Behind the scenes, the conflict started brewing years before the actual invasion.Ĭynics would say the entire war was about oil. The Argentineans got wind of the Falklands' oil potential, and they started to undertake offshore seismic explorations in the islands' continental shelf as early as 1977. (And my readers were 18 years ahead of The Guardian.) In retrospective, it all makes a lot of sense. In 1975, an energy department official wrote: 'Our ministers are very interested in the possibility of exploiting offshore oil around the Falkland Islands.'" " Declassified documents show that Britain has long been interested in oil around the Falkland Islands. The oil issue pre-dated the warĪs The Guardian reported in its 14 June 2022 article "Declassified files reveal British interest in Falkland Islands oil": It begs the question, why was Britain so keen to keep the remote outpost? Doesn't it all seem a bit out of proportion?Īs you probably suspect by now, oil played a role in it. Billions were spent to make sure the islands would never see another Argentinean soldier set foot on them. In terms of military spend per capita, the Falkland Islands have since been one of the best-protected places on Earth – further aided by their extreme remoteness and hostile environment. Ultimately, Britain won the Falklands War, and it has had a much bigger military presence on the islands ever since. At one time, the British even threatened to nuke Cordoba, Argentina's second largest city with 1m residents. 900 soldiers died on both sides, a steep price to settle a dispute over a territory with then just 1,800 residents. The subsequent British mobilisation represented the country's largest military deployment since the Korean War and became a major international episode. Following the invasion of the islands by 10,000 Argentinean soldiers, Margaret Thatcher's government dispatched a naval task force to engage the Argentinean navy and air force. Nowadays, most people only know the Falkland Islands from the context of the Falklands War of 1982. As a British Overseas Territory, they have outsourced defence and foreign policy to Britain, but are otherwise like a country of their own. They count as one of the world's most remote places and currently have a population of about 3,600. The Falkland Islands are a self-governing British Overseas Territory located about 480 kilometres (300 miles) to the east of Argentina. ![]() Ready for a short trip to a group of remote islands? A century-old colonial outpost
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