She pledged to seek assistance at the United Nations to remove British military forces from the region, warning that the heightened British military presence risks a potential clash between the two countries.
London recently announced that it was dispatching the HMS Dauntless, a Type 45 destroyer, Britain's newest and most advanced warship, to the Falklands as well as a Trafalgar class nuclear-powered submarine equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles and Spearfish torpedoes. Another Type 45 destroyer, HMS Daring, was recently deployed to the Persian Gulf where two U.S. aircraft carriers, USS Carl Vinson and USS Abraham Lincoln, and their strike groups are also deployed, with the USS Enterprise carrier strike group to join them.
The British destroyer and submarine will reinforce Typhoon warplanes of the sort used against Libya last year, an air base with radar, a patrol frigate and a garrison of 1,700 soldiers, the latter almost the number of civilian inhabitants of the Falklands.
The deployment of Prince William on a military mission to the islands late last week further antagonized Argentina, with President Fernandez describing the royal scion as being garbed in the "uniform of a conquistador."
Rick Rozoff contributed to this report.
Malvinas in Britain’s imperialist claws....
The simmering tensions over the Malvinas Islands, or Falkland Islands (off the coast of Argentina in the South Atlantic) as called by the British occupiers, have become a matter of great concern as the UK decided to deploy destroyer HMS Dauntless to the islands.
The British Royal Navy is planning to send the Type 45 destroyer HMS Dauntless, a state-of-the-art warship, to the region on her maiden mission in a few months, a move interpreted by some experts as a provocation of war. Also known as the Daring class, HMS Dauntless is often regarded the most powerful air-defense warship in the world. This warship is equipped with the SAMPSON Multi Function Radar with the capability to detect hundreds of targets out to a distance of 400 km as well as outer atmosphere objects such as ballistic missiles.
Argentine Vice-president Amado Boudou sees the escalating conflict as an excuse to “distract public opinion from serious domestic problems such as unemployment.”
“London is after issues of big media impact to hide the daily sufferings of Britain with its problems of unemployment, shrinking economy, social unrest by appealing to a very distant situation such is the South Atlantic Islands dispute.”
However, the British Royal Navy says the Portsmouth-based destroyer’s deployment is “not a reaction to heightened tensions over the Falklands.” Paradoxically, Britain has already deployed anti-aircraft installations, a tracker station and modern jet fighters on the archipelago.
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner says the UK harbors secret plans to plunder the natural resources such as oil and fish in the area of the territorial dispute and that Argentina insists on her legitimate claim to the islands.
“Don’t expect an outcry of xenophobia from us, we stand on the concept of sovereignty which is in agreement with the interests of the state, our people and protection of our natural resources.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron has recently slammed Argentina for trying to ‘colonize’ the Malvinas Islands while the UK has basically cast its specter of imperialistic domination and colonization of Argentina’s South Atlantic islands since 1833.
“What the Argentineans have been saying recently I would argue is actually far more like colonialism because these people want to remain British and the Argentineans want them to do something else,” Prime Minister Cameron said last Wednesday.
Mr. Cameron’s statement was, however, welcomed by a spate of criticism on the part of some Latin American leaders. For instance, Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota said Latin America and the Caribbean “back Argentine sovereignty over the Malvinas and back the UN resolutions calling on the Argentine and British governments to hold talks on the issue.”
Although some pundits rule out the possibility of a full-scale invasion of the islands on the 1982 lines, Michael Clarke, head of the Royal United Services Institute, believes that a similar invasion particularly supported by the construction of an airfield at Mount Pleasant is possible. “In the event of tension, the UK could quickly reinforce the island because of its control of the airfield. We simply don’t need the kind of naval taskforce we had in 1982.”
On Friday, 2 April 1982, Argentine forces mounted an attack on the Malvinas Islands and South Georgia in order to redeem their long occupied territory. Britain sent a naval task force and retook the islands through amphibious assault. The war, which lasted 74 days, ended to the triumph of the British imperialist army, claiming the lives of over 600 Argentine troops, and 255 British soldiers.
Britain has a long-standing interest in the Malvinas’ oil which originally dates back to a couple of decades. In 1975, Britain conducted preliminary studies in this regard and in 1998–2009, two British exploratory missions succeeded in proving the oil potential of the area. It remains unclear how much oil there is in the Malvinas Islands but initial estimations place the offshore petroleum potential at a minimum of 6.525 billion barrels of oil.
On March 22, 2011, British transnational Rockhopper announced it had discovered a commercially viable deposit of crude oil in the Malvinas. Rockhopper Exploration PLC reported a “significant reservoir package” at its Sea Lion prospect.
When the company gave an initial report on its oil find at Sea Lion, Argentinean President Cristina Kirchner’s administration issued a statement and said the oil-drilling operation runs counter to international laws and treaties as well as UN resolutions which urge both sides to not take steps which might exacerbate the situation.
With an established history of imperialism and colonization, Britain has long coveted the windswept Malvinas as a strategic shipping stopover and treasure-trove of natural resources such as oil and fish.
With economy declining terminally at home, Britain is exploring ways to save itself either by virtue of climbing on the shoulders of others, i.e., digging its imperialistically colonialist claws into others ,i.e., the Malvinas Islands or by foisting its weapons off on nations with a turbulent status quo such as Bahrain.
That the British government is contemplating another imperialist adventure in the Malvinas Islands is an irrefutable assumption but it is painfully difficult to conjecture how Britain is going to achieve this nefarious objective.....
As the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War nears, Western media show angry leaders and “mounting tensions between Britain and Argentina”. In fact, little stops the UK from reconfirming sovereignty in the oil-rich and strategically located islands.
So, when the UK dispatched its most potent destroyer, the 8,000-ton state-of-the-art HMS Dauntless, and a nuclear sub to the Falklands, it was most probably prepared for Argentine President Cristina Kirchner’s reaction.
Whilst over the past three decades the British have built up a powerful military nuclear base in the Falklands to serve UK-US strategic interests in the region, Argentina had US-brand Money Power “democracy” imposed upon it, as punishment for daring to recover the Falklands in 1982.
Thus, since 1983 when “democracy” kicked in, successive governments have gone from bad to worse, sinking Argentina deeper and deeper. Starting with president Raúl Alfonsín (who veered us straight into hyperinflationary collapse in 1989), followed by presidents Carlos Menem (who with his Trilateral Commission Foreign and later Finance Minister Domingo Cavallo dismantled Argentina’s economy and military); Fernando de la Rúa (who in 2001 blindly led Argentina to its worst financial and banking meltdown… and even brought Cavallo back!); Eduardo Duhalde; Néstor Kirchner and now his hand-picked successor-wife Cristina Kirchner.
The Kirchners actually sympathize so much with terrorist groups from the seventies (whose terror attacks led to the 1976 military coup), that today many of the latter hold key government posts.
These successive governments all had something in common: they upheld two key factors, fully aligned to Global Power Masters’ requirements and needs:
1) NEVER investigate the origin of Argentina’s huge Public Debt initiated under the illegal military-civilian regime that usurped power from 1976 to 1983. That debt should be repudiated as “Odious Debt” under international law; and in order to ensure that this never ever happens and that the Global Power Masters may wield full control over Argentina:
2) DISMANTLE ARGENTINA’S ARMED FORCES – This has been completely achieved, and today Argentina’s military credibility and dissuasion are all but nothing; not only vis-a-vis the UK (and US) against whom we went to war in 1982, but also compared to traditional UK-US allied neighbors like Brazil and Chile who maintain modern, professional and credible armed forces.
So, when president Kirchner went on nationwide radio and TV last Tuesday to announce what her government would do about Britain’s renewed colonial aggression, she said that:
1) Argentina would denounce the UK at the UN for being “colonialist” (…the Brits have only been doing this for about five centuries!);
2) The government will release the contents of the “Rattenbach Report” prepared by a long-dead general almost 30 years ago which states that the military junta under General Leopoldo Galtieri made every political, diplomatic, military and strategic blunder in the book (Ha! As though we didn’t know that!!), and
3) Argentina will never ever dare take military action against the UK in the Falklands-Malvinas (as though we could!)
All of this was music to London’s ears.
But why all the noise and why now? It is and has always been about four key British and American geopolitical objectives:
1) Maintaining geopolitical prowess in the South Atlantic;
2) Projecting US and UK power over Antarctica, where UK and US territorial claims overlap with Argentina’s (which has all but withdrawn from the White Continent) and Chile’s (not a problem as they are traditional geopolitical allies of Britain);
3) Projecting US and UK power over Argentina’s immensely rich and grossly under-populated Patagonia Region facing the Falklands/Malvinas; and last but not least…
4) Oil.
Oil is always an issue with the “Western Democracies”, which their subservient global media downplay. Whether in Libya, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Venezuela or the South Atlantic.
The truth is that recent estimates indicate that under the Continental Shelf of the Argentine Sea in the South Atlantic, where the Falklands jut out above the relatively shallow waters, there’s around 8.3 billion barrels of oil. That’s three times UK reserves, ranking 15th in global reserves.
Not surprisingly, billions of pounds and dollars are rushing in to exploit Falklands oil, so important at a time of growing turmoil in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. Oil giants like Hess, Noble and Murphy (US), Cairn Energy, Premier Oil (UK) and, notably, BP’s Deepwater Horizon partner Anadarko Oil from Houston are all in top gear.
Anadarko is interesting as its board includes General Kevin Chilton (former commander of US StratCom) and former Pentagon officer Preston M Geren III. Rockhopper UK Exploration, in turn, announced it has already struck reserves estimated around 700 million barrels off the Falklands.
Keen observers living on Argentina’s Patagonian coasts say that, when the wind blows in from the Falklands, you can almost hear the British laughing at Cristina Kirchner’s Tuesday announcement.
Basic geopolitical common sense indicates that maintaining a powerful military is absolutely vital for any self-respecting country. Not to attack anybody – as the US, UK, NATO and Israel constantly do – but rather as defence and dissuasion against those very countries. In Argentina’s case, England has a bad track record, having repeatedly tried to invade it over the past 300 years.
But, alas! Cristina Kirchner is only doing what all Argentine politicians do so well: that is to say, nothing. In fact, her “announcements” last Tuesday were applauded by her own party and almost everyone in the so-called “opposition”. Clearly, she’s not the sole culprit. Back in 1990, under president Carlos Menem Argentina signed what many here consider its “Treaty of Versailles” (alluding to the devastating treaty imposed on defeated Germany in 1919 by the US, UK and France).
Menem’s Foreign Minister Domingo Cavallo negotiated unconditional surrender with Britain, under a treaty that became Argentine Law No. 24.184, almost unanimously passed in Congress on 11th December 1990, opening our economy to unconditional deregulation, privatisation and indebtedness to global banks and dismantling our armed forces, notably in the critical southern part of the country. Similar treaties then followed with the US and EU.
The truth is that today Argentina is not a sovereign country. National independence means there is a willingness to be free, even at the cost of war. In fact, the last bastion of national sovereignty for any country is its armed forces.
Not so Argentina. We have no credible armed forces so, rather than being sovereign and independent, Argentina is merely “not yet invaded”.
Were London, Washington, Brasilia, Santiago, NATO or Tel Aviv to decide on military intervention against Argentina for whatever reason, there would be absolutely nothing Argentina could do about it.
The British know this very well. That’s why they’re laughing!
Adrian Salbuchi for RT
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