I imagine the aftershock would have been worse than that of 1956. Presumably as the US had initially been against the operation. Could Britain have lapsed into despair and isolationism?
Effect on Argentianian victory in the Falkand's war on Britain's Global Standing?
- Thread starter Emperor Palpatine
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It depends on how such an outcome happens. I'm going to guess the Argentine aviation manages to mission kill either both carriers or enough supply ships for the ground offensive to become inviable. Let's say, Argentina has all the 35 Exocets it had originally ordered and at least half of them find their targets.
I don't think it would affect British prestige. After all, they would have been defeated by state of the art Western weapons, employed by a Western military and the quality of the British ground forces wouldn't have been in question.
It would end up with changes to naval construction and doctrine without any military or geopolitical consequences as NATO was not, in OTL, involved in any other war in which it's naval assets were really at risk.Thatcher wouldn't be reelected, but that's another matter.
I don't think it would affect British prestige. After all, they would have been defeated by state of the art Western weapons, employed by a Western military and the quality of the British ground forces wouldn't have been in question.
It would end up with changes to naval construction and doctrine without any military or geopolitical consequences as NATO was not, in OTL, involved in any other war in which it's naval assets were really at risk.Thatcher wouldn't be reelected, but that's another matter.
The idea of Michael Foot as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, with a resounding public mandate behind him due to Thatcherism going disastrously wrong (let's not forget what the economy was like at the time), is a fascinating one.
We'd certainly be out of the EEC (so Redwood, IDS, Boris & co. ought to thank him and curse Thatcher's name!), we'd have no nuclear weapons, the armed forces would probably be gutted on ideological grounds, we'd have a fully elected parliament with no House of Lords (which I don't think I would call a good thing), we'd keep the inefficient nationalised industries, we'd get plenty of new progressive taxes, we almost certainly wouldn't have our lamentable modern-day habit of using the armed forces which are supposed to be there to defend our country to randomly invade Muslim countries and get stuck in hopeless quagmires whenever the USA decides to do the same thing, the Conservative Party would probably conclude that its huge hard-right shift under Thatcher was an absolutely disastrous mistake and would go back to something more like Ted Heath… I'm nowhere near educated enough to understand the full breadth of the ramifications but it would make a great TL.
Oddly, though one can argue that the British would be a bizarre mixture of much worse off and much better off for losing, with how much of each depending on your political viewpoints, the Argentines would be much worse off for winning, because the junta would remain in power. It's hard to dispute that Galtieri was a horrible human being.
We'd certainly be out of the EEC (so Redwood, IDS, Boris & co. ought to thank him and curse Thatcher's name!), we'd have no nuclear weapons, the armed forces would probably be gutted on ideological grounds, we'd have a fully elected parliament with no House of Lords (which I don't think I would call a good thing), we'd keep the inefficient nationalised industries, we'd get plenty of new progressive taxes, we almost certainly wouldn't have our lamentable modern-day habit of using the armed forces which are supposed to be there to defend our country to randomly invade Muslim countries and get stuck in hopeless quagmires whenever the USA decides to do the same thing, the Conservative Party would probably conclude that its huge hard-right shift under Thatcher was an absolutely disastrous mistake and would go back to something more like Ted Heath… I'm nowhere near educated enough to understand the full breadth of the ramifications but it would make a great TL.
Oddly, though one can argue that the British would be a bizarre mixture of much worse off and much better off for losing, with how much of each depending on your political viewpoints, the Argentines would be much worse off for winning, because the junta would remain in power. It's hard to dispute that Galtieri was a horrible human being.
Admiral Beez
Banned
If that happens, Britain would double down, not cave. We may see a formal declaration of war by Britain, meaning every available SSN goes south to kipper everything in Argentine waters. So, while Illustrious is rushed for her June 1982 completion, Bulwark is reactivated (granted this will be a major operation, but if money and labour is no object, they'll get it done by June). Meanwhile, Britain makes every possible overture to Pinochet to bring Chile actively onside, leading to aviation access if not a base for Vulcan strikes.
There is no chance really of Argentine victory in the Falklands war, without ASBs. You're taking on one of the most powerful militaries in the world, led by one of Britain's most aggressive, action-oriented prime ministers, with one of the world's largest navies, with an trained and equipped army that cut its teeth in the Troubles, with SAS, Paras and Gurkhas ready to kill you, Perisher-commanded nuclear attack subs ready to kill all your maritime trade. Meanwhile your British-friendly neighbour hates you enough to go to war over the Beagle Channel.
If Argentina scores big and sinks the two carriers, it gets ugly not better for Galtieri. You can expect Australia and other friends to activity assist Britain as well, so Melbourne's CBG transits Panama and arrives at Ascension to meet Illustrious and Bulwark that June.
At first I thought Michael Foot would become prime minister and implement the longest suicide note in history too.
However, then I remembered that the SDP-Liberal Alliance was at the height of it's popularity before the Falklands. I'm old enough to remember David Steel saying at the 1981 Liberal Party Conference, "Go back to your constituencies and prepare for Government!"
Defeat in the Falklands doesn't just mean Mrs Thatcher has to resign, it probably means a general election in the second half of 1982. I think that people who would otherwise have voted Tory would vote for the Alliance in preference t the Labour Party. Therefore the result could have been David Owen as prime minister instead of Michael Foot. Unless the Tories could find a 1980s equivalent to Harold McMillan who replaced Anthony Eden after the Suez War and won the next general election.
I think you underestimate the turbulence of the political situation in the United Kingdom. Thatcher was not universally popular. Even in her own Cabinet—not even considering the Opposition—there were advocates of backing down.
If Thatcher's policy fails as disastrously as this, at a time when her economic policies are hugely unpopular and much of her own party is convinced she's a walking catastrophe, I can't see how anyone could seriously suppose that she'll somehow stay in power, unless there's some Magical Power of Monetarism. The Conservative Party is going to tell her "out, out, out" and there is going to be a different, 'wetter' Prime Minister.
{edit} Since I didn't see this when I started to post:
The thing is, it's not just the Falklands War which made Thatcher unpopular at the time. Unemployment was catastrophic, which is another reason for people not to vote Conservative. It's not easy for a major party to collapse utterly, so some people would still vote Conservative, and if there's a very great deal of vote-splitting, that will primarily help Labour.
Yours is certainly a fair point, and the idea of having the Conservatives collapse and Labour led by Michael Foot is probably the best-case scenario easily imaginable for the SDP, but the political system is so inherently opposed to third parties I'm not sure it's enough. One could argue it, though.
I think you really underestimate the feeling of the man in the street.
He wasn't interested in politics, he just wanted to knock the Argies down and give them a good kicking while they were there.
Losing a serious amount of naval units is the loss of a battle, not a defeat of the country. Britain is used to losing battles, the reaction is to double down and kick even more enemy ass.
Yes, the left wing chatterati would scream about enlarging the war, its unlikely that will get them very far. Thatcher will simply say its our duty to free the British inhabitants of the islands.
The only likely way for Argentina to win is for the USA to have an unremitting hatred for Britain. Given Reagan in power, and given what the result of Britain telling the US forces in the country to sod off would do to the US strategic power, this is ASB.
He wasn't interested in politics, he just wanted to knock the Argies down and give them a good kicking while they were there.
Losing a serious amount of naval units is the loss of a battle, not a defeat of the country. Britain is used to losing battles, the reaction is to double down and kick even more enemy ass.
Yes, the left wing chatterati would scream about enlarging the war, its unlikely that will get them very far. Thatcher will simply say its our duty to free the British inhabitants of the islands.
The only likely way for Argentina to win is for the USA to have an unremitting hatred for Britain. Given Reagan in power, and given what the result of Britain telling the US forces in the country to sod off would do to the US strategic power, this is ASB.
NamelesStatistic
Banned
The French President, Francois Mitterrand would later write that Thatcher threatened to nuke Argentina if he didn't give the British the codes to disable the Exocet missiles. I think this was obviously a bluff on the part of Thatcher (although the article suggests that Mitterrand genuinely believed the threat), but it does suggest that the British would be more likely to escalate the conflict if they faced serious losses, or at the very least lean hard on their NATO allies to press their case.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/22/books.france
Out of curiosity, is there any chance Thatcher would have dared use a similar sort of back-room threat on the US government at the time to try and strong-arm them into openly backing the UK and forcing the Argentinians to back down if the Argentinians were winning in this scenario? Even if this strategy worked it would have disastrous consequences for the UK (not the least because they are dependent on the US for its nuclear weapons).
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/22/books.france
Out of curiosity, is there any chance Thatcher would have dared use a similar sort of back-room threat on the US government at the time to try and strong-arm them into openly backing the UK and forcing the Argentinians to back down if the Argentinians were winning in this scenario? Even if this strategy worked it would have disastrous consequences for the UK (not the least because they are dependent on the US for its nuclear weapons).
So tell me: Thatcher, who suffered enough mutinous feeling among her Cabinet in OTL, has just suffered a military disaster in a war which plenty of people even in her own Cabinet thought she shouldn't have entered in the first place. At the same time, unemployment is horrific and she's in the middle of a major economic experiment which at the time looks like a total failure and hasn't yet reaped any rewards, and she's carrying out a radical and highly transformative agenda which plenty of people in her own party, the so-called 'wets', think is a terrible idea. And yet she stays in power… how?
It's hard to even imagine a more ideal situation for a leader to be toppled unless we are to invoke the proverbial dead girl and live boy.
Thatcher's hard line on the Falklands made her a great hero who persisted in spite of petty cowardice from her own side, after the fact. It could also have made her a fool who ignored the advice of her own side begging her not to do something stupid. One can easily imagine the Suez Crisis producing a crop of national heroes if it had gone the other way. That's the thing about big gambles: you either get rich or go bust.
RodentRevolution
Banned
You know I doubt those words ever crossed Mitterand's lips. One because anti-ship missiles do not work by some magic codes that you can turn them on and off from a distance. Two because the French were already taking a rather hard line against the idea of any of 'their' missiles being used on an ally and an EEC partner and were already doing their best to dicombobulate Argentine efforts to obtain more exocets. Thatcher would not have needed to threaten the French would have gladly shared such magic if it existed.
Ali Magoudi's main aim seems to have been to sell copies of his book, sticking to boring fact comes a distant umpteenth to that.
Other incidental evidence against the British needing to ask for any codes was they already used exocets themselves and thus were familiar with the likely range of frequencies the radar of the missiles would employ.
As for a threat the British might employ against the US? "If our Navy gets wiped out in the South Atlantic who is going to help you hunt Soviet subs?" Again though it is an unlikely point to need to be actually raised.
"Someone not fucked by a third rate latino power,you embarassment for the anglosphere" would be a good answer i guess
I'm not sure that this argument would have been accepted by the Americans as the British Government was voluntarily cutting the Royal Navy by a third under the 1981 Defence Review.
"Someone not fucked by a third rate latino power,you embarassment for the anglosphere" would be a good answer i guess
....the hell is this supposed to even imply?
Argentina was certainly no world power, but they were very clearly a regional power.
RodentRevolution
Banned
"Someone not fucked by a third rate latino power,you embarassment for the anglosphere" would be a good answer i guess
Well one assumes the point at which discussions were conducted as to what amount of help should be offered the British would, in much the same way as OTL, be conducted before the RN was entirely submerged
I can see the possibility of Britain losing. It was in the throes of really quite silly and utterly swingeing defence cuts and so matters in the South Atlantic were in some ways quite dicey and there were not the normal reserves of power to send if the first waves failed.
That said you do rather need to boost the Argentines a lot not just in luck but in terms of skill to exploit that luck and keep up a performance when the British did try round two for although I suspect the British second effort would be much reduced over the first the Argentines had not exactly prepared their long war fighting capabilities.
One joke that does the rounds in Argentina is that these days their Army could resist Paraguay for about thirty-six hours before running out of ammunition and having to surrender. The really scary thing is that Junta despite clinging to power based on its armed forces did not actually treat them as much better as military force than a succession of civilian governments who do not trust them. So while the thirty-six hours thing is an exaggeration it was then much less of an exaggeration than it ought to be.
Now if the British were somehow incompetent or unlucky or a combination of both combined with never evinced levels of Argentinian military competence that did result in their defeat... say the British really did need to go with round two or task force three and the Argentines really had prepared to keep up the tempo of ops longer than a couple of weeks...well Britain would have likely suffered a huge loss of confidence out of all proportion to the defeat and to be frank NATO would be shaken too.
Oddly, I think the result would be more likely to have been a Britain that is more internationalist than ever before as its faith in its status as a great power is decisively broken once and for all.
Michael Foot may have been leader of the Labour Party at the time, but by this point the Labour party looked less electable than ever before. Besides, if the Falklands were lost, Thatcher would probably be kicked out by her own party, and she would likely be replaced by a more moderate figure as her radicalism had been discredited. Given the state the Labour party was in, its not impossible the Conservatives could hold onto power next term. Even if they didnt, the SDP/Liberal Alliance was a bigger threat at this time to them, at least in terms of how many votes they could fetch.
So I would foresee three scenarios
1. The Tories remain in charge, but with a more moderate leader
2. The SDP-Liberal Alliance lead the next government, its difficult, but not impossible, they would need a 10% lead over the other two parties to actually be in with a shout of being the largest party, which to be fair to them, they were averaging at the height of there popularity a few months before the Falklands.
3. The Alliance and the Tories (either way around) end up neck and neck for first in the popular vote, with Labour third by 5 points or so, but the screwed up way FPTP works means that they fluke being the largest party in a hung parliament, in which circumstances, maybe Foot becomes PM, but not without being considerably moderated by his coalition partner
Given that One Nation Tories and the Alliance were Eurofanatics at this point, I'd think the first two options would see a Britain that is more integrated in Europe, and is part of the Euro, whilst in the third Labour would be heavily influenced by one of those two to the point where its more radical foreign policy would not see the light of day.
Argentina sinking all 60 frigates and destroyers is ASB. The British Government would have given up before losses had reached 20 ships and the Argentine armed forces weren't capable of wiping out the entire surface fleet.
RodentRevolution
Banned
See you own statement actually answers the question of whether the British would have given up at just twenty lost ships. I would expect based on what I recall of the time, what I know of the players in the Conservative Party at the time and what I have learned since that both Astrodragon and Perfidious Albion are somewhat right. Thatcher would have been toppled if results went badly but then whomever succeeded her or more likely whomever wanted to succeed her would have been committed to not looking like the person who called it quits on fighting fascism (which is how the Junta were seen within mere days of the whole thing starting, to the British they had become the very archetype of the unacceptable face of South American militarism).
Since the Argentines had real capacity problems in facing the British then the British would have been very tempted indeed to go into big casualties territory.