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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, APRIL 16, 1982
PAGE 8
If the U.S. favors stability in the world it had best support
Brita in's duty to rescue its own people from an act of inter
national piracy. Besides, it would help hold the NATO alliance
together.
The Argentines signaled earlier this year, via "lea ks" to their own news
papers, that in view of stalemated negotiations with Britain over the
islands they might resort to force to recover the Malvinas, as they call
them. In that sense it is rather remarkable that the British were ca ught
napping, and did not have enough mi1itary presence in the islands to
forestall such an eventuality. Five years ago, the then British government
of Prime Minister James Callaghan feared a move by Argentina to take the
islands. Mr. Callaghan and his Foreign Secretary, David Owen, then ordered
three British frigates from the Mediterranean to the South Atlantic. The
immediate threat passed.
The Argentines also moved at this time knowing that the United States has
been counting on them to provide more anti-Communist support in the
Americas. The British are quite upset over Washington's middle-of-the-road
efforts to resolve the conf1ict.
After all, one side (Britain) is a
brother-, a close ally of the United States in both world wars, and a
supporter (sometimes a solitary one) of U.S. policies in recent days over
Afghanistan and Poland. Argentina, on the other hand, amounts to little
more than a recently hired "lover," a country of pro-Nazi sentiment in
World War II, ruled by a totalitarian milita ry junta hardly aspiring to the
same values as the U.S. and Britain. The April 10 issue of Brita in's THE
ECONOMIST editorialized:
Argentina took over the Falkland Islands by force, 500 miles from
its coast. Britain now has to challenge that ta keover...•This is
the way the dispute now has to go. To shrink will be to shrink:
to show that today democracies l'.'eally are lessable to defend
their interests--even the tiny ones, never mind the bigger ones
that matter more--than are authoritarian regimes. And thereby to
encourage bigger losses in the future than the Falklands today.
This is the issue.
As it did for Israel _when Egypt caught it by surprise in 1973,
America will have to offset Argentina's surprise attack by a tilt
towards Britain that brings both combatants back into diplomacy.
For America to lie low will only diminish, irrevoca bly, its
leverage with both. By lying low it would cede to Argentina, and
to other South Americans, the notion that their great northern
neighbour is powerless to hinder even their wildest actions.
Equally, for American inaction to cause Britain to lose the whole
dispute to Argentina would cede to those in Brita in and elsewhere
in Europe the notion that the leader of their North Atlantic
alli ance is a fair-weather ally.
Alliance a la carte is no
alliance:
that is the argument that America itself has been
trying to deploy aga inst European waywardness in the Middle East,
over Poland, over Afghanistan, over nuclear deployment and over
spending on defense••••
The dispute is going to test Brita in too••••A belief has crept
into all of Europe's democracies, save France, that you never
fight--not, at least, with guns and bombs and unpleasant things