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Miscalculation in the South

Atlantic: The origins of the
Falkland War
a
Richard Ned Lebow
a
Professor of Strategy at Johns Hopkins School of
Advanced International Studies , Bologna Center ,
Italy
Published online: 24 Jan 2008.

To cite this article: Richard Ned Lebow (1983) Miscalculation in the South Atlantic:
The origins of the Falkland War, Journal of Strategic Studies, 6:1, 5-35, DOI:
10.1080/01402398308437139

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 Miscalculation in the South Atlantic:
The Origins of the Falkland War
Richard Ned Lebow

'I thought and we thought we were old enough to take our own decisions.'
— Leopoldo Galtieri, 7 June 1982
'It would have been absurd to despatch the fleet every time there was
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bellicose talk in Buenos Aires.' — Margaret Thatcher, 3 April 1982

The recent war in the South Atlantic broke out because of two serious and
mutually reinforcing misjudgments: the belief in London that Argentina
would not invade the Falkland Islands and the expectation in Buenos Aires
that Britain would accommodate itself to a military takeover of the islands.*
The former illusion made British policymakers unresponsive to warnings of
invasion while the latter encouraged the Argentine Junta, dissatisfied with the
progress of negotiations, to seek to resolve the question of sovereignty once
and for all by force.
Any analysis of the Falkland War must start by accounting for these two
misjudgments; only then can we hope to explain the air of unreality that
characterized the behavior of the two protagonists throughout the pre-war
period and, in the case of Argentina, well into the actual war. No doubt, there
are important lessons here for other policymakers as well. For miscalculation
in this instance may have led to what some have described as an opera bouffe
conflict in a remote corner of the world but the causes of the conflict are not
likely to prove so arcane or idiosyncratic.
Any kind of definitive treatment of the crisis must obviously await the
emergence of the relevant documents. This would include intelligence
estimates, diplomatic correspondence and memoirs of the principal actors. In
the absence of these documents the investigator can only piece together the
outlines of the story from the evidence available at this time. This consists
principally of speeches, newspaper accounts, interviews and, above all, the
visible actions of the protagonists. As such evidence is not only fragmentary
but possibly misleading, the following analysis is of necessity speculative in
nature. The hypotheses it advances concerning miscalculation cannot be
documented conclusively. They can, however, be shown to be consistent with
the existing evidence. Only time and subsequent study will reveal the extent to
which they are valid. A preliminary examination is nevertheless a valuable
exercise to the extent that it identifies the attributes of the case that have
significant theoretical or policy relevance and by doing so, directs later
research to these questions. This study is offered with such a purpose in mind.
* I have used the term Falklands as opposed to Malvinas or Falkland-Malvinas as a matter of
convenience. It should not be construed as an indication of preference for either side in this
controversy.
 6 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

1. Self-Deception in London
On 3 March 1982 Argentina disavowed the negotiations that had just taken
place with Britain in New York over the future status of the Falkland Islands.
On 2 April Argentine marines stormed ashore near Port Stanley, over-
whelmed the small British garrison and raised the Argentine flag over the
Falklands. The month between these two events was marked by steadily
escalating tensions between Argentina and Britain as well as obvious
Argentine military preparations for an invasion. However, from the vantage
point of London the danger looked remote. It was not until 29 March, four
days before the invasion, that the Cabinet Office and the Government judged
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the situation to be serious. In response, they ordered a submarine and support

vessels from the Mediterranean to the South Atlantic. Prime Minister
Thatcher did not summon her first cabinet meeting on the crisis until the night
of 31 March. By then, the Economist rightly observed, it was too late to deter
with anything but words.1
As is so often the case with intelligence failures, Britain's inability to foresee
the Argentine invasion cannot be attributed to simple lack of information.
The British Government had ample intelligence about Argentine intentions
and military preparations. From 3 March onwards, Buenos Aires had done its
best to signal both its dissatisfaction with the status quo and its intention to do
something about it. The Argentines also made efforts to publicize rather than
conceal their military preparations in the hope that this demonstration of
resolve would elicit a British concession on sovereignty that would make
military action on their part unnecessary. Beyond this, London was in receipt
of a wide range of information about Argentina from both open and
clandestine sources. The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) of the Cabinet
Office, whose task it is to warn the Government of impending foreign threats,
had before it all the cable traffic from the British Embassy in Buenos Aires.
This included reports from political officers, military attaches and secret
intelligence sources run through the Embassy. The JIC also had access to
American naval and other relevant intelligence.
Britain participates in a worldwide naval intelligence network together with
the United States, Canada and Australia. A Fleet Ocean Surveillance
Information Center (FOSIC), run by the US Navy in London, analyzes data
from their combined intelligence sources in the Atlantic and routinely passes
its reports on to the Royal Navy. A major source of FOSIC's information is
the global ship radio monitoring system run by the four powers. Another is the
US Navy's four Ocean Surveillance Satellites (OSUS) which use radar and
infra-red cameras to detect ships. They can also monitor their radio and radar
signals.2 Close-up photo-reconnaissance can be provided by SR 71s. The
United States, in response to a British request, flew such a surveillance mission
in the South Atlantic prior to the Argentine invasion.3
Britain also receives signal intelligence from a variety of American and
jointly operated listening posts, one of them on Ascension Island in the South
Atlantic. According to Ted Rowlands, a Labor MP, who handled the
Falkland question in the Foreign Office until 1979, Britain had successfully
broken the Argentine diplomatic code. He told the House of Commons that in
 MISCALCULATION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC 7

terms of intelligence Argentina was an open book for the British.4 No one in
the Thatcher Government has disputed his claim.
At the present time (June 1982), we do not know the precise nature of all of
the information available to the British government. The commission
established by the House of Commons has just begun its investigation into
what government critics allege is a serious intelligence failure. Their report,
when published, will no doubt shed more light on the question. There can be
little doubt, however, that the Government had enough information to
suggest the very real possibility of a military confrontation in the South
Atlantic. By their own admission in various statements to the press and in
parliament the government was aware of the following:
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2 March: The Argentine Government terminates negotiations with Britain and

announces that it reserves its right to 'seek other means' of regaining the
Falklands.
3 March: La Prensa, known to have good connections with the Junta, announces
its dissatisfaction with the negotiations and predicts the liberation of
the Falklands by force within three months unless Britain agrees to
cede sovereignty.
Junta members begin dropping hints to diplomats that they are
contemplating some kind of unilateral military action in the absence of
a commitment by Britain both to speed up negotiations and to put
sovereignty of the Islands formally on the agenda.
Clarin and other newspapers begin talking about the prospects for an
invasion of the Falklands.
14 March: An Argentine airforce Hercules 130, claiming technical difficulties,
makes an emergency landing at Port Stanley airport.
19 March: Employees of an Argentine scrap firm land on South Georgia Island
and raise the Argentine flag.
22 March: A group of Argentines occupies the Port Stanley office of the Argentine
state airline and unfurls the Argentine flag.
25 March: Three Argentine warships arrive in South Georgia to give 'full
protection' to the landing party.
27-28 March: British intelligence sources learn of the impending departure of the
Argentine fleet with wartime stocks.
28-29 March: The Argentine fleet puts to sea a force which includes an aircraft
carrier, two missile destroyers, a battleship and two corvettes,
ostensibly to conduct maneuvers with Uruguay.
29 March: The Argentine press is put on a worldwide alert by the Government;
diplomatic leaves are cancelled; DYN, the Argentine news agency,
citing unnamed military sources, announces that the Marine regiment
with the fleet has been issued food rations, arms and ammunition;
Uruguay asks the British Government if any Falklanders wanted to be
airlifted to safety 'before the invasion'.
31 March: London learns that the Argentine naval units on maneuver have
broken away from the Uruguayan force and are steaming towards the
Falklands.
1 April: Argentina's foreign minister tells Britain's ambassador in Buenos Aires
that 'the diplomatic channel as a means of solving the dispute is closed".
The Buenos Aires magazine Siete Dias, publishes a fictitious front page
of The Times with the headline 'Argentine Navy Invades Falkland
 8 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

Islands' alongside a photograph of Argentine marines allegedly

storming ashore.
2 April: Argentina invades the Falkland Islands.
In fairness to the Foreign Office, the JIC and the Prime M inister, all of these
'signals' only became clear in retrospect. At the time, they were also consistent
with a strategy of bluff, as British ministers hastened to point out. Lord
Carrington told the House of Lords: 'Had this been the first time over the past
20 years that some allusion to the use of force had been made from the
Argentine side it might have struck Britain as more significant than it did.'5
Prime Minister Thatcher put her finger on the dilemma that a situation of
repetitive threat created for the government. On 4 April, she explained to her
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critics in the House of Commons that: 'Several times in the past an invasion
had been threatened. The only way of being sure of preventing it would have
been to keep a large fleet close to the Falklands, 8,000 miles away from base.
'No government has ever been able to do that', she insisted, 'because the cost
would be enormous.' 6
One must feel some sympathy for policymakers caught in this bind.
However, the problem of repetitive threat neither excuses nor fully accounts
for the poor judgement of the British Government. Faced with the prospect of
recurring crises it was incumbent upon the British to develop indicators to
help distinguish bluff from the real thing. This they failed to do. Instead,
London waited for indisputable evidence of impending attack. Due to what
Robert Jervis has called the 'masking effect', the fact that moves associated
with bluff and preparations for attack are generally indistinguishable until the
very last moment, Argentine intentions only became clear after it was already
too late to do anything to influence them.7
A useful analogy can be drawn to the situation faced by Israel in October
1973. Israeli military intelligence had devised a series of tactical indicators to
predict the possibility of an Egyptian attack. Their principal indicator was the
deployment and reinforcement of troops along the cease-fire lines. Also
deemed significant were the mobilization of reserves, construction of ramps
and bridging equipment along the Suez Canal and the imposition of war-time
security measures at military bases throughout the country. On three
occasions prior to the October attack, in December 1971, December 1972, and
in April-May 1973, the Egyptians did all of these things without going to war.
The Israelis, who had braced themselves for war in each instance,
understandably lost confidence in their tactical indicators. They fell back
upon strategic indicators of attack. Their hypothesis was that Egypt would
not attack unless two conditions were met: the Egyptian airforce was capable
of striking at Israel in depth, in particular at Israeli airfields, and secondly,
that Egypt would be joined in the attack by Syria. Israeli military intelligence
accordingly considered an Egyptian attack highly unlikely before 1975, the
earliest possible date they believed the Egyptian airforce capable of absorbing
enough Soviet equipment to achieve the requisite strike capability.8
The Agranat Commission, established by the Israeli cabinet to investigate
the 1973 intelligence failure, attributed much of the fault to the fact that
Israel's strategic indicators were based on the flawed assumptions that Egypt
 MISCALCULATION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC 9

would only go to war together with Syria, and then to seek Israel's destruction.
Israeli intelligence ignored the possibility of a limited war, fought for less
ambitious objectives, a conflict in which Egyptian equality in the air was not
an essential precondition of success. Egyptian forces relied instead upon a
missile screen in the vicinity of the Canal to keep the Israeli air force at bay.
The erroneous Israeli fixation on general war, for which the Arabs were
clearly not ready in October 1973, combined with Israeli disillusionment with
tactical indicators, encouraged Jerusalem to dismiss Sadat's escalating threats
of war in the summer and late fall of 1973 as bluff initiated in the hope of
winning diplomatic concessions. For the same reason, Israel's leaders did not
become particularly disturbed by the build-up of Egyptian forces along the
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Canal, the evacuation of Soviet dependents and the subsequent warnings of

attack. All of this they had seen before.9
If the Israelis were led astray by a faulty conception of the strategic
objectives of their principal adversary they at least had such a conception. The
British by contrast give no evidence of having developed any express notion of
the political-military conditions under which Argentina might attack the
Falklands. At best, they seem to have developed a misleading tactical scenario
which presupposed that any Argentine escalation of the conflict would be
gradual, begin with suspension of air services and not lead to an invasion until
the end of the year.10
The Agranat Commission faulted the very existence of a strategic
conception, as it inevitably biased information processing. Janice Stein, in her
perceptive study of Israel's intelligence failure in 1973, argues that such
conceptions can function as useful aids to policymakers concerned with
developing indicators of warning. The important question, she believes, is not
the use of an organizing concept but rather 'its logical coherence and
completeness, its relationship to other concepts in a larger analytical system,
and the way it is used'.'J According to Stein, a strategic conception concerning
deterrence, defense and miscalculated escalation, must analyze and relate at
least five issue areas to be considered coherent and complete. It ought to
include an evaluation of the interests at stake, specify the challenge to be
deterred, evaluate the adversary's calculation of the conditions and options
for challenge, consider the credibility of a commitment to respond and
describe appropriate responses to deterrence failure.
It is not the purpose of this paper to develop a strategic conception for
Britain concerning her commitment to defend the Falkland Islanders' right of
self-determination. It is rather to make the case that had such a conception been
developed by the British, it would have made them very much more sensitive to
the possibility of Argentine military action. Such a conception would of
necessity have required an examination of the Falkland question from the
Argentine perspective. Any moderately sophisticated effort in this regard,
based only on the information already at hand, would have highlighted striking
differences between the situation in 1977, the last time Argentina appeared on
the verge of invading, and in 1982. All of these differences should have been
seen as having had the effect of increasing the attractiveness to Buenos Aires of
an invasion while at the same time reducing its perceived military cost.
 10 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

Perhaps the most important difference between 1977 and 1982 was that in
the interim Argentine leaders had lost faith in negotiations with Britain and
had concluded that they would never achieve sovereignty over the Falklands
by diplomacy.
Since 1965, at Argentina's insistence, the two countries had been
conducting almost yearly negotiations with regard to the future of the
Falkland Islands.12 These talks were often preceded by saber rattling in
Buenos Aires but serious violence had always been forestalled by Argentine
expectations that negotiations would ultimately lead to a transfer of
sovereignty. Step by step, the British appeared to be moving in that direction.
The Wilson Government recognized the legitimacy of Argentina's de facto
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claims to the Islands. The Heath Government signed a communications

agreement that gave Buenos Aires control of air transportation to and from
the Falklands. Subsequently, Argentina was permitted to lengthen the Port
Stanley runway, increase tourist traffic with the mainland and take over
management of the Falkland's energy supplies. Islanders made growing use of
Argentine hospitals and schools. Both sides assumed that sooner or later some
mechanism could be found that would enable Argentina to 'recover
sovereignty' yet still permit Britain to protect the rights and lifestyle of the
inhabitants.
Progress in this direction had continued, if at a snail's pace, until tfye
'leaseback' debacle of 1980-81. Nicholas Ridley, the new junior minister put in
charge of the Falklands question following the Tory victory of 1979, settled
upon the leaseback proposal, first broached by his predecessor, as the most
promising solution to the sovereignty dilemma. His goal was to placate both
Buenos Aires and the Islanders by transferring formal sovereignty to
Argentina while leasing back British administrative responsibility for them.
Although backed by Lord Carrington, Ridley failed to generate enthusiasm
for the leaseback proposal either in the cabinet, sensitive to the chauvinsim
voiced by many backbenchers on the question, or in the Islands, where public
opinion regarded the scheme with suspicion. Ridley's report to the House of
Commons on 2 December 1980 was greeted with derision and hostility from
right-wing Tories who wanted to know why the Foreign Office could not leave
the matter alone.13
Two months later the talks resumed in New York. This time Ridley brought
Islanders with him to meet directly with Argentina's representative, Carlos
Cavandoli. According to Adrian Monk, one of the Islanders included on the
delegation, Cavandoli held out the promise of a 'democratic form of
government, a different legal system, different customs, and a different form
of education'. The only thing Argentina wanted, Cavandoli insisted, was
sovereignty. The Islanders declared that they could agree to nothing before
their Council elections in November.14
After this round of inconclusive negotiations the Argentine press, and
privately, government officials as well, began to accuse the British of stalling
and voiced considerable pessimism about the prospects of a diplomatic
solution. Two subsequent developments appeared to lend credence to their
view. In September 1981, Thatcher removed Ridley from the Foreign Office
 MISCALCULATION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC 11

and replaced him with Richard Luce, a politician with a reputation for
caution. In November, the Island Council elections were held with Ridley and
the leaseback proposal the principal issue. The anti-leaseback forces won a
clear victory: two moderate representatives who had attended the talks in New
York were defeated by hardliners adamantly opposed to any further
concessions to Argentina.
The Junta, now headed by General Leopoldo Galtieri, who had assumed
power in December, made a final attempt in February 1982 to reach an
agreement with Britain. Enrique Ros, the negotiator sent by Argentina to New
York, demanded the concession of sovereignty before the year's end. The most
the British would agree to was the creation of a negotiating commission to
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work towards this goal. Moreover, Richard Luce, representing the British,
now insisted that any agreement would also have to meet the approval of the
Islanders. The Thatcher Government in effect gave the Islanders a veto power
over the negotiations, something that all but precluded any transfer of
sovereignty. The significance of this development was not lost to the Junta.
Upon his return home, Ros was disavowed by the generals and the talks were
broken off. The Argentine press began to speculate about an invasion.
As Argentine leaders became convinced of the impossibility of obtaining
sovereignty over the Falklands through diplomacy they also come under
increasing pressure at home to achieve that elusive but immensely popular
goal. The political vulnerability of the Junta, the result of its poor
performance on a range of important domestic issues, made this pressure all
the more difficult to ignore.
The excesses of Peronism had been such that five years earlier, in March
1976, the Junta's accession to power in a bloodless coup had been greeted with
a nearly universal sense of relief. By the Spring of 1982, however, the generals
had succeeded in alienating almost all of their earlier backers. Their repression
of the Left, expected to be a short-lived operation, turned into an extensive
and often indiscriminate reign of terror directed not only against Montoneros
but any element of the society too free-thinking for the military. Estimates,of
the victims run as high as 20,000 and include entire families tortured and
killed, sometimes without any apparent motive.15
Economically, the picture was also bleak. A country of 28 million people,
and with the highest standard of living and the highest rate of literacy in Latin
America, Argentina had been brought to the brink of economic disaster by 30
years of political instability and economic mismanagement. The Junta had
vowed to reverse this trend through free market policies but had only
succeeded in intensifying the pace of economic decline. After an initial
improvement, economic growth dropped from a high of 7.1 per cent in 1979 to
below [Link] in 1981. In 1980, Banco de Intercambio, a leading financial
institution, collapsed along with 27 other banks as did Sasetru, the country's
leading conglomerate. 1981 was even more disappointing. Continuing failures
of banks and businesses forced the Junta to abandon its economic program.
This in turn led to a run on the peso and a series of devaluations. The inflation
rate shot from 87 to 149 per cent. Real wages declined by 18 per cent and
unemployment may have climbed as high as two million.16
 12 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

The precipitous economic decline had its political consequences. Indepen-

dent farmers and entrepreneurs, originally among the Junta's supporters,
openly voiced criticism of its economic programs. Organized labor,
emasculated by the generals in 1976, also began to reassert itself. The General
Confederation of Labor (CGT) slowly rebuilt its grass roots organization and
on 30 March 1982 defied the ban on union political activities by filling Buenos
Aires' Plaza de Mayo with thousands of protesting workers. The demon-
strators, shouting for 'bread, freedom and work', were only dispersed after four
hours of battle with police armed with water cannon and tear gas. In Mendoza,
the same day, police are reported to have fired on union demonstrators.17
Political parties also began to become active again. In June 1981, the five
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largest parties, led by the Peronists and the Radicals, formed the
multipartidaria (common front) and demanded a new electoral law that
would permit open party activity and competition. The Junta did not feel
strong enough to reject these demands outright. In November, the generals
issued guidelines for a new electoral law that, while restrictive, was
nevertheless interpreted as an important step towards the ultimate restoration
of civilian rule.
The Junta also had to permit a substantially freer press. After 1976,
newspaper editors had become very restrained in their criticism of the
military. In 1981 they became more outspoken, taking the generals to task
both for their mismanagement of the economy and for their apparent failure
to secure Argentine sovereignty over the Falklands. The most vocal critics of
the Junta, La Prensa and the English language Buenos Aires Herald, began to
call for an end to military rule.18 These editorials were an indication of the
Junta's growing isolation. In the aftermath of the 30 March labor
demonstrations the generals faced a stark choice: step down or do something
dramatic to restore public confidence and their own legitimacy. The obvious
choice in the latter regard was recovery of sovereignty over the Falklands.
Well before the Spring of 1982, the Junta's vulnerability on the Falkland
question was obvious. During the Summer 1981 round of talks, Carlos
Cavandoli, the Argentine negotiator, had pleaded for some concessions that
would demonstrate progress on sovereignty. Time and again he is reported to
have told Nicholas Ridley: 'Just give me something to take back home'.19 When
Cavandoli's successor, Enrique Ros, failed to obtain such a concession he was
abandoned by the Junta, anxious for domestic political reasons to disassociate
themselves as much as possible from his mission. Spurned by London, facing
growing opposition at home, military action must have begun to look more
and more attractive to the distraught, anxious men of the Junta.
If London was insensitive to the Junta's fast waning freedom of action with
regard to the Falklands, the South Georgia incident should have made the
problem apparent to them. A barren wasteland 800 miles south of the
Falklands and over a 1,000 miles east of the southernmost tip of Argentine,
South Georgia is inhabited only by scientists at the British research base at
Grytviken. On 19 March, an Argentine naval transport ship on longterm
contract to a private company landed a team of workmen at Leith Harbor.
Their ostensible purpose was to cart away old equipment sold to them by the
 MISCALCULATION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC 13

British company that had formerly operated whaling stations on the island.
The director of the Argentine scrap company had received permission for his
men to land on the island from the British Embassy in Buenos Aires with the
proviso that they obtain permits from the base commander in Grytviken. The
landing party ignored the stipulated procedure and instead raised Argentina's
blue and white flag and sang the national anthem. The action seems to have
been carried out without the connivance and perhaps even the prior
knowledge of the Junta.20
When apprised of the situation, the British Foreign Office protested to
Buenos Aires. London also quietly dispatched HMS Endurance to South
Georgia, an Antarctic survey ship then in the vicinity of the Falklands. Niconor
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Costa Mendes, Argentina's foreign minister, assured the British that his
government would send a ship to take the men off the island. In response, the
British kept Endurance with its complement of 21 marines from the garrison at
Port Stanley at sea awaiting the arrival of the promised vessel. Instead, three
Argentine warships appeared and Endurance had to beat a hasty retreat.
Meanwhile, the Argentine Government announced that their navy would give
'full protection' to men on South Georgia. Clearly, the Junta, once they realized
the extent to which this private initiative had caught the country's imagination,
no longer deemed it prudent to disassociate itself from the flamboyant gesture.
The South Georgia episode occurred in a climate of escalating tension
which had begun on 3 March following the repudiation of the New York
negotiations by Buenos Aires. The events of the next four weeks indicated a
shift to a harder line by the Junta, the further arousal of Argentine public
opinion in expectation of military action and finally, actual preparations for
the invasion of the Falklands. This pattern of events when seen against the
political background just described did not indicate with any certainty that an
invasion would actually occur. However, it certainly should have made it
appear a very real possibility. British passivity in light of these developments
was really quite extraordinary.
According to Janice Stein, the Israelis committed a second major error in
1973: they insisted upon near certain knowledge of an Arab attack before they
were prepared to initiate any military counter-measures themselves. Their
concern to avoid what they feared might be a premature mobilization derived
in the first place from the tremendous economic and social cost to Israel of
calling up its citizen army. Beyond this, it reflected Israel's experience in 1967.
Many senior Israeli military and intelligence officers had concluded that war
at that time had arisen only because of miscalculation. Israel, the argument
went, had misjudged Nasser's strategy, which was probably one of bluff, and
had initiated an unnecessary preemptive attack. Stein points out that the
Israeli commitment to avoid a possible repetition of this situation also
reflected relative satisfaction with the status quo. The policy implication of
this position was obvious: no mobilization or preemption unless the
leadership was absolutely convinced that the adversary was himself on the
verge of attacking. Such a. restrictive criterion of warning [Link] a
requirement for certainty,-'.significantly reduced the attractiveness of any
significant [Link]-'during the crisis.21 . ••..;.
 14 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

Once again, there seems to be an analogy between the Israeli and British
cases. British policymakers, for many of the same reasons as the Israelis,
appear to have insisted upon evidence of the near certainty of an Argentine
invasion before they were willing to authorize the kind of military
preparations that might have been successful in deterring it or at least in
limiting its chance of success.
Like the Israelis, British officials were fearful of the conseqences of
miscalculated escalation. This concern had dominated the British response to
the 1977 crisis. At that time, diplomatic relations had been severed, Argentina
had fired on a British ship, occupied the dependency of Southern Thule and cut
off fuel supplies to the Falklands. The Callaghan Government, despite
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strenuous opposition from the Ministry of Defense, sent a hunter-killer

submarine to the Falklands as a precautionary measure. As the ensuing
negotiations were encouraging to Argentina, the threat of invasion receded
and the submarine was withdrawn after a month.
The most remarkable thing about the 1977 crisis was the secrecy that
surrounded the mission of the submarine. Its presense was hushed up in order
to avoid precipitating the very invasion the vessel was sent to forestall. In
doing this, Callaghan and his advisors were willing to sacrifice whatever
deterrent value the submarine might have had as that clearly required
Argentine knowledge of its presence.
For the British, the lesson of 1977 was that caution was likely to reap a
handsome dividend. Not surprisingly, therefore, the consensus in both the
Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office in March 1982 was for the need to avoid
any public display of British resolve. The fear was that this would only elicit a
similar response from the Junta concerned about protecting its machismo in
the eyes of Argentine public opinion. There was also concern, Lord
Carrington explained in Parliament, that moving ships into the area would
also prove counterproductive by strengthening the hand of the extremists
within the Junta. 'Nothing,' he argued, 'would have been more likely to turn
the Argentines away from the path of negotiations and towards that of
military force.. .\22
The proclivity to do nothing unless invasion appeared imminent was almost
certainly reinforced by political and economic considerations. The Thatcher
Government had met with little success in lifting Britain from its economic
doldrums and faced discouraging electoral prospects. Its foreign and defense
policies had also come under increasing attack from the burgeoning peace
movement. War, under almost any circumstances, must have seemed a
loathsome idea to Downing Street. But all the more so to the extent to which
the Thatcher Goverment could in any way be made to appear responsible for
it. This would almost certainly have made the Tories that much more
vulnerable at the next general election. Military restraint no doubt appeared
the best way to avoid this problem.
Sending a tripwire force would also have cost money. By most accounts, the
climate in Whitehall was totally inimical to the authorization of extra
expenditure. This penny pinching mentality is said to have been particularly
marked in the Ministry of Defense, barely able to fulfil its various
 MISCALCULATION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC 15

commitments on what it believed to be a penurious budget. For Lord

Carrington or John Nott, the defense minister, to have asked the Overseas and
Defense Committee of the cabinet for authorization for a naval force for the
South Atlantic they would have needed some very compelling evidence of the
likelihood of Argentine attack. This was lacking until 29 March, four days
before the invasion. The concern for saving money was so pronounced, The
Economist asserts, that a request from the Foreign Secretary for a naval force
any time before 29 March 'would probably have been laughed out of court'. 23
As the Israeli and British situations illustrate, there are almost always trade-
offs to be made between escalation and passivity in pre-crisis or crisis
situations. Escalation, while it conveys resolve, if premature or miscalculated,
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risks provoking the outcome it was initiated to forestall. Often, it also carries
economic and political costs. Military passivity, on the other hand, is
decidedly unprovocative, but may weaken or even undermine deterrence by
conveying an inappropriate signal to an adversary. It too can have serious
military and political costs if war breaks out and finds the nation unprepared.
Decisions regarding escalation are among the most difficult leaders can
face. The problem is extraordinarily complex as it has political, military and
psychological components that must be considered with regard to both
foreign and domestic audiences. It is also anxiety provoking, as the wrong
decision entails significant, perhaps even catastrophic loss. Moreover, there
are no decision-making rules that can be followed. Rather, policymakers must
consider and weigh a number of situational attributes, among them the
interests at stake, their confidence in deterrence, the political vulnerability of
the adversary's leaders, and the possible military cost of inaction. Perhaps the
most important consideration in this regard is the judgement policymakers
must make about the other side's intentions. To the extent that a challenge of
an important interest or commitment is deemed likely, some kind of military
preparations are usually implemented as both a demonstration of resolve and
a means of putting the nation in a better position to wage war if the crisis is
unresolved. Conversely, when the challenge appears remote, policymakers are
more likely to prove responsive to the possible costs of miscalculated
escalation.
The importance of assessing the probability of a challenge brings us full
circle by highlighting the need for strategic indicators that offer some insight
into this question. In the absence of some kind of strategic conception from
which these indicators can be derived, policymakers must of necessity fall
back upon tactical indicators, the dangers of which we have already described,
or rely upon their personal assessment of the situation. Such judgements may
be haphazard, ill-informed or even quite arbitrary. They are also likely to
escape the kind of scrutiny given to institutionally developed strategic
conceptions, whose assumptions must normally be articulated and defended
before colleagues.
One danger of personal or informal assessments is that they can all too
easily, even unconsciously, be made consonant with the political-military
needs of the policymakers who form them. By doing this, policymakers may
finesse the need to make trade-offs between the sometimes incompatible
 16 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

objectives of buttressing deterrence and avoiding miscalculated escalation.

They can convince themselves instead that all, or almost all, of the 'facts' of the
case and their own interests point to one or the other of the options open to
them. Some wishful thinking of this kind may have occurred in London. Civil
servants in Whitehall and members of the Government believed that military
preparations on their part were likely to provoke not deter a confrontation
with Argentina. For this reason among others they decided not to initiate any
military preparations until late in the crisis. As this left them vulnerable in the
case of an invasion, they accordingly had every incentive to believe that
Argentina was bluffing. This could in turn be expected to bias British
receptivity to information about Argentine intentions.
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The psychological approach to decision-making may in fact hold the key to

understanding the British intelligence failure in the South Atlantic. For the
remarkable British passivity in light of all the danger signals coming from
Argentina still seems to defy ordinary institutional explanations. Perhaps it is
best understood as a form of collective 'defensive avoidance', an attempt by
British policymakers to shield themselves from threatening realities for which
they were unprepared and unable to face.
According to Irving Janis and Leon Mann's formulation of defensive
avoidance, a policymaker searches for an alternative to his current course of
action when he perceives serious risks to be inherent in it. If the search reveals
a feasible alternative, he will adopt it without inner conflict. If, however, the
policymaker is unable upon first assessment to identify an acceptable
alternative he experiences psychological stress. He becomes emotionally
aroused and preoccupied with finding a less risky but nevertheless viable
policy alternative. If, after further investigation, he concludes that it is
unrealistic to hope for a better strategy he will terminate his search for one
despite his continuing dissatisfaction with the current policy and other
available options. This results in a pattern of defensive avoidance which is
characterized by efforts to avoid fear-arousing warnings.24
Janis and Mann identify three forms of defensive avoidance: procrasti-
nation, shifting responsibility for the decision, and bolstering. The first two
are self-explanatory. Bolstering is an umbrella term that describes a number
of psychological tactics designed to allow policymakers to entertain
expectations of a successful outcome. Bolstering occurs when the policymaker
has lost hope of finding a satisfactory policy option and is unable to postpone
a decision or foist the responsibility for it onto someone else. Instead, he
commits himself to the least objectionable alternative and proceeds to
exaggerate its positive consequences and minimize its negative ones. He may
also deny the existence of his aversive feelings, emphasize the remoteness of
the conseqences, or attempt to minimize his personal responsibility for the
decision once it is made. The policymaker continues to think about the
problem but wards off anxiety by practicing selective attention and other
forms of distorted information processing.25 ~Y
Bolstering can serve a useful purpose; jt helps the policymaker forced to
settle for a less than satisfactory course, of action overcome residual internal,
conflict and move more-confidently-toward commitment. But-bolstering
 MISCALCULATION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC 17

is detrimental when it blinds the policymaker to the possible adverse

consequences of his course of action. It lulls him into believing that he has
made a good decision when in fact he has avoided making a vigilant appraisal
of the alternatives in order to escape from the conflict this would engender.
For years, the British Government had been committed to the twin goals of
a negotiated settlement of the Falkland dispute with Argentina and protection
of the liberties and interests of the Islanders. Superficially, each round of talks
in New York seemed to bring these objectives closer to realization. However,
the negotiations also made apparent the full extent of the differences that
separated the parties. The Islanders, never pleased with the prospect of
absorption by Argentina, became even more hostile to the idea when the
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Junta's bloody suppression of the Argentine Left revealed its utter disregard
for the most fundamental human rights. The Argentines were also dissatisfied
with the negotiations. They came increasingly to believe, and not without
reason, that they were behaving like the proverbial donkey, tricked into
pulling the cart by a carrot on a stick dangled before him.
Some time before Argentina's repudiation of the New York talks British
officials had begun to recognize that a negotiated settlement of the dispute was
very unlikely given the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the interests of
the Islanders and the demands of the Argentines. This realization prompted a
gradual but significant shift in the British strategy for dealing with the
Falkland question. The Thatcher Government began to move away from the
objective of actually finding a solution to the problem and instead sought
merely to forestall a crisis by keeping the negotiations alive. Ridley, who made
a serious and even courageous effort to confront the problem head on, had
elicited for the most part the scorn and even antagonism of his colleagues. His
report to the House of Commons on 2 December 1980 was greeted with'howls
of outrage1. The Economist reported that he appeared at the despatch box
shattered and uncertain and many observers were astonished that he should
have wrecked his political career on such a hopeless little venture.26
The impractical goal of trying to continue the talks from year to year was
probably motivated in part by the illusory hope that some future development
would facilitate a settlement. A less charitable explanation is that the Thatcher
Government had come to view the Falkland dispute as a 'hot potato',
something that could only burn their fingers if they picked it up. They sought
instead to pass it on to their successors for resolution. In either case, a strategy
that substituted procedure for substance was doomed to failure, as sooner or
later Britain would run out of new proposals or Argentina would tire of the
game. As we have observed, this critical juncture was reached with the failure of
the leaseback proposal and not long afterwards the negotiations stalled.
The Thatcher Government was to a certain extent responsible for the
dilemma in which it now found itself. Supporters of Ridley insist that between
a third and half of the Islanders did not oppose the leaseback proposal when it
was first broached to them. They argue that more Islanders would have come
around had London made it clear that it supported the idea and was prepared
to compensate residents who wished to leave rather than live symbolically
under the Argentine flag.
 18 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

We will never know whether or not government pressure on the Islanders

would have succeeded in bringing about a consensus in form of recognizing fife
jure Argentine sovereignty as the policy was never tried. Margaret Thatcher
was unprepared to put any pressure on the Islanders. No doubt, she viewed
such a policy with loathing. Another reason for her caution may have been the
strength of the Falkland lobby among conservative Members of Parliament.
This small but outspoken group of Tories portrayed the Falkland Islands as a
test case of the government's commitment to uphold traditional British
freedoms. They allied themselves with left-wing Labourites who also opposed
any concessions to the Junta on the grounds that it was a fascist dictatorship.
Both groups are reported to have kept in close touch with the Islanders and to
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have encouraged them to keep up their pressure on the Government. The

Prime Minister, already in trouble within her own party, and her popularity
sagging in the polls, would have been reluctant to antagonize backbench
opinion on this issue.
The Prime Minister's solicitousness towards the Islanders signalled to them
that a harder line on their part was likely to be rewarded as indeed it was when
they received what was in effect a veto power over the negotiations. The whole
affair was reminiscent, on a much smaller scale, of the successful effort earlier
in the century by Orangemen to gain a stranglehold over successive British
Governments in order to forestall a settlement of the Irish question. They too
had a powerful lobby in Parliament that successive prime ministers were
reluctant to defy.
The two mediating conditions for defensive avoidance are: (1) a state of
relatively high decisional conflict resulting from two clashing types of threat
that make easy resolution impossible: and (2) the loss of hope of finding a
better solution than the defective ones already considered. This was precisely
the situation the British Government confronted in 1982. The failure of the
Ieaseback proposal left the government with only two clear policy
alternatives. The first of these, to put pressure on the Islanders to accept
Argentine sovereignty, was unpalatable to the government and entailed
serious political costs at home. The other option, telling Buenos Aires that a
transfer of sovereignty was out of the question for the time being, was
something the British had all along been unwilling to do because it would have
required them to garrison the Falklands with forces sufficient to deter an
Argentine invasion.
Rather than face this unpleasant reality and the unappealing and costly
choices associated with it, the British government sought escape in the illusion
that their existing policy of stringing Argentina along could be continued.
Despite all the indications that this objective was no longer realistic, Luce and
other British negotiators in New York returned to London in March
convinced that they had 'bought another year'.27 They were surprised by the
Junta's disavowal of the talks.
The British sense of helplessness in the South Atlantic seems to have elicited
all three forms of defensive avoidance. The overall British policy objective of
keeping negotiations alive was in effect a form of procrastination designed to
postpone the need to make a choice between the Scylla of Islander interests
 MISCALCULATION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC 19

and the Charybdis of Argentine nationalism. It can also be seen as an attempt

by the Thatcher Government to avoid altogether the responsibility for such a
decision by passing it on to their successors. Finally, the Government and the
intelligence community engaged in bolstering. They convinced themselves
that the course of action to which they were committed would succeed and
became insensitive to information that indicated otherwise. Toward this end,
British leaders may unwittingly have encouraged their intelligence organ-
izations to provide them with reassuring estimates. It would not be at all
surprising to find that intelligence officials shaded their evaluations to bring
them in line as much as possible with the expectations of their superiors. Air
Commodore Brian Frow, Director General of the Falkland Island Office, has
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openly charged the Foreign Office with ignoring the warnings he passed on
from Islanders because they were found inconvenient.28 Some middle level
intelligence officials have also confided to the press that 'their raw material
was far more alarmist than the much blander assessments of it reaching
ministers', assessments that are known to have played down the threat of
invasion.29 The failure of senior intelligence officials to insist upon the
development of a strategic conception could also have been, at least in part, an
expression of the same phenomenon.
We must return to the original justification given by both Margaret
Thatcher and Lord Carrington to explain their failure to predict the Argentine
invasion. This was that they were victims of the 'cry wolf phenomenon. As
such threats had been made before without resulting in invasion they had
become relatively immune to them. Given the obvious difference between
1977 and 1982, one is left wondering the extent to which this argument was
really a rationalization used by British leaders throughout the month of
March to convince themselves that the very outcome they feared the most but
were unprepared to confront would not actually come to pass.

2. Self-Deception in Buenos Aires

In May 1982, James Reston, the doyen of mainstream American political
commentators, declared: 'The problem in Buenos Aires is not that the
calculations of the general went w r o n g . . . but that they did not think or
calculate at all'.30 Reston's observation is typical of the instant analysis that
proliferated in the British, European and North American press. The media in
these countries for the most part portrayed the Argentine Junta as ignorant,
short-sighted and even foolish men who went to war oblivious to its likely
consequences for their nation. While there is certainly some validity to this
judgment, it also helps to justify London's failure to foresee the Argentine
invasion. For if the Junta behaved irrationally, indeed unpredictably, then
British leaders might to some extent be excused for not foreseeing the
invasion. The truth is more complex. The British, as we have seen, were
themselves guilty of a number of errors and illusions. Nor were Argentine
leaders quite so unsophisticated in their approach to the Falklands problem as
is commonly alleged.
After the termination of the New York negotiations the Junta set out upon a
 20 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

deliberate course of escalating tensions with Britain. Their strategy was to

commit themselves step by step to military action in the expectation that this
would succeed in eliciting some kind of British concession on sovereignty
before they were compelled to act. Such a strategy had worked in 1977.
The Junta first burned their bridges with public opinion. On 2 March, the
generals announced that Argentina reserved its right to 'seek other means' to
regain the Falklands. At the same time Junta representatives briefed the press
on the unsatisfactory outcome of the New York talks. This prompted bellicose
editorial comments which continued throughout the month and culminated in
predictions of invasion. Junta members also began dropping broad hints to
diplomats in Buenos Aires that they were considering military action unless
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the British displayed willingness to cede sovereignty. The Argentines even

communicated the precise concession they had in mind: a public statement by
London that it would resume negotiations with the purpose of reaching an
agreement to transfer sovereignty before the end of the year. Later in the
month, the Junta screwed up the pressure further by sending three warships to
South Georgia to give 'full protection' to a small party of Argentines who had
unfurled the national flag on that island in defiance of the British.
That this strategy was a form of political coercion is made apparent by the
fact that the generals made no effort to disguise their intentions, nor later to
hide their military preparations for invasion. The latter were well-publicized
and meant to be taken by London as palpable indicators of Argentine
commitment and resolve. DYN, the Argentine news agency, carried accounts
of extensive naval preparations including a report on 29 March that the
Marine regiment attached to the task force had been issued food rations, arms
and ammunition in expectation of an invasion of the Falklands. Even more
telling was a query from Uruguay on 30 March, in all likelihood with
Argentine approval, asking Britain if any Falklanders wanted to be air-lifted
off the Islands before the invasion.31
The Argentine strategy, while deliberate, was not altogether a matter of
choice for the Junta. The generals were to a great extent the prisoners of
passions they themselves had helped to arouse and had subsequently become
increasingly vulnerable by virtue of their faltering legitimacy. In this sense, the
March policy of the generals represented something of a desperate gamble; it
was the last card they could play from a bad hand that held out any prospect of
success.
During this month of crisis London was probably in a position to have
eased the Junta's dilemma in one of two ways. Thatcher could have made a
concession on sovereignty, as Buenos Aires certainly hoped she would, or she
could have assembled a naval armada that was sufficiently imposing to permit
the Junta to back down without necessarily losing face. The British
government did neither.
After the invasion, David Owen, Labor's former foreign secretary,
suggested that the proper policy would have been to have deployed Hunter-
Killer submarines without any publicity.32 However, this did nothing to
insulate the Junta from the domestic political reprecussions of appearing to
shy away from the use of force. The only naval action that had any hope of
 MISCALCULATION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC 21

success was a visible and intimidating display of force, say a carrier task force
with a contingent of Royal Marines to augment the meager Port Stanley
garrison. This might just have allowed the generals to justify passivity as the
only possible policy in light of the adversary's overwhelming military
superiority. Such an outcome might not have been at all disadvantageous to
the Junta as they could have rallied considerable political support at home
and elsewhere in Latin America by portraying themselves as the victims of
colonial oppression. Moreover, by compelling Britain to assemble and send a
naval armada all the way to the South Atlantic they would unquestionably
have succeeded in giving the Falkland question much greater salience in
London. This in itself might even have helped to break the diplomatic logjam
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by convincing the Thatcher Government that the cost of ignoring Argentine

claims was at least as great as that of antagonizing the Falkland lobby.
Unfortunately for the Junta, they were dealing with an adversary who was
insensitive to so many of the political storm warnings blowing from
Argentina. The generals' strategy thus failed in the first instance because their
desperation went unrecognized in London. Argentine leaders were in effect
trying to compel their British counterparts to make the very choice they were
trying so hard to deny. In the end, the British capacity for self-delusion
triumphed over Argentine efforts to instill a sense of urgency in the British
consciousness.

By the end of March the Junta accordingly found itself in a position where it
had to make some kind of decision about military action. To back down, after
having raised public opinion to a feverish pitch, invited a political backlash
that was likely to sweep the generals from power. However, to carry through
their strategy to its logical conclusion, an invasion of the Falkland Islands,
risked war with Great Britain.
Like the British before them, the Junta found itself in the kind of decisional
dilemma that prompts defensive avoidance. Not surprisingly, they too
procrastinated and deferred a decision as long as they could. The evidence
indicates that Galtieri did not actually screw up his courage and authorize
Admiral Anaya to break away from maneuvers with Uruguay and steam to
the Falklands until 31 March, three days after the fleet had put to sea.33
In weighing their decision it seems likely that Galtieri and his colleagues in
the Junta were in the end swayed by the consideration that backing down
entailed near certain political disaster whereas invasion, if it did not lead to
war, held out the prospect of substantial gains for little cost. In this regard, the
labor demonstrations against the regime on 30 March, the very day before the
decision to invade was apparently made, could reasonably have been expected
to have brought home their vulnerability to the generals. They may even have
tipped the scales in favor of invasion. By contrast, there were a number of
reasons, some convincing and some much less so, why the Junta could bring
themselves to believe that the policy to which they were committed would
succeed. General Galtieri himself later confessed to Oriana Fallaci that he
downplayed the likelihood of a British military response. Til tell you', he
replied to her. query, 'that though an English reaction was considered a
 22 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

possibility, we did not see it as a probability. Personally, 1 judged it scarcely

possible and totally improbable.'34
The principal reason why Galtieri may have discounted the possibility of a
strong British reaction was London's obvious failure to communicate resolve.
To the best of our knowledge no strongly worded warnings, even private ones,
emanated from London until 31 March when the invasion was all but a. fait
accompli. Nor, Endurance aside, was any effort made to strengthen Britain's
naval presence in the South Atlantic until quite belatedly. On 20 March, a
submarine and support ships were ordered south from the Mediterranean.
Even then, this deployment was not announced publicly but remained an
unconfirmed press report. The ships did not reach the Falklands until after the
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invasion. Endurance itself, sent to South Georgia in the aftermath of the

unauthorized flag raising incident, was withdrawn when three Argentine
warships appeared on the scene despite Lord Carrington's earlier promise in
Parliament that 'it would remain on station as long as necessary'. This episode
did nothing to enhance British credibility.
The avowed reason for London's passivity was, of course, concern for
miscalculated escalation. In retrospect, it is apparent that this was quite a
mistaken emphasis. The British should have been more fearful of a deterrence
failure. Argentine leaders, propelled toward invasion by the series of events we
have described, were probably predisposed to interpret British passivity as a
sign of lack of resolve. Tony Emerson, The Times correspondent in Buenos
Aires, reported that many Argentine officials had actually formed the
impression that the British failure to respond to Argentine provocations could
only be attributed to their desire to be rid of the Falkland problem once and
for all by means of an invasion.35
A second consideration that may have influenced Argentine calculations
was the Junta's apparent belief that there was little or nothing in a military
sense that Britain could do to dislodge Argentina from the Falklands once
they had actually occupied it. The time for Britain to have acted was before an
invasion when a reinforced garrison in Port Stanley could have opposed the
Argentines with some expectation of success or better yet when the British
fleet, had it been in Falkland waters, could have interdicted the invasion force.
Having missed this opportunity, Britain's only logical military recourse was to
try to dislodge the invaders, a very risky and exceedingly complex operation
that required forces and a national commitment of an altogether different
magnitude. Rear Admiral John F. Woodward, commander of the Royal
Navy task force, himself agreed that recapture of the Falkland Islands could be
'a long and bloody campaign'. There was, he admitted, 'no simple, short, quick
military solution ... while the Argentine resisted'.36
Galtieri confided that the Junta thought such an amphibious operation
'inconceivable'. When the British subsequently prepared to carry it out he
gave it little chance of success.37 Galtieri was not alone in this opinion. Many
naval experts, among them American, who were presumably well-informed
on the subject, doubted Britain's ability to liberate the Falklands even after the
Thatcher Government had committed itself to this course of action. 'The
British aren't going to be able to do it', predicted a senior American general.
 MISCALCULATION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC 23

'They will control the seas but not the air'.38 The Washington Post reported a
similar expectation among high ranking naval officers. The consensus was
that the British task force would not be able to do much when it arrived in
Falkland waters because it lacked sufficient airpower and logistical support. A
retired American admiral told the Post: 'The British made the decision to
structure their navy to only certain NATO tasks and have lost their ability to
conduct independent operations in the process'.39 Drew Middleton, one of the
most respected American military analysts, offered an only slightly less
pessimistic assessment in the New York Times.40
Subsequent events proved predictions of failure to be quite unfounded,
although the British did pay a heavy price for their inability to provide
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adequate air cover for their fleet. The point, however, is if knowledgeable
authorities doubted Britain's ability to recapture the Falklands, the
Argentines might to some degree be pardoned for their failure to foresee first
the scope and then the success of military operations against them.
A third consideration, which some commentators suggest influenced the
Argentine decision to invade, was the change in American policy toward
Argentina initiated by Ronald Reagan. Stanley Hoffmann, for one, has taken
the line that American policy 'twice fueled' the Falklands crisis. The
Administration, he argues first, helped to start it by leading Argentina to
believe they could get away with seizing the Islands and then made matters
worse by trying to mediate a settlement instead of immediately condemning
the Argentine aggression.41
It is certainly true that even before Reagan took office he actively sought to
reverse the Carter approach to Latin America. Transition team members
journeyed to Buenos Aires and advised the Junta to clean up its act in order to
pave the way for closer relations with the United States. In Washington,
Administration intellectuals devised a farcical distinction between 'totali-
tarian' and 'authoritarian' regimes and used it to justify their circumvention of
Carter's human rights policy. In the United Nations, the United States
delegate to the Human Rights Commission supported Argentina's effort to
block disclosure of their abysmal human rights record in opposition of the
efforts of all the European democracies to make it public. In March 1981, then
President Designate of the Junta, General Roberto Viola, who had
commanded the army during the reign of terror, was entertained at the White
House by President Reagan who called him 'a majestic personality'. He was
similarly feted by bankers in New York.
The reasons for Reagan's courtship of Argentina were both ideological and
geopolitical. The administration, impressed by the Junta's strident anti-
communism, sought to enlist their cooperation against leftist regimes and
guerilla movements in Central America. Argentina was encouraged to speak
out against the Mexican-French initiative for a negotiated settlement in El
Salvador. Cooperation between the two countries was later broadened to
encompass a wide range of activities including the despatch of Argentine
'advisors' to the Salvadorian and Guatamalan armies and to Somocieta
Camps in Honduras. Argentina also withdrew its ambassadors from Havana
and Managua in support of Reagan's policy and proved receptive to the
 24 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

possibility of participating in the Sinai peace-keeping force.

The United States had always remained aloof from the dispute over the
Falklands' sovereignty. The Reagan administration, despite its closer
relationship with Buenos Aires, did not publicly deviate from this line. It is not
known what, if anything, General Vernon Walters, Reagan's sub rosa
intermediary with 'authoritarian' regimes, said about the Falklands on his
several trips to Argentina. It may be, as some critics of the Administration
allege, that he whispered words of sympathy into the ears of the Junta.42 Even
if true, this could hardly be taken as license for an invasion. Nor should the
Reagan administration's efforts to woo the generals have necessarily provided
any assurance that Washington would turn a blind eye to Argentine
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aggression. After all, the United States also had a long-standing and far more
intimate relationship with Britain, who was in addition a mainstay of her most
important military alliance. Washington was also opposed on principle to the
unilateral use of force to resolve territorial disputes. President Reagan
belatedly attempted to make this point clear in his fifty-minute telephone call
to General Galtieri on the morning of 1 April. He tried unsuccessfully to
persuade Galtieri to call off the invasion, telling him that Britain was certain to
respond with force and that an invasion 'would wreck relations between the
United States and Argentina'.43
From the perspective of Buenos Aires, the American record could at best
be seen as ambiguous. The Argentine military attache in Washington is
nevertheless reported to have informed the Junta that the Regan admin-
istration was so eager for Argentina's support in Central America that 'in a
crunch it would tilt toward Buenos Aires, not London'.44 Galtieri admitted to
Oriana Fallaci that he shared this view. 'I didn't expect his (Reagan's)
approval or support', he said, 'but 1 was sure that he would behave with
balance and neutrality'. It is significant that Galtieri was unwilling in this
interview to face up to his own miscalculation. Instead, and with obvious
emotion, he portrayed Haig's mediation and Reagan's subsequent support for
Britain as 'a tremendous deception' in light of his close personal relations with
the President and the importance of Argentina for American global strategy.
'Both the Argentines and I', he asserted, 'see this as a betrayal.'45 Such a
paranoid response, indicative of severe disappointment, is another sign of
the importance American neutrality seems to have had in the Junta's
calculations.46
One further and on the whole more convincing explanation for Argentina's
miscalculation should be considered. This is the very different cognitive
contexts in terms of which Buenos Aires and London conceived the Falkland
problem. The different contexts encouraged quite divergent estimates of
British resolve.
From the Argentine perspective the Falkland Islands were national
territory that had been occupied by a colonial power since 1833. Continued
British sovereignty over the Islands was an atavism in a world that had
witnessed numerous wars of national liberation to bring the age of colonialism
to an end. General Galtieri gave voice to this sentiment in his address to the
Argentine nation on 1 May. 'Our cause', he insisted, 'has ceased to be an
 MISCALCULATION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC 25

Argentine problem. It has become a cause of America and of the world, which
does not acknowledge colonialism as a situation which can be tolerated this
century'.47
Galtieri's claim was more than mere rhetoric. Opinion throughout Latin
America was strongly supportive of Argentina's claim and on the whole
understanding of the Junta's exasperation with diplomacy.48 Within
Argentina, feeling was even stronger. Every newspaper in the country greeted
'the recovery' of the 'Malvinas'with banner headlines. All the political parties,
including those who had been the most strident in their criticism of the Junta,
issued statements celebrating the reconquest. Deolindo Bittel, leader of the
Peronists, whose views on just about everything were at odds with the
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generals, publicly embraced Galtieri. Not to be outdone in this orgy of

nationalism, the CGT, which had demonstrated against the Junta the week
before, called upon its members to return to the Plaza de Mayo to voice their
approval of its foreign policy. What linked these disparate and antagonistic
factions together was the belief on the Left as well as the Right that the British
occupation of the Falklands represented, as La Prensa put it, 'an intolerable
insult to Argentine independence and nationhood'. 49
Viewed in this light, it must have seemed a far-fetched notion indeed that in
1982 a 'colonial' power would try, let alone succeed, to reimpose its rule on a
liberated colony by force of arms. World opinion, international morality and,
most important of all, the constellation of international political forces, all
appeared to militate against it. The analogies that might have sprung into
Argentine minds were Goa and Suez. The former, a possible model for the
Argentine operation, resulted in a colonial power, Portugal, accommodating
itself to the loss of its colonial enclave on the Indian sub-continent when it was
overrun by India. Suez, of course, remains the best example of how an attempt
to reimpose colonial domination failed for all of the reasons already alluded to.
The British conceived of the Falklands controversy in an altogether
different way. Politicians, the press and public opinion for the most part
dismissed the colonial metaphor as inappropriate because the population of
the Islands was of British stock and wished to remain under the protection of
the Crown.50 Majority opinion did not see the Argentine invasion as an effort
at national liberation but as an act of naked aggression carried out by a
dictatorship against a democratic and peaceful people. For the major parties
and most factions within them, even those who admitted some legitimacy to
Argentine claims, the military means Buenos Aires had used to achieve its end
were repugnant and unacceptable. There was, however, considerable
disagreement as to the best way of effecting an Argentine withdrawal.51
For British opinion, the dominant historical analogy was Hitler and the
origins of World War II. Newspapers and politicians made frequent, if not
incessant, reference to the events and lessons of that period. Chief among
these lessons was the need to stand up to aggression lest failure to do so further
whet the appetities of would-be aggressors everywhere. The day before tne
invasion, The Times drew the parallel between the two situations when it
warned the government that 'it would be wrong to give Argentina the
impression that any sudden Anschluss would be unopposed'.52 The Thatcher
 26 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

cabinet later pursued the same line of reasoning. On 7 April, Francis Pym
began his maiden speech in parliament as Foreign Secretary with the
declaration that 'Britain did not appease dictators'.53 The Prime Minister
herself justified the cost in lives and money of retaking the Falklands with the
twin arguments that 'aggression must not be allowed to succeed', and 'freedom
must be protected against dictatorship'.54 Probably the most succinct
statement of the essence of the analogy appeared once again in The Times. The
first leader following the invasion declared:
We defended Poland because we had given our word and because the
spread of dictatorships across Europe had to be stopped for our own
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sakes.... As in 1939, so today, the same principles apply to the Falkland

Islands. We have given our word, and we must, where we can, prevent
the expansionist policies of a dictatorship affecting our interests.55
If it was inconceivable for Argentina that Britain would ever go to war to
regain the Falklands it was equally inconceivable to most Britons that they
would not if it proved the only way to effect an Argentine withdrawal.56 The
different cognitive contexts in terms of which the two countries conceived of
the problem led not only to contrasting visions of justice but also to quite
different imperatives for action. Unfortunately, policymakers in both London
and Buenos Aires, while not altogether ignorant of the other's conceptual-
ization of the problem, seemed unable to grasp its implications for that
country's behavior.
Having reviewed the likely reasons for the Junta's failure to foresee Britain's
reaction to their invasion of the Falklands it is still necessary to assess the
extent to which this judgement could be considered reasonable based on the
information on hand at the time. Such an assessment cannot be made in terms
of the outcome of the crisis as there can be situations in which an adversary
proves willing to go to war in defense of a commitment but his precrisis
behavior nevertheless made it reasonable to assume that he would back down
or remain passive when challenged. The North Koreans, for example, clearly
misjudged the American response to an invasion of South Korea, but their
expectation of American non-intervention was not an unreasonable
expectation. American statements and actions prior to June 1950 had given
them good cause to believe that Washington would not commit its few forces
in the Pacific to the defense of South Korea.57
Like the United States in Korea, Britain had sent misleading signals to
Argentina, signals that we have shown could have been interpreted as
indications of lack of resolve. It was also far from clear that Britain had the
means to recapture the Falklands even if they had the resolve. Considering
only this information the Junta might be said to have acted with reasonable
expectation of success. However, there were other equally important
attributes of the situation which should have dictated caution in Buenos Aires.
It did not require sophisticated political analysis to grasp the fact that an
invasion of the Falklands dealt a severe blow to British honor and prestige and
that the British Government and people would probably be moved to do
something about it. The Argentine Government should have been particularly
 MISCALCULATION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC 27

sensitive to this reality given their problem in this regard. What reason did the
Junta have for believing that Thatcher and her Government would be that
much more able than they had been to ignore the demands of what was certain
to be aroused if not enraged public opinion?
The extent of public outrage in Britain became apparent immediately
following the invasion. In a three hour emergency Parliamentary Debate, the
first on a Saturday since the Suez Crisis in 1956, Margaret Thatcher, Lord
Carrington and John Nott were subjected to a 'verbal battering', The Times
reported, 'of a savagery reserved by the House of Commons for occasions of
national humiliation'.58 The Prime Minister faced a possible revolt among
Tory backbenchers and the prospect of a near total loss of confidence in her by
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the electorate.59 A national public opinion poll published in the Daily Mail on
6 April revealed that 80 per cent of the British people blamed the Government
for the invasion and 36 per cent blamed Thatcher herself. Twenty-five per cent
believed she should resign.60 A week later The Times featured a Gallup Report
with the stunning finding that the public thought Thatcher the worst Prime
Minister in British history. She topped the list with 48 percent of the vote.
Neville Chamberlain, usually the winner in such contests, only received 12 per
cent.61 It was clear that only a forceful and successful response would have any
hope of restoring the Government's credibility. One member of the Cabinet
confessed to an American journalist: 'To be frank, I don't see how she
(Thatcher) can survive if she shrinks from a military showdown.'62
Domestic politics aside, Britain had important interests and commitments
throughout the world that would have been seriously compromised by passive
acceptance of the Falklands invasion. Many of these interests, as were the
Falklands themselves, were carryovers from the days when Britain had been a
great empire. Concern for Gibraltar probably headed the list as the invasion
had touched off an onrush of nationalism in Spain.63 'If we can't get the
Argentinians out of the Falklands', a senior British defense official observed,
'how long do you think it will be before the Spaniards take a crack at
Gibraltar.164 The Economist voiced the same concern and thought it sufficient
grounds for retaking the Falklands.65
Within Latin America, Guatemala and Venezuela stood out as particularly
vocal backers of Argentina's action. Both coveted former British territory.
Guatemala hoped to annex Belize which had been granted independence in
September 1981. The country was protected by a small British force which the
Thatcher Government had been seeking to withdraw because of its cost.
Venezuela in turn had laid claim to about two-thirds of Guyana for 83 years
but in 1970 had agreed to a twelve year moratorium which was due to expire
two months after the invasion. In March, the Guyanese had reported military
activity along their border and were worried that the Argentine invasion
would strengthen factions within the Venezuelan armed forces who favored a
harder line.66
Loss of the Falklands might also have been expected to have weakened
Britain's position in both Diego Garcia and Hong Kong. Diego Garcia, an
important Western naval base in the Indian Ocean, had attracted the
increasing attention of the left-wing electoral alliance in Mauritius which won
 28 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

the general election of 13 June 1982 and previously had vowed to launch an
international campaign to regain sovereignty over the atoll.67 Hong Kong,
which had been subjected to Chinese intimidation in the past, is soon to be the
subject of negotiations as the British lease on the New Territories expires in
1997. Finally, there were the questions of economic rights in South Atlantic
waters and territorial interests in Antarctica to be considered. Argentina and
Britain had extensive clashing claims with regard to both. In parliament and
in the press concern was expressed that British interests would be prejudiced,
if not irreparably harmed by continuing Argentine occupation of the
Falklands.68
Argentina should also have considered a less tangible but nevertheless
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important consideration: the personality of Britain's leader. Throughout her

term as Prime Minister, the 'iron lady' had actively cultivated an image of
toughness. To the delight and occasionally the dismay of her supporters, she
had a tendency to treat defiance of Government policy as a personal challenge.
Her series of clashes with the unions, which had pitted her against them in a
highly confrontatory manner, were well-publicized cases in point. Given her
Government's standing commitment to the Islanders, an invasion of the
Falklands was almost certain to be conceived of by her as the kind of challenge
to which she had to respond.
There were, therefore, good and for the most part perfectly obvious reasons
why it was unlikely that Britain would accept an invasion of the Falklands.
There is no evidence that Argentina's leaders considered any of these reasons.
Even after Britain's naval armada had laid siege to the Islands, General
Galtieri, if he is to be believed, was still amazed by London's response.'Why',
he asked, 'should a country situated in the heart of Europe care so much for
some islands located far away in the Atlantic Ocean; in addition, islands which
do not serve any national interest? It seems senseless to me.'69
Galtieri's apparent difficulty in comprehending Britain's motives must be
attributed, at least in part, to his lack of international experience and political
sophistication. Like most of the other members of the Junta, his education
had been narrowly technical, his professional experiences entirely within his
own branch of the service and his political horizon limited to Latin America.
The Junta as a body was poorly equipped to understand the differences
between the political systems of Argentina and Britain or to put themselves in
the position of their adversary in order to see the world through his eyes.
Lack of sophistication is, however, an insufficient explanation for the
Junta's failure to consider some of the more obvious motives for intervention.
Here we must fall back upon our earlier hypothesis of defensive avoidance
which makes their selective attention to information more readily explicable.
Galtieri and his colleagues, compelled for internal political reasons to go
forward with the invasion, sought to insulate themselves from information
that suggested their policy would lead to war. At the same time they played up
any circumstance, however uncertain its import, that might indicate the
successful outcome. Seen in this light, the range of reasons we have explored
for the Junta's miscalculation — lack of apparent British resolve, the difficulty
of recapturing the Falklands, expectations of American neutrality and
 MISCALCULATION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC 29

differing cognitive conceptions of the controversy — were rationalizations for

a policy to which the generals were committed. They constituted a psycho-
logical shield behind which the Junta could protect itself from threatening
realities that lay beyond the barrack walls. The perceptual distortion this
engendered was the real cause of the miscalculation that led to war.

Conclusions
In an earlier study of international crisis I defined 'brinkmanship' as a
confrontation in which one state knowingly challenges an important
commitment of another with the expectation that its adversary will back down
when challenged.70 In such a confrontation the initiator is not attempting to
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start a war but rather to achieve specific political objectives by means of

coercion. Brinkmanship succeeds only if the initiator achieves his goals
without provoking war.
The Falkland confrontation clearly conforms to this pattern of crisis.
Argentina's leaders certainly had no desire to provoke a war with Great
Britain but rather expected the Thatcher Government to retreat from its
commitment to maintain sovereignty over the Falklands when Argentine
marines occupied Port Stanley. Like many initiators or brinkmanship crises,
they miscalculated their adversary's response, an error that resulted in war.
Crisis strategies are predicated on a set of expectations about the behavior
of other international actors. These expectations are often derived from the
analysis of a large number of indices and signals, many of which are
ambiguous or contradictory. Nevertheless, one of the most striking findings of
my study of brinkmanship was the extent to which initiators of these crises
frequently misjudged their adversary's resolve. The expectation that the
adversory would back down when challenged, a defining of characteristic
brinkmanship, proved justified in only three of the fourteen cases I examined.
In every other instance, the initiator had to back down or go to war.
The Argentines also remained insensitive to the full extent of their
miscalculation well into the crisis. In the month between the invasion on 2
April and the sinking of the Argentine cruiser Belgrano on 3 May, the Junta
received ample indications of British resolve to use force to recapture the
Falklands. The Argentines also had several opportunites to reach a negotiated
settlement. Nevertheless, Haig's shuttle diplomacy, United Nations'initiatives
and the mediation of Peru's President Fernando Belaunde Terry all failed to
bring about a peaceful withdrawal. Until Washington's announcement on 31
March that it would support Britain, the Junta gave every appearance of
confidence in a diplomatic outcome. Argentine Foreign Minister Nicanor
Costa Mendez kept expressing his optimism in this regard and even claimed
that 'the danger of war with Britain was fading'.71 When these several attempts
at settlement fell through Argentine leaders took refuge in the belief that the
British task force would fail in its attempt to dislodge Argentina from the
Islands. Throughout, they continued to insist, quite unrealistically, on some
nod by London in the direction of recognizing Argentine sovereignty as their
minimum condition for withdrawal.
It is always difficult to know the extent to which public statements actually
 30 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

reflect the thinking of the officials who make them. In the Argentine case they
may have done so as Costa Mendez' statements were given substance by an
unrealistic policy that appeared to be based on those judgements. Once again,
psychology and politics were intertwined. The Junta was caught between the
military facts which dictated a settlement, and the domestic political facts at
home, which indicated that neither the honor of the military nor their tenure
as Argentina's leaders were likely to survive any settlement they had any
chance of reaching. The Junta's dilemma was, if anything, more acute after the
invasion than before by reason of the commitment this action entailed. One
Argentine editor commented: 'Galtieri and the generals are cornered. They
have nowhere to go but forward. If they go backwards, they will be swept
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away.'72 They thus stayed locked into their suicidal collision course with
Britain until the very bitter end.
The Falkland crisis was complicated by the fact that there was serious
miscalculation on both sides. The British, as we have seen, also took refuge in
illusions when it helped to reconcile their clashing political and strategic
needs. This perceptual sleight of hand was abetted by the failure of British
intelligence officials to develop a strategic rationale from which useful
indicators of warning could be derived. British political leaders also insisted
upon almost certain knowledge that Argentina actually intended to invade the
Falklands before they were willing to buttress deterrence. By the time they
received this information it was too late to influence Argentine behavior.
We can surmise that the contrasting cultural temperaments of the two
societies, one given to hyperbole and visible displays of emotion, the other to
understatement and the public suppression of feeling, complicated the
problem of prediction even further. Despite all the difficulties attendant upon
the task, the problem of facing recurrent crises compelled the British to
develop a conception of strategic and political conditions that might
encourage or even necessitate an Argentine attack. Such a conception, we
have argued, would have pointed to some very important differences between
1977 and 1982 and could have alerted British policymakers to the gravity of
the situation they faced.
Strategic conceptions, important as they are, are no panacea to the problem
of fathoming an adversary's intentions. They can be misleading, as was true
for Israel in 1973. They are nevertheless the only practical means of
attempting to decipher an opponent's intentions in a situation of recurrent
threat short of a reliable source with access to their opponent's most secret
deliberations.
The Israeli failure illustrates some of the difficulties inherent in constructing
a strategic rationale. By virtue perhaps of decades of extreme Arab hostility
and rhetoric superimposed on Israel's own 'holocaust mentality', Israeli
military intelligence could not imagine an Arab attack which did not have the
destruction of Israel as its objective. The conditions they posited for such an
attack, equality in the air and Syrian participation, were largely irrelevant to
the limited war envisaged by Sadat.
Israel's strategic indicators were also strictly military ones; they ignored the
political context of Arab-Israeli relations. In practise, relative military
 MISCALCULATION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC 31

advantage, while it is an important consideration, is rarely the determining

factor in foreign policy challenges. It was not decisive for Egypt in 1973 nor
was it for Argentina in 1982. In fact, had Buenos Aires waited one more year it
might well have gotten away with its invasion. HMS Invincible would have
gone to the Australian navy, Hermes would have been paid off. Intrepid and
Fearless, the two amphibious assault ships, would have been scrapped
together with some of the supporting frigates. Britain, which barely had the
means to retake the Falklands in 1982, would have been very hard put,
perhaps unable, to do so in the absence of these vessels.73 Both these cases
illustrate the importance of political as opposed to military calculations in the
decision to go to war. This puts a premium on devising strategic conceptions
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that not only specify the military preconditions of a challenge but also the
political conditions that encourage or necessitate them in the first place. This
requires close collaboration between military intelligence and its civilian
counterparts as the latter can be expected to be more sensitive to the political
dimension of the problem.
The other British error we have identified was the government's misplaced
concern for avoiding miscalculated escalation. As a result, the British
government insisted upon absolute certainty of Argentina's aggressive
intentions before they were willing to act. Their passivity contributed to a
deterrence failure as it appears to have been interpreted by Argentina as lack
of resolve.
The British failure in this regard had two dimensions to it. The first we have
already noted. In the absence of a strategic rationale the Government had little
guidance in making an appropriate trade-off between the need to guard
against miscalculated escalation and deterrence failure. The second concerned
the actual cost of making a trade-off between these two somewhat
contradictory objectives of crisis management.
Action designed to buttress deterrence, in this instance visible naval
preparations coupled with warning to Buenos Aires, would have entailed an
immediate cost. A significant naval presence in the South Atlantic was both
expensive and politically embarrassing as the Government had recently cut
the budget for precisely the kind of conventional naval forces they would now
have utilized. It seems likely that concern for these immediate costs
contributed to the reluctance of the Government to act and made them
insistent upon near certain knowledge that Argentina was going to invade
before they were willing to do so.
If this analysis is correct, it points to the importance of immediate as
opposed to deferred costs for policymakers in crisis situations. Both
miscalculated escalation and deterrence failure would have grave conse-
quences. Either could lead to war and in circumstances that would be
particularly embarrassing to the British Government. If war arose from
miscalculated escalation the Government could readily be portrayed by the
Opposition as having been responsible for it. If, on the other hand, war was
the result of a deterrence failure, as was in fact the case, the Government had
to account for its apparent intelligence failure to predict and prevent the
attack and then organize a risky expedition to recapture the Falkland Islands.
 32 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

These costs, great as they were, were difficult to assess in magnitude and
probability. No doubt the inability to determine with any certainty which of
the two problems posed the greater and more likely threat made it difficult to
choose between competing courses of action. The costs may even have tended
to cancel each other out in the minds of policymakers. Calculations of
immediate costs, although hardly comparable in consequence, would have
accordingly loomed larger in the deliberations of the Government. They may
even have had a decisive impact upon the decision to opt for passivity.
The general principle that emerges from this argument is that policymakers,
not only in crisis situations, but across a whole range of decisions, are probably
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inordinately influenced by immediate and predictable costs regardless of their

dimensions. The relative importance of short-term considerations is likely to
increase in proportion to the difficulty of determining the magnitude or
likelihood of the longer term costs that might be associated with any particular
course of action. In the case of the British Government, short term
consideration, unfortunately, and quite arbitrarily, pointed to what we now
know was the wrong policy choice. In retrospect, it was a tragedy that the
Prime Minister, a person of unquestioned courage when she perceives matters
of principle to be at stake, seemingly failed to rise above narrow calculations of
short-term interests when formulating Falklands policy.
The short-term interests that presumably influenced Thatcher's Falkland
policy were political in nature: concern for maintaining backbench support
and the desire to avoid the embarassment associated with a precautionary
naval demonstration after her government had recommended deep cuts in
funding for conventional naval forces. As we have seen, Argentine policy also
appears to have been heavily, perhaps decisively, influenced by domestic
political concerns. The motive here was the Junta's need to do something to
restore its faltering legitimacy.
The Falkland crisis is by no means unique in the extent to which domestic
political concerns, often short-term in nature, shaped foreign policy
decisions, including those entailing high risks. This was the case with many
crises included in my earlier study of brinkmanship. In so many of these
crises, policies determined principally by domestic considerations had
disastrous consequences for both the state and political leaders involved. This
is also true of the Falklands. The Argentine military leaders responsible for
the war were forced out of office in the aftermath of their defeat and the Junta
itself is likely to be replaced by a civilian government in the not so distant
future. In Britain, Margaret Thatcher's popularity increased following
Britain's victory but that victory was a costly one. It was also a very near
thing. The war could easily have resulted in disaster for Britain and her Prime
Minister.
The principal policy lesson of the Falklands is clear. Political leaders,
especially in democracies, must respond to public opinion and other domestic
pressures. However, leaders who allow themselves to shape foreign policies
primarily in terms of these internal considerations court disaster at home and
abroad as such policies are likely to bear only a chance resemblance to the
needs of the nation.
 MISCALCULATION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC 33

NOTES

This study was written in July 1982 under the aegis of the Frankfurt Peace Research Institute.
The author is indebted to Ernst-Otto Czempiel, Gert Knell, Harald Mueller, Reinhard Rode and
Bernd Kubbig for their encouragement and support.
1. The Economist, 19 June 1982, p. 49.
2. Both the OSUS satellites and the Central Intelligence Agency's KH 11 photo-reconnaissance
satellites are quite capable of monitoring the Falklands at latitude 52° South. Their range
extends as far South as 70°. The US Navy also operates the Sound Surveillance System
(SOSUS) which consists of 22 systems of underwater microphones placed in strategic
waterways around the world. It is unlikely, despite some newspapers' claims to the contrary,
that this system was in place in the waters between Argentina and the Falklarids.
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3. The Chicago Tribune, 1 May 1982, p. 11; New Statesman, 30 April 1982, p. 5.
4. The Chicago Tribune, 1 May 1982, p . I I ; Los Angeles Times, 4 May 1982, p . 1; The
Economist, 10 April 1982, p. 27.
5. The Times, 5 April 1982, p. 6; 6 April 1982, p. 2.
6. The Times, 5 April 1982, p. 6.
7. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Relations (Princeton
University Press, 1976), p. 194.
8. Janice Gross Stein,' "Intelligence" and "Stupidity" Reconsidered: Estimation and Decision
in Israel, 1973', The Journal of Strategic Studies 3 (September, 1980), 147; see also, Michael
Handel, 'Perception, Deception and Surprise: The Case of the Yom Kippur War', Jerusalem
Papers on Peace Problems, 19 (Jerusalem, 1976); and AvrahamShlaim,'Failures in National
Intelligence Estimates: The Case of the Yom Kippur War', World Politics (1976), 348-80.
9. Agranat Report, A Partial Report by the Commission in Inquiry to the Government of Israel.
(Jerusalem: Government Press Office, 2 April, 1974).
10. This was reported to The Times, 6 April 1982, p.3, by John Cheek, a member of the Falkland
Islands Council and of the British delegation to the New York talks. Lord Carrington alluded
to the same scenario on BBC's Panorama program on 5 April 1982.
11. Stein, op. cit., p. 152.
12. For the background to the conflict, see, Peter J. Beck, 'Cooperative Confrontation in the
Falkland Islands Dispute', Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 24 (1982), 3f-
5c; Maroldo Foulkes, Las Malvinas: Una Causa Nacional (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1978);
José Enrique Greno Velasco, 'El "Informe Shackleton" Sobre las Islas Malvinas', Revista de
Política International (Madrid) 153 (September-October, 1977, 31-57; Juan E. Gugliamelli,
'Las Negociaciones por las Malvinas en una Nueva Etapa?', Estrategia (Buenos Aires) 43-44
(1976-77), 6-81; John Hickey, 'Keep the Falklands British? The Principle of Self-
Determination of Dependent Territories', Inter-American Economic Affairs 31 (Summer,
1977), 77-88; Duardo van der Kooy, 'Malvinas. Después de la Visita de Nicholas Ridley se
Hace Más difícil la negociación por la devolución del Archipiélago', Estrategia, 59 (July-
August, 1979), 37-42; J. Metford, 'Falklands or Malvinas? The Background to the Dispute',
Internaional Affairs 44 (July, 1968), 463-81; Ezequiel Federico, Las Islas Malvinas —
Soverania Argentina. Antecedentes, Gestiones Diplomáticas (Buenos Aires: Ediciones
Culturales Argentinas, 1969); Lidia Rodrigues, 'Malvinas: Su Estructura Socioeconómica',
Revista Argentina de Relaciones Internacionales 2 (May-August 1976), 17-36; Camilo Hugo
Rodriguez Berrutti, Malvinas: Ultima Frontera del Colonialismo (Buenos Aires: Ediciones
Universitaria, 1975); J. Santa-Pinter, 'Islas Malvinas or Falkland Islands?', Horizontes
(Ponce) 21 (Spring, 1977), 37-52; Edward Arthur Shackleton, 'Prospects of the Falkland
Islands', The Geographical Journal 143 (March, 1977), 1-13; Hermann Weber, 'Falkland
Islands' oder 'Malvinas? Der Status der Falklandinseln im Streit zwischen Großbritannien
und Argentinien. Eine völkerrechtliche Fallstudie (Frankfurt a.M.: Metzner, 1977).
13. The Times, 3 December 1980, S. 6.
14. The Economist, 19 June 1982, p. 42.
15. On the domestic situation in Argentina, see, Charles Maechling, Jr., 'The Argentina Pariah',
 34 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

Foreign Policy, No. 45 (Winter, 1981-82), 69-83; Gary W. Wynia, 'The Argentine Revolution
Falters', Current History 81 (February, 1982), 74-7, 87-8; Jorge Louis Bernetti, José Ricardo
Eliaschev and Mempo Alfaro, 'Argentina, Seis Anos Después', Uno Mas Uno (Mexico City)
23, 24, 26 March, 1982.
16. Forthe 1982 economic figures, see, Clarín (Buenos Aires), 8 and 14March, 1982; El Cronista
Comercial (Buenos Aires), 16 March, 1982.
17. Clarin, 29-30 May, 1982; Latin America Weekly Report, 2 April 1982; The Times, 2 April
1982.
18. Manfred Shonfeld in La Prensa, 23-27 March 1981; Buenos Aires Herald, 25 March 1981.
19. The Economist, 19 June 1982, p. 43.
20. On this incident, see. The Economist, 3 April 1982, p. 98, 19 June 1982, p. 49; Clarin, 23
March 1982; The Times 20 March, 1 April 1982.
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21. Stein, pp. 158-9, 167-8.

22. Lord Carrington in the House of Lords, 4 April 1982. The Times, 5 April 1982, p. 6.
23. The Economist, 19 June 1982, p. 49.
24. Irving L. Janis and Leon Mann, Decision-Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict,
Choice, and Commitment (New York: The Free Press, 1977), pp. 57-8, 74, 197-233. For a
discussion of the concept of defensive avoidance and its application to several cases of crisis
decision-making, see Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature of
International Crisis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).
25. Janis and Mann, pp. 74-95.
26. The Economist, 19 June 1982, p. 43.
27. The Times, 6 April 1982, p. 3; The Economist, 19 June 1982, p. 44.
28. The Times, 6 April 1982, p. 2. Air Commodore Frow is quoted as saying: 'Last September we
warned that we clearly envisaged the crisis that was going to occur around the end of this year.
I have been accused of crying wolf and of exaggeration, and when 1 said a government was
likely to fall over the Falkland Islands issue people said don't be silly, it's only 1,800 people.'
29. The Economist, 19 June 1982, p. 44.
30. The New York Times, 5 May 1982, p. 27.
31. The Argentine strategy was not unlike that pursued by the People's Republic of China prior
to its intervention in the Korean War. Peking attempted to demonstrate its resolve to the
United States by making its military preparations for intervention highly visible. For a
discussion of this case see Lebow, pp. 148-229.
32. The Times, 5 April 1982, reporting the debate in the House of Commons on 3 April.
33. Ibid., 7 April 1982, p. 1, citing British intelligence sources
34. Ibid., 12 June 1982, p. 4.
35. Ibid., 22 April 1982, p. 12.
36. The Guardian,29 April 1982, p. 1.
37. Galtieri's interview with Oriana Fallaci, The Times, 12 June 1982, p. 4.
38. Wall Street Journal, 27 April 1982, p. 1.
39. The Washington Post, 4 April 1982, p. 19.
40. The New York Times, 7 April 1982, p. 3.
41. Ibid., 12 May 1982.
42. Walters, together with Thomas O. Enders, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American
Affairs, is reported to have opposed outright support of Britain during the war as well as the
severing of relations with Argentina, This was also the position of about a dozen influential
congressmen. Within the administration this group was opposed by Lawrence S.
Eagleburger, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and later, by Alexander Haig.
The New York Times, 8 April 1982, p. 4; The New York News, 17 May 1982, p. 5.
43. The New York Times, 3 April 1982, p. 6; 8 April 1982, p. 10.
44. Ibid., 19 April 1980, p. 1.
 MISCALCULATION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC 35

45. The Times, 12 June 1982, p. 4; Haig and his party of mediators were apparently equally
disenchanted with Galtieri and the Junta. One of them described the generals to Leslie Gelb of
The New York Times, 2 May 1982, p. IE, as'a bunch of thugs who were almost impossibleto
deal with'.
46. Galtieri's response is reminiscent of that of William II's upon learning of Britain's entry into
the war in 1914. The Kaiser resorted to paranoid projection to justify his illusory but deeply
held expectations of British neutrality. Rather than to admit his miscalculation he sought to
escape from his own aggressiveness by portraying Germany and himself as unwitting victims
of British duplicity. See Lebow, pp. 139-45 for an analysis of William's behavior.
47. The full text of this speech is reprinted in English in The Times, 3 May 1982, p. 2.
48. With some exceptions, Latin American countries took one of two positions on the Falklands
question. The moderate position, taken for example by Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, Ecuador,
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Paraguay, Nicaragua, Uruguay and Chile, supported Argentina's claim to the islands but not
her invasion. The more radical position, adopted by Bolivia, Grenada, Guatemala, Cuba,
Panama, Peru and Venezuela, supported her military action as well.
49. La Prensa, 3 April 1982.
50. Some Labor MPs subscribed, to the colonial analogy as did some left-wing journalists. The
editors of the Labour Herald, described the Falkland Islanders as 'company slaves' and
insisted that there was no justification for Britain to cling to its 'colonial possession'. The
Times, 10 April 1982, p. 1.
51. The New Statesman of 11 April 1982, p. 5, and 28 May 1982, p. 7, provided a good analysis of
these differences as well as a description of left-wing opposition to a military reconquest of the
Falklands.
52. The Times, 1 April 1982, p. II.
53. Ibid., 8 April 1982, p. 6.
54. Margaret Thatcher in Parliament, 20 May 1982, The Times, 21 May 1982, p. 4.
55. Ibid., 5 April 1982, p. 9.
56. The Economist, of 1 May 1982, p. 14, reported that the latest Market and Opinion Research
International (MORI) poll revealed 76 per cent of the public behind Thatcher's response to
the invasion.
57. For the most balanced discussion of this problem, see David S. Mclellan, Dean Acheson: The
State Department Years (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1976), pp. 267-70.
58. The Times, 5 April 1982, p. 6.
59. Ibid., 3 April 1982, p. 1.
60. The Daily Mail, 6 April 1982, p. 1.
61. The Times, 14 April 1982, p. 2.
62. R. W. Apple, Jr., in The New York Times, 7 April 1982, p. 1.
63. The Times, 5 April 1982, p. 4; for the short-term effect of the Falklands invasion on the
Gibraltar negotiations, see The Times, 10 April 1982, p. 3; 24 May 1982, p. 11; 31 May 1982,
p. 6.
64. Reported by Drew Middleton in The New York Times, 7 April 1982, p. 3.
65. The Economist, 17 April 1982, p. 27.
66. The Times, I April 1982, p. 1; 20 May 1982, p. 6; The Economist, 1 May 1982, p. 29.
67. The Times, 14 June 1982, p. 5.
68. Lord Shackleton in the House of Lords, 3 April 1982, reported in The Times, 5 April 1982;
The Times editorial of 28 April 1982, p. 15.
69. The Times. 12 June 1982, p. 4.
70. Lebow, pp. 57 ff.
71. The New York Times. 9 April 1982, p. 1; 25 April 1982, p. 1.
72. Reported in The New York Times. 19 April 1982, p. I.