On anniversary of Malvinas War, whose islands?

The Malvinas Islands should belong to Argentina. If you call them the Falkland Islands, as British imperialism does, they should still belong to Argentina.

No matter what its name, the archipelago in the South Atlantic with about the same surface area as the state of Connecticut, which has been an outpost of the British Empire since the British Navy seized it by military force in 1833 and British imperialism re-seized it in 1982, is part of Latin America in general and Argentina in particular.

The Malvinas are in the news again this April 2, the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the 1982 Malvinas War. They are in the news also because British imperialism is using this island outpost to plunder more natural wealth from Argentina, first through the fishing rights in Argentine waters and second through demands for rights to search for oil on Argentina’s continental shelf.

The corporate media—along with British politicians and officials and their U.S. allies—are rewriting and distorting the history of the Malvinas and of the 1982 war as they retell the story of that battle. While this struggle is well understood in Latin America, it is important that it be told straight here in the United States.

The story of the Malvinas War contains lessons important for today’s anti-imperialist movement in judging whose side to be on. These lessons are all the more valuable because they involve an apparently complicated situation regarding the relationship between Argentina, the U.S. and Britain in 1982 and today.

In April 1982, the U.S., with the rightist Ronald Reagan as its president, was the dominant imperialist power—and still is. Britain was Washington’s most reliable junior partner—as is even more so today. Both were and are oppressor countries, using their capital and, when necessary, their military to pillage the people of the world.

Argentina in 1982, as today, was an oppressed country in relationship to world imperialism. It was ruled by a brutal military junta that had come to power six years earlier with the planning aid of the CIA and the complete backing of Washington. It had by 1982 executed 30,000 revolutionaries, progressives and trade unionists and jailed many others, all illegally, secretly, without even a phony trial.

The Argentine generals were favorites of Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Reagan’s ambassador to the United Nations. Two of the three top military junta generals were graduates of the School of the Americas, which under a new name still turns out hundreds of killers and torturers each year to serve U.S. and local capitalist interests in Latin America. Kirkpatrick’s friendliness apparently fostered the illusion among these generals that they were somehow equal allies of the imperialist U.S., at least as much as Britain was.

Despite Kirkpatrick’s enthusiasm for the murderous way the generals treated progressive Argentines, the U.S. double crossed their clients in Buenos Aires and cooperated with Britain during the war, providing intelligence and logistic support. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was only too happy to direct a military attack. The British even gratuitously sunk an Argentine troop ship, the General Belgrano, after it was headed back to its Buenos Aires port, killing 323 Argentine troops.

The battle was not completely one-sided, as the Argentines fought bravely and had their own advanced arms, but in the end 655 Argentines died, along with 255 British troops. The junta, ill-equipped to lead a war of liberation, conceded to British imperialism. Within a year the generals were driven out of power, although most of them have not yet received the punishment they deserve for their crimes against the Argentine people.

Workers World, which had considered the Argentine generals criminals and killers, nevertheless defended Argentina against the attack from the two major imperialist powers. This defense was in the same tradition as the 1930s anti-imperialist defense of the absolute monarchy of Haile Selassie when Ethiopia was attacked by imperialist Italy.

WW members participated in and helped organize demonstrations protesting the British attempt to re-seize Argentine territory—the Malvinas.

A false argument that was raised over and over at the time to excuse British intervention was the claim that the 1,800 inhabitants of the Malvinas, who were settlers or descendants of settlers from the British Isles, wanted to remain British “subjects.” (In 1982 they were not British citizens.) Thus, it was argued, applying “self-determination” would mean supporting the choice of these settlers and thus supporting Britain.

But the Malvinas/Falkland Islands were a special outpost of the British Empire, just as Hong Kong, Diego Garcia, Aden and the Suez Canal were in other periods of its history. Or as New Caledonia (Kanaky) is for French imperialism. Or as the Panama Canal Zone is for U.S. imperialism. They are military or commercial bases with some civilian population.

It is possible to colonize an area with people from the metropolis, in some cases killing or driving out the Indigenous population. The result can be a majority that prefers to be an extension of the imperialist metropolis. This only shows that the “self-determination” argument is not absolute. You have to evaluate what strengthens world imperialism and what weakens it.

The British presence in the Malvinas—which now includes 1,200 soldiers, sailors and air force personnel—puts imperialist pressure on all of South America. Indeed, the vast majority of Latin Americans side with Argentina’s continued desire to take back the Malvinas.

It should have been no surprise when the two imperialist allies stuck together to slap down an upstart regime ruling an oppressed country. And these two powers have done so since. They have joined in an effort to reconquer the colonial territories that were freed by liberation struggles during the period when the Soviet Union existed as a counterweight to imperialism.

They joined with other NATO powers to reconquer the Balkans in the 1999 war against Yugoslavia. They are together trying to reconquer Afghanistan and Iraq today, although their efforts to occupy these territories are running into the determined resistance of the local populations. They threaten to intervene in Iran, in Sudan, in Somalia, in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in a similar attempt to impose a new form of colonial rule. All these are reactionary and often brutal interventions.

Anyone who supports national liberation, who supports the oppressed nations against imperialism, has to be for the defeat of this alliance of two predator nations against the people of the world. This means supporting the resistance movements in the Middle East. And it means supporting the Argentine effort to take back the Malvinas.