The Falklands-Malvinas, or the Remake

I. The occasion

In early September 2026 the dispute over the Falkland Islands sharpened. The trigger is an offshore oil project by British and Israeli companies in the contested waters; production is to begin in 2028.

Argentina’s president has announced economic sanctions against companies operating there without Argentine authorisation, promised Congress legislation on sovereignty, and ordered the expansion of a naval base in Tierra del Fuego. Argentine veterans’ associations and environmental lawyers have filed suit against the project.

The British government declares its position unshakeable and invokes the right of self-determination of the islanders, who in 2013 voted 99.8 per cent to remain.

Militarily nothing is happening. Rhetorically and symbolically, a great deal is.

II. The question

A war with roughly nine hundred dead lies forty-four years back. Since then nothing has changed — no settlement, no procedure, no accommodation. The dispute is as old as 1833 and as unresolved as in 1982.

That calls for explanation. At issue is an island group of some three thousand inhabitants, two friendly states, no ideological enmity, no ethnic tension. Comparable territorial disputes have been settled in that time.

The obvious answer is that the positions are irreconcilable. It is true and explains nothing, for irreconcilable positions are the normal case in territorial disputes. They are settled all the same, when both sides want it.

The other question therefore runs not: why was it not resolved — but for whom was it not?

III. What 1982 delivered

For the Argentine military government the war was a diversion. It faced hyperinflation, mass protests and the spreading knowledge of its crimes. The islands were the one subject that united every camp. The plan failed: defeat accelerated the junta’s fall.

For the British government the war was the turning point. A prime minister with historically poor polling was re-elected a year later.

And for the British arms industry it was something that cannot be bought: a trial under real conditions.

What worked in the South Atlantic and what failed — air defence, anti-ship missiles, vertical take-off aircraft, naval construction — fed directly into procurement and export. An engagement is the only test that counts, and it is not to be had on a proving ground. That French anti-ship missiles sank British ships was the best advertising in the French manufacturer’s history; that British systems proved themselves was the same for the British.

That is no insinuation but the ordinary connection: weapons that have proved themselves sell. Conflicts that do not become wars do not furnish that proof.

IV. What would have been possible in 1980

For there was an accommodation, and it lay on the table.

In the 1970s both sides negotiated over various forms of settlement — joint administration, economic cooperation, and finally a model under which sovereignty would have passed to Argentina and the islands been leased back to Britain for a long term. For the inhabitants nothing would have changed for decades.

That is precisely the fair offer that can dissolve a self-binding commitment: Argentina would have had its claim satisfied, Britain kept the administration, the inhabitants their way of life.

It failed not on the substance but on a small, well-organised group. The islanders refused, and their advocates in the British Parliament prevailed. Two years later came the war.

V. Why no conspiracy is needed

One might suspect that matters were helped along here. A handful of affected parties, a project of considerable economic weight, a parliamentary minority tipping the balance — the conditions for targeted influence were favourable.

It was not necessary.

Two thousand people whose way of life depends on the outcome are, of their own accord, more unyielding than any paid group. They need no principal, because their interest is real. And in the House of Commons there were enough members to whom relinquishing territory was repugnant in any case. What arises from that looks from outside like steering and is agreement.

That is the more uncomfortable finding. Were there an arrangement, it could be exposed and stopped. Where none is needed, there is nothing to stop.

What stands in the files of the 1970s we do not know. They are partly released; who has gone through them is not known to us.

VI. Two legal principles, one outcome

Both sides invoke law in force, and both rightly.

Britain invokes the right of self-determination of peoples. The United Nations still list the islands as a non-self-governing territory, and those who live there have expressed themselves unmistakably.

Argentina invokes territorial integrity and the continental shelf. The relevant UN resolution of 1965 calls the case a dispute between two states — not a self-determination question. And today’s population is not the resident one but the transplanted: in 1833 the Argentine administration was expelled.

Both stand in the Charter of the United Nations. There is no superior instance to decide which principle prevails. The International Court of Justice could — but only if both sides submit, and Britain does not.

The dispute therefore stays open not because the legal position is unclear. It stays open because nobody who could bring about clarification wants it.

VII. A right that costs nothing

And here lies the core.

A principle whose application always yields the same result is no constraint. The islanders are of British origin, speak English, carry British passports and live off British fishing licences. That they want to remain British is not news.

Whoever settles a population and thereafter grants it the right of self-determination has fixed the outcome in advance.

That is no charge of insincerity against the inhabitants. They vote as anyone in their position would. It is an observation about the construction: a referendum under these conditions is a confirmation, not a choice.

By way of test: could the islanders decide for Argentina? Formally yes — and London would then be bound by its own principle. In practice it will never happen. A right that cannot turn against the one who invokes it costs nothing.

VIII. The control case: Chagos

There is a comparable case, and it lies with the same state in the same era.

On the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, Britain in the 1960s and 1970s removed the resident population in order to make Diego Garcia available as a military base. Of self-determination there was no mention. The International Court of Justice declared the continued administration unlawful in 2019; Britain has since undertaken to transfer sovereignty to Mauritius.

The same state, the same period, the opposite procedure. On the Falklands the population was consulted and its will elevated to the supreme principle. On the Chagos Islands it was removed.

The difference lies not in the law but in what the population wanted in each case — and whether that coincided with one’s own interests.

IX. What the oil changes

For forty-four years the dispute was cheap. Two positions that exclude one another but incur no cost: Argentina could raise the claim without having to enforce it; Britain could reject it without giving anything up. A conflict without an object can last forever.

From 2028 it has one. Oil in the South Atlantic is no symbol, and whoever does nothing loses something.

That is the moment at which it becomes apparent whether a conflict was being farmed or merely left unresolved. As long as there was nothing to be had, nobody needed an answer. Now everybody does.

X. The proposal

Since everything today is for sale, the procedure could be simplified. The islanders could hold an auction. Whoever bids most gets the affiliation.

The objection is obvious: one does not sell people. But that is precisely what the prevailing principle does not claim — it says the inhabitants decide freely. And if they decide freely, their decision may also carry a price.

Three things would come of it.

Argentina could not bid. Not out of poverty, but because a purchase would destroy its own argument. Whoever pays concedes that the thing belonged to the other. A claim to inheritance from Spain and unlawful occupation admits of no purchase price.

Britain would not need to bid. It has what there is to have, and invokes a right that confirms this outcome anyway.

And then there is a third party nobody invited.

For the thought is not invented. The American president publicly offered to buy Greenland — an island belonging to a NATO ally — and did not rule out other means. Washington’s traditionally pro-British position in the Falklands dispute is now under review; Buenos Aires has read that as a tailwind.

Whoever has bid for Greenland will hardly wave away an island group in the South Atlantic. And for him the attraction would be not only the oil but still more the position: the passage between the oceans, access to Antarctica, whose treaty regime comes up for review in 2048.

The precedent already stands in this text: Diego Garcia. It would not be the first time a British island became American — only, so far, without a purchase price.

And here lies the reason the third party wins: he is the only one with no legal claim that a purchase would devalue. Argentina founders on its self-binding, Britain on its own. Whoever has never raised a claim can pay without giving anything up.

XI. Who limits the bidders?

And here the thought breaks open.

For nobody can compel the islanders to limit the bidders. If the principle holds that the inhabitants decide freely, then they also decide freely whom they admit.

And then the list grows longer. China would have the means and a known interest in Antarctic research and fishing rights. Russia likewise, with the added attraction of a base in the South Atlantic. And then the states with no strategic interest but an economic one — sovereign wealth funds, for which an exclusive economic zone with oil would be an asset like a port or a football club.

All have the same freedom: they hold no legal claim that a purchase would devalue.

So it is not a market with one admitted buyer. It is a market nobody can limit.

XII. What remains

Once several can bid, it is no longer the law that determines whose the islands are, nor history, but solvency.

And the only one who then certainly does not win is the one with the oldest claim.

Where belonging becomes purchasable, every legal claim loses its value — not because it is refuted, but because in an auction it plays no part. Argentina has insisted on a right for two hundred years. In a sale that is not an argument but an impediment.

With that the circle closes. At the beginning stood a right of self-determination whose outcome was fixed because those voting had been settled there by the very power they were voting about. At the end stands a procedure whose outcome is equally fixed — only this time it is decided not by the origin of the voters but by the wealth of the bidders.

Both times the form is impeccable. Both times the result is known in advance.

And there is a reason this does not remain a thought experiment: with Greenland it has already been attempted.