for the size of the literature. The first is that during the conflict itself hard news was a rare commodity; this generated an interest in what had 'really been going on' behind the scenes. The public (or at least the media) appetite for news was hardly satisfied by the terse one-liners from official spokesmen and so had to be met by a huge army of unofficial commentators. The need to fill the information gaps and correct the speculation left over from the war has created an incentive to tell the 'real' story as soon as possible. Moreover, the conflict had developed a large following over the summer (almost like a television serial) and this interest was readily sustained. Unlike much else in the modern world, this was a story that could be readily understood by a wide audience with their interest already fully engaged.

A second and related reason is that many of the correspondents assigned to the British Task Force had a frustrating time. They were subject to strict and unusually effective censorship and suffered long delays in getting out their despatches. Moreover, as the actual policy on release of information was controlled from London, it was actually the London- based correspondents who often got the news first. Not surprisingly a number of the journalists have decided to ensure that they get at least some benefit from the experience by writing books.

The most obvious reason of all for the volume of publications is that Britain won and there is always an interest in stories in which the 'good guys' come out on top! A more painful outcome might have produced a longer and more pointed official inquiry, but there would not have been the same market for detailed dissections of the course of the campaign.

Not surprisingly, much of the material already in print consists of eyewitness reports. Two of these are outstanding. The first is by BBC correspondent Robert Fox, who had what is known as a 'good war' in that he was close to much of the important action and was even awarded an MBE for services rendered to the Task Force. He sticks in his reporting largely to what he saw and he is extremely successful in conveying the 'feel' of the land campaign.3 The second of these reports is based on the letters of Lieutenant David Tinker, who was killed in the closing stages of the war on HMS Glamorgan. One feature of the British campaign was that whereas all reports by the correspondents were carefully censored, this

Lawrence Freedman is Professor of War Studies, King's College, London. 1. Pictures can explain a lot, not only of the physical character of a war but also of the terrain and

climate in which forces have to operate. The best collection is by the Sunday Express Magazine team, War in the Falklands: the campaign in pictures (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982).

2. Christopher Wain's in The Listener, 3 March 1983, corrects a couple of common inaccuracies. Another interesting review is that by Neal Ascherson in the London Review of Books, 18 Nov.-1 Dec. 1982.

3. Robert Fox, Eyewitness Falklands (London: Methuen, 1982). Another readable account, though slighter, is provided by Patrick Bishop of The Observer and John Witherow of The Times, The winter war (London: Quartet, 1982). Robert McGowan and Jeremy Hands offer 'the human story of what it was actually like to live and fight in those bleak islands' in Don't cry for me, Sergeant Major (London: Camron Design, 1983). This is a fairly trivial pot-boiler.

0020-5850/83/3/0445- 08$03.00 i) 1983 International Affairs

446 BRIDGEHEAD REVISITED

was not true of the letters home from members of the task force. (At least one of the few serious 'leaks' of information-on the helicopters lost in South Georgia-during the campaign came from such a source.) David Tinker hardly fitted a military stereotype: the eloquent son of an eminent liberal scholar with a taste for poetry, he responded with unusual sensitivity and ultimately extreme distaste to the events unfolding around him. The publication of his letters home is a necessary corrective to the forgetfulness about the individual tragedies of war (it is all too easy to write 'the British only lost one killed . . .') and also a valuable source of uninhibited comment which has already been drawn upon in more recent accounts of the fighting.4

The bulk of the eyewitness accounts is not readily available but is to be found in the service journals. In The Wire (Royal Signals), Flight Deck (Fleet Air Arm), Globe & Laurel (Royal Marines), The Gunner (Royal Artillery), Pegasus (Parachute Regiment) and so on, are to be read the reports from the fighting men back to their colleagues. These reports provide the basic detail upon which future military histories will be based. The style tends to be borrowed from schoolboy essays on holidays, attempting awkwardly but honestly to describe difficult and complex emotions.5 The accounts are cheerful and matter-of-fact with a hurried but respectful passage by death. Later editions of these journals provide extremely full accounts of the action. The Spring 1983 edition of Flight Deck, for example, carries reports from many of the key ships in the Task Force.

These individual accounts from the participating units will be invaluable in putting together a proper military history of the campaign, but they largely tell how it looked from the bottom up rather than from the top down. We are now getting some direct reports from the higher command of the campaign. After the fighting was over, many of those who had been closely involved either in Whitehall or with the Task Force were in great demand on the lecture circuit. The most notable double act was by Rear-Admiral Sir John Woodward and Major-General Sir Jeremy Moore, the former Commanders of the Naval Task Force and Land Forces Falkland Islands respectively. Their presentation to the Royal United Services Institute in October 1982 is printed in the Institute's journal and provides a compressed but lucid account of the operation from the top. Inevitably the account is somewhat diplomatic in that there are no reports of divisions among the planners on the most appropriate course of action and each step now appears to have a logic that may not have been so apparent at the time. Nevertheless, the Woodward/Moore presentation provides us with a framework for analysing the campaign.6

Other journals with close connections with the military or the defence industries have also been carrying full descriptions of the campaign, often with an emphasis on the performance of individual items of equipment. Some of the companies have produced their own accounts of how their merchandise fared. British and French manufacturers have been waging a commercial war via leaks to such journals as the American Aviation Week & Space Technology in an effort to demonstrate the superiority of their merchandise. Advertisements with the 'proven in combat' headline have already appeared and some rather dubious methods have already been used to undermine or substantiate some claims (such as the French manufacturers of the Roland surface-to-air missiles and Mirage fighters suggesting that the British were lying about the numbers of Harrier aircraft shot down in order to obscure the real success of French systems).7

4. Hugh Tinker, A message from the Falklands: the life and gallant death of David Tinker, Lieut. RN, from his letters andpoems (London: Junction, 1982; now also available in Penguin).

5. To give the flavour, here is a passage, chosen almost at random, from an anonymous reminiscence from HQ Company of 40 Commando: 'Do you remember our stay in Fearless, the kindness shown by everyone on board; the passageways stacked with kit, the "haute cuisine", the ant-like procession as we staggered our way to the tank deck early on in the morning of the 20 May, cheered by the cries of 'Good luck Royal, keep your head down' from the ship's company as we snaked along the passageway; the feelings and emotions experienced during the transit to the beach-fear, apprehension, tiredness, seasickness; the thoughts of "Is it going to be an opposed landing?", or "Christ I won't be able to move with this lot on my back, let alone fight" or perhaps the question that often comes to mind in such situations, "What the hell am I doing here?"' (Globe & Laurel, Sept./Oct. 1982, p. 321.

6. Woodward and Moore, 'The Falklands experience', Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, March 1983.

7. In Aviation Week & Space Technology, 1 Nov. 1982 and 6 Dec. 1982. As an example of a company report see the P&O booklet on the experience of The Canberra entitled The great white whale).

Lawrence Freedman 447

To a large extent the specialist journals have reworked the basic information and, with a few exceptions, do not add very much to the story in the areas of either diplomacy or military organization and tactics. Where they can add a new slant is on the role of the hardware when their authors already have an understanding of the capabilities of the equipment they are describing or have been fed interesting snippets from their contacts. The best such accounts have been those in the International Defence Review and in a special issue of the magazine Defence. The latter examines in detail specific aspects of the military effort, such as the conversion of merchant ships to cope with aircraft and the attacks on Port Stanley airfield by the Vulcan bombers (in their first and last act of war since they became operational in 1957).8

The IDR reports draw carefully on a wide variety of sources to provide a reasonably complete, preliminary examination of the performance in combat of systems. Their readers will be as familiar with the biographies and essential characteristics of these systems as readers of other magazines are with Royal babies or hi-fi.9

These and other accounts in the defence journals sound, and often are, extremely authoritative, but it must be remembered that their reporters were suffering from many of the same disadvantages as were others who were following the war as outsiders. To the collections of Hansard, official briefings and press cuttings were added useful contacts in industry and the military, but these contacts were rarely disinterested. Accordingly, while this material is valuable, one has to listen for the sound of axes being ground. Moreover, given the general objective of packing as much detailed information as possible into a small space, there are obviously going to be mistakes, and with references rarely provided, they are not always easy to identify. Between one magazine and another there can be great variations on, for example, lists of participating military units. In the absence of official material, the specialist journals are normally the best alternative sources on basic statistics or technicalities, but they are very much second best.

Although some of the specialist material has now been packaged for a wider audience,10 most people will rely on the books by journalists which are both physically and stylistically more accessible. The first to reach the bookshops was by the Sunday Times 'Insight' team, led by Paul Eddy, Magnus Linklater and Peter Gillman." Much later Max Hastings of the Evening Standard, whose reporting from the Falklands virtually swamped that of his fellow correspondents, and Simon Jenkins, political editor of the Economist, produced their version.12 Both books are extremely readable and particularly interesting on the diplomatic side. There is no doubt that, however irritating it must have been to watch the competition win the race for publication, Hastings and Jenkins were wise to take their time and get a firm grip on their story. Theirs is really a superb piece of journalism and if only one book on the subject were to be read, this must be that book. The descriptions of the fighting are vivid and lucid while that of the political and diplomatic activity is fascinating and plausible.

As a journalist friend would put it, the authors have succeeded in the basic objective of their craft in producing a 'first draft of history'. But it is still a first draft, and while it will be difficult to surpass in the telling, The battle for the Falklands cannot be considered definitive. The method of both the Hastings/Jenkins and 'Insight' books was to interview as many of the key participants as possible while memories were still fresh. As they were both produced before much written evidence was available, this was the only way to gain new material and the authors might argue that it will be many years before what they were told unofficially in private can be released officially. Furthermore, any description of high-level decision-making can only be enriched by interviewing those who have just made the decision.

The trouble is that accounts in which interview material predominates are inevitably unbalanced. Journalists of the calibre of those writing these books will know enough to

8. 'A job of work', Defence, Nov. 1982. 9. International Defence Review: 'Fallout from the Falklands: a preliminary assessment', June 1982;

'The air war', Aug. 1982; 'Missile operations', Sept. 1982; 'Naval operations', Oct. 1982. 10. For example, Antony Preston, Sea combat off the Falklands: the lessons that must be learned

(London: Willow, 1982). Osprey have produced three books in their 'Men-at-arms' series on The battle for the Falklands: W. Fowler, Landforces: A. English and A. Watts, Navalforces; R. Braybrook, Air forces. See also B. Perret, Weapons of the Falklands conflict (Blandford, Dorset: Blandford, 1982).

11. The Sunday Times 'Insight' team, The Falklands War: the full story (London: Sphere, 1982). 12. Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins, The battlefor the Falklands (London: Michael Joseph, 1983).

448 BRIDGEHEAD REVISITED

make allowances for vanity, grudges, confusion and other human failings and will undoubt- edly have cross-checked where they can and rejected juicy material that cannot be corrob- orated. But there is a limit to what can be done without documentary evidence to jog memories, confirm facts and sort out sequences. The difference of opinion between Lord Lewin, former Chief of Defence Staff, and Dr David Owen, former Foreign Secretary, over what really happened in the mini-crisis of 1977 illustrates the problem. Interviews carry with them their own temptations: to use the quotable, whether apt or not; either to ignore or to play up the mischievous or malevolent comment according to personal sympathies. However many of the participants are caught in the interviewer's net, some will escape and these are the ones who are likely to come off worst in the narrative!

Lastly, one can never be sure that one is not being told what someone else wants it to be thought rather than what needs to be known. With a question as politically charged as the Falklands War and involving questions as sensitive as that of the conduct of individual units in such a major military operation, ties of loyalty and friendship and a general sense of propriety are often likely to overcome a desire to help a journalist write his book.

One senior officer described to the author an early version of Hastings' account of the campaign which had appeared in the Observer as being like a patchwork quilt put together in the dark in which all the pieces could be recognized but not the overall pattern. The analysis was improved in the finished book, but the point remains that one is forced to take a particular version of events, based on a? composite of reminiscences, on trust. There are few references to follow through. All this is not to criticize the authors, for they do not claim to have written an academic history. The point is only that there is still work to be done, especially as new material becomes available.

Neither the 'Insight' nor the Hastings/Jenkins book was able to take advantage of the official material released since they went to press. The major new source, of course, is the Franks Report."3 Messrs Hastings and Jenkins had enough confidence in their own work to issue a press release pointing out some gaps in the Franks Report that had been filled in their account. Certainly their Latin American sources allow a much better feel of the development of the crisis from both sides. Franks is also rather delicate in his treatment of the undistinguished role played by parliament. In many ways the Hastings/Jenkins account rings more true; the reasonableness of the committee blunted its cutting edge. Nevertheless, we have still been provided with a fascinating insight into the workings of the government machine moving from complacency to emergency with alarming speed. There is a wealth of information and a clear chronology for the crisis, at least from the British side.

Another official source which also helps to sort out the chronology is the Falklands White Paper from the Ministry of Defence of December 1982.14 The White Paper gained most publicity for its concluding announcements on plans to replace lost equipment and changes to defence policy made in the light of the experience of the war. Although the description of the actual campaign is terse and familiar and the discussion of the 'lessons' somewhat anodyne, the White Paper contains the basic statistics of the campaign and a couple of useful maps. It also tells what the government would like us to think the forces were up to during the campaign. A final official source on the details of the fighting is the supplement to the London Gazette with the Falklands Honours and Awards. The 140 citations are full of interesting incidental detail."5

There were aspects of the campaign, such as the handling of the media, where the government has been asked to explain its activities in more detail than it might otherwise have preferred. However, the nature of the diplomacy during the crisis is an area where we are still heavily dependent on the unofficial accounts. There is still the White Paper released by the government on 17 May which was an attempt to show Britain at its most conciliatory for the benefit of world opinion and provides a reasonable indication of just how far the government was prepared to move to achieve a settlement before having to approve a landing.16

13. Falkland Islands Review: Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors, Chairman The Rt Hon. The Lord Franks, Cmnd 8787 (London: HMSO, 1983).

14. The Secretary of State for Defence, The Falklands campaign: the lessons, Cmnd 8758 (London: HMSO, 1982).

15. Supplement to the London Gazette, Friday 8 October 1982. 16. Falkland Islands: negotiations for a peaceful settlement (London: FCO, May 1982). Sir Anthony

Parsons provides a valuable first-hand account of 'The Falklands Crisis in the United Nations' in International Affairs, Spring 1983, pp. 169-78.

Lawrence Freedman 449

The Stationery Office has also brought out an extremely handy digest of Commons debates from 2 April to 15 June 1982. It is unfortunate that debates from the Lords are not included and also that the record does not start early in March so that we could watch the developing crisis as it appeared in parliament, especially as the statements dragged from ministers during March appear to have had a significant and unfortunate effect on the perception of the crisis in Buenos Aires."7

To understand the crisis diplomacy it is also necessary to look at foreign capitals, where the local interest in the events has yet to justify a massive publishing effort.18 As we now expect, the United States exposed much of its internal wrangling to public view, so we know all about the divisions between the Europeanists and the Latin Americanists, and the specific arguments between Secretary of State Haig and Ambassador Kirkpatrick at the UN. Elsewhere, including in the UN, diplomats have remained more taciturn. We are still remarkably ignorant not only of the international machinations designed to stop Britain and Argentina fighting, and then to pull them apart once they had started, but also simply what the diplomatic community thought of it all.

Completing our survey of the basic sources on the conflict are the newspapers. Early attempts to use a large cuttings file to obviate the need for further research and win the race to the bookshops are best forgotten and illustrate the limits of reliance upon the press.19 Furthermore, the subsequent publicity about the problems faced by the media may have created the impression that few stories of lasting worth appeared. Nevertheless, while the details of the military action released at the time were limited, much of the diplomacy was played out in public. Furthermore, a sense of the movement of public and elite attitudes can only be gained by reading the press of the time. Both the BBC and ITV have produced videos on the conflict which serve as reminders of how much this was not a television war. The BBC has also published the collected despatches of its two reporters, Brian Hanrahan and Robert Fox, taking as the title Hanrahan's most memorable phrase after the first raid on Port Stanley.20

The actual performance of the media has been subjected to intense scrutiny. So serious were the arguments between Whitehall and the media during the course of the conflict, with accusations flying backwards and forwards-of the press giving aid and comfort to the enemy and of the Ministry of Defence practising the most sinister techniques of disinformation and manipulation-and so great was the furore, that the House of Commons Defence Committee decided to investigate this issue as its first major postwar inquiry. The result is an unusual and significant archive. The committee received evidence from most of the journalists who had been with the Task Force as well as from the major news agencies, papers, the BBC and ITV. All the frustrations of the previous few months were poured out. The Ministry of Defence was then given a chance to answer all the criticisms which, by and large, it did quite well. However, overall it is clear just how much the handling of the media reflected official instinct, which is rarely loquacious, rather than any deliberate or considered policy. The naturally restrictiVe approach demonstrated an extremely narrow view of the proper goals of an information policy. At least the complaints were put into some sort of perspective.2

The overall impression is that the media are not very good at reporting on themselves, in that they often have an exaggerated sense of their own importance and the inconveniences that others should accept, even when fighting a war, to accommodate the pressures of deadlines and Fleet Street rivalries. Robert Harris, drawing very much on the evidence given

17. The Falklands campaign: a digest of debates in the House of Commons, 2 April to 15 June 1982 (London: HMSO, 1982).

18. The exception, of course, is Buenos Aires; for Argentine literature see the article by Simon Collier on pp. 459-64 of this issue. An interesting account of how the war looked to a number of young Argentine conscripts has been published in Britain: Daniel Kon, Los chicos de la guerra (New English Library, 1983). An important description of the fighting from an Argentine perspective but written by an American is Robert L. Scheina, 'The Malvinas campaign', Proceedings of the US Naval Institute, Spring 1983.

19. C. Dobson et al., The Falklands conflict (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982). This came out even before the fighting was over!

20. Brian Hanrahan and Robert Fox, 'I counted them all out and I counted them all back': the battle for the Falklands (London: BBC, 1982).

21. First Report from the Defence Committee, The handling of press and public information during the Falklands conflict. 2 vols, session 1982-3 (London: HMSO, 1982).

450 BRIDGEHEAD REVISITED

to the Defence Committee, has produced a readable account of the 'media war', looking with a properly Iaundiced eye at the rather undistinguished role of the Sun, whose most infamous headline provides the title of the book.22

A lot of the trouble between the military and the media stemmed from the assumption by many servicemen and officials that in some way the American media had been responsible for 'losing' the Vietnam War by eroding popular will through a daily diet of lurid TV pictures. This explains to a large extent both the relief that it proved impossible to organize live TV coverage and the apprehension that bad news would damage popular morale. (The evidence for the assumption of the negative media role in the case of Vietnam is flimsy to say the least.)

The importance of domestic factors in the conduct of the war is surprisingly neglected.23 It might have been expected that Simon Jenkins would have done more on this aspect of the campaign but he had his work cut out making sense of what was going on in the higher levels of decision-making.24 One of the main insights to emerge from the Jenkins/Hastings book is the role played by the First Sea Lord, Sir Henry Leach, in convincing the Cabinet of the practicability of sending a large naval Task Force. A major incentive was to demonstrate the capability and the importance of the Royal Navy in contradiction to the general defence policy line set out in the White Paper of June 1981 which argued for substantial cuts in the Navy's combat vessels. The intermingling of the conflict with a general debate over the future of the Navy also comes out in an interesting combination of memoir and advocacy from Keith Speed, the former Navy Minister who resigned in opposition to the naval cutbacks.25

Otherwise, the discussion of the politics of the conflict is left to the opponents of the war. Anthony Barnett and Tam Dalyell both provide spirited critiques of what they obviously see as a reversion to the habits of empire.26 Both deal at length with, but have difficulty in getting over, the fact that the war was willed by parliament as much as by the government itself, and that a key factor in parliament was the role of the Labour front bench. It was not, in this sense, really 'Mrs Thatcher's War'. Tam Dalyell is convinced that a settlement could have been secured had not the Prime Minister consistently escalated' the fighting just as mediators looked like succeeding. The relationship between the course of the fighting and the diplomacy is somewhat more complicated, as Jenkins and Hastings amply demonstrate. Barnett's account is more composed and organized than Dalyell's and raises an interesting but in the end slightly implausible thesis about the importance of Churchillian symbols as a means of maintaining national unity.

It is notable that among the authors whose works have been mentioned thus far, academics are conspicuous by their absence. Scholarly work on the Falkland Islands dispute has hardly been a prominent feature of British university life. Those few academics who were interested in the matter have either concerned themselves with the general question of British-Latin American relations or with the particular question of sovereignty over the islands.27 During the crisis the

22. Robert Harris, Gotcha!-the media, the government and the Falklands crisis, (London: Faber, 1983). Some further material, and more background on the force's public relations efforts and general relations with the media is to be found in Alan Hooper, The military and the media (Aldershot, Hants: Gower, 1982).

23. Best ignored is a self-conscious attempt to get intellectuals to say something useful on the subject, which fails miserably: Cecil Woolf and Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Authors take sides on the Falklands (London: Cecil Woolf, 1982).

24. He did, however, with Robert Worcester, write a brief article on the development of public opinion up to the end of May: 'Britain rallies round the Prime Minister', Public Opinion, June/July 1982. I am not aware of a more recent article which brings together the poll evidence for the whole of the conflict.

25. Keith Speed, Sea change: the battle for the Falklands and the future of Britain's navy (Bath: Ashgrove, 1982).

26. Anthony Barnett, Iron Britannia (London: Allison & Busby, 1982). Tam Dalyell, MP, One Man's Falklands (London: Cecil Woolf, 1982). Another left-wing critique, published before the war's end, is Anthony Arblaster, The Falklands: Thatcher's war; Labour's guilt (London: Socialist Society, 1982).

27. J. C. J. Metford, 'Falklands or Malvinas?: the background to the dispute', International Affairs, Summer 1968; Peter Beck, 'Co-operative confrontation in the Falkland Islands dispute-the Anglo- Argentine search for a way forward, 1968-1981', Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs, Feb. 1982, pp. 37-58.

Lawrence Freedman 451

Royal Institute of International Affairs produced a quick survey covering a variety of questions. This succeeded in getting a number of academic specialists to commit themselves to paper while events were still unfolding.28 Inevitably some of the judgements did not pass the test of time. It is interesting to note the general pessimism and distaste for the military option and hope that a peaceful settlement could be achieved through the exertion of economic and diplomatic means of pressure. Nevertheless the authors did succeed in throwing light on aspects of the affair that were neglected at the time-in particular the actual and likely reactions of those not directly involved in the conflict-and which have not been fully discussed since.

Since the end of the war the only book by an academic has been by a Latin Americanist who demonstrated commendable enterprise and speed in getting his manuscript to the printer-and still remembered the footnotes!29 Peter Calvert's discussion of the months of April to June does not add a great deal but it is helpful to have the conflict placed in a Latin American as much as a British context. The running is still being made by those interested in the Latin American or sovereignty aspects of the issue. Thus, a special 'Falklands' issue of the journal Millenium contains, out of seven articles, three on the question of sovereignty and two on Latin America. It is of note that those on sovereignty do not give much support to the British claim to the islands, although the Argentine counter-claim is not desperately impressive either.30 As Dr Beck suggests towards the end of his piece, in the end power rather than legal argument appears to be decisive. However, it might also be the case that in terms of the public debate, the question of whether a claim to the Islands can be established that is watertight in international law is less important than the principle of self-determination. Jeffrey Myhre devotes only a paragraph to this principle along with the contrary principle of decolonization, because he doubts its legal validity. Yet the political importance of this principle is considerable and a thorough analysis, pointing to the inevitable limits on its application, would be welcome.

Two further essays in the Millenium collection put the crisis in a historical context. Guillermo Makin places the Argentine invasion at the end of a long history of political instability and offers little prospect of the 'Malvinas' issue removing its hold on Argentine politics. Peter Calvert explains the importance of General Galtieri's government in the development of US policy towards Latin American policy prior to the crisis and the subsequent attempts by Washington to mend its broken fences.31

The final two essays bring us to more general issues. Many of those who opposed the war in Britain argued that there were alternative forms of pressure available which could have forced Argentina off the islands without bloodshed. Most of the histories see the economic sanctions move in symbolic terms rather than as a practical method of shifting the occupying force. Margaret Doxey justifies scepticism as to the general value of economic sanctions. Finally, Philip Windsor investigates 'one of the very few wars in history in which one nation had no real intention of invading, and the other fought for territory which it had spent twenty years saying it did not really want'. He develops the compelling case that it was the nature of American conduct in the crisis that made matters worse rather than better.32 In an article in The World

28. The Falkland Islands dispute: international dimensions (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1982).

29. Peter Calvert, The Falklands crisis: the rights and wrongs (London: Pinter, 1982). 30. Peter Beck, 'The Anglo-Argentine dispute over title to the Falkland Islands: changing British

perceptions on sovereignty since 1910'; Jeffrey D. Myhre, 'Title to the Falklands-Malvinas under international law'; Alfredo Bruno Bologna, 'Argentine claims to the Malvinas under international law', all in Millenium, Spring 1983. The last of these is by an Argentine author and is translated from the Spanish. See also Malcolm Deas, 'Falklands title deeds', London Review of Books, 19 Aug.-2 Sept. 1982. The classic text on the matter, highly disapproved of in London, is Julius Goebel, The struggle for the Falkland Islands, written in the 1920s and recently republished by the Yale University Press. The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has been taking evidence on this (as well as on such matters as the future economic viability of the islands). Among the expert witnesses discussing the sovereignty question are Beck, Deas and Professor James Fawcett. The report has not been published (though it was substantially leaked to The Times) but the Minutes of Evidence are being published under the heading of Falkland Islands.

31. Guillermo Makin, 'The military in Argentine politics: 1880-1982'; Peter Calvert, 'Latin America and the United States during and after the Falklands crisis', both in Millenium, Spring 1983.

32. Margaret Doxey, 'International sanctions: trials of strength or tests of weakness?'; Philip Windsor, 'Diplomatic dimensions of the Falklands crisis', both in Millenium, Spring 1983. For a useful survey of

452 BRIDGEHEAD REVISITED

Today Phil Williams demonstrates how the basic conditions for successful crisis management were not met in this case.33

The weaknesses of the economic sanctions, the confusion of American diplomacy as well as the inability of both belligerents to compromise on the principle of sovereignty, meant that the issue (at least in the short term) was decided by force of arms. And so we had the unusual and wholly surprising spectacle of a limited war in the South Atlantic. Inevitably, as such conflicts are few and far between (though less so than they used to be) the conflict has been picked over by strategists for clues as to the nature of modern warfare. The general consensus appears to be that it is very dangerous to draw too many lessons too quickly and that what lessons are to be drawn are less to do with equipment than with the more timeless features of armed conflict. Most would agree with Jeffrey Record: 'In sum, the general military lessons of the Falklands War are for the most part affirmations of old truths and established trends, whatever the new conclusions that may emerge about the performance of specific technologies. War is still first and foremost a human encounter, and the intangibles of leadership, training, strategy, tactics, and cohesion under fire are still as decisive as they were in the days of Alexander the Great.'34 This conclusion is most valid when considering the land war. Those studying the air and sea wars find technology looming larger in their analyses, though again the skill and determination with which weapons are used can still mock the manufacturer's specifications. For airmen the question is one of what can be achieved at the limits of aircraft range;35 for sailors the questions turn on the best means of air defence and the role of the carrier (an issue which ensured that the conflict was analysed with special care in the United States).36 A nervousness that unwarranted conclusions, primarily of a broad strategic nature, might be drawn for future defence policy is also to be found in articles on the relevance of the conflict for future British defence policy.37

As can be seen from this survey the Falklands War has already stimulated a rich and varied literature which, given the speed of its production, is of a generally high quality. More is still needed from the Argentine side and to fill in the gaps on the diplomatic activity. For most of the questions that need asking some information of a reasonable reliability is now available.

the economic measures taken against Argentine, see Joan Pearce, 'Economic measures' in The Falkland Islands dispute (RIIA). See also M. S. Daoudi and M. S. Dajani, 'Sanctions: the Falklands episode', The World Today, April 1983.

33. Phil Williams, 'Miscalculation, crisis management-and the Falklands conflict', The World Today, April 1983.

34. Jeffrey Record, 'The Falklands War', Washington Quarterly, Autumn 1982. See also articles by Edward N. Luttwak and Michael Moodie in the same issue. The line taken by Record is similar to one that I took in 'The Falklands War of 1982', Foreign Affairs, September 1982. See also A. M. Cordesman, 'The Falklands crisis: emerging lessons for power projection and force planning', Armed Forces Journal International, Sept. 1982.

35. Air Commodore R. A. Mason, 'Hurray for the hobby horses: reflections on the air war in the South Atlantic 1982', Journal of the Royal United Services Institute, Dec. 1982. See also the chapter by Air Vice Marshal M. J. Armitage in M. J. Armitage and R. A. Mason, eds: Air power in the nuclear age: theory and practice (London: Macmillan, 1983).

36. Admiral Thomas H. Hoover and Alvin J. Cottrell, 'In the wake of the Falklands battle', Strategic Review, Summer 1982; John 0. Coote, 'Send her victorious . . .', Proceedings of the US Naval Institute, Jan. 1983.

37. All the articles seem to have the same title: Bruce George and Michael Coughlin, 'British defence policy after the Falklands', Survival, Sept.-Oct. 1982; Lawrence Freedman, 'British defence policy after the Falklands', The World Today, Sept. 1982; Peter Foot, 'British defence: the Falklands and after', ADIU Report, July/Aug. 1982.