bwaarp – stand easy, listen in. The British public don’t have to watch kill tv if they don’t want, and most don’t. I suspect that most civvies would be utterly appalled. However, footage of the boot necks or the boys from Hereford brassing up Argies will be on the 10 o’clock news, Fox, Sky, etc It’s not exactly the sort of publicity we need unless we want to join Israel, Syria and Iran on the list of pariah states. The Argentineans would love to provoke a tactical overreaction that will win them global sympathy, destroy the ‘special relationship’, and potentially lose the UK its seat on the P5. In fact, this is probably the most dangerous enemy COA. We need to pre-empt this and not fall into the trap.
The UK has not exactly been able to use its overwhelming military superiority to achieve its foreign policy objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The war in 1982 clearly didn’t provide a permanent solution to this problem either. We can do the smart thing and find a political outcome by negotiating while occupying the moral and legal high ground. We can do the dumb thing – under estimate the enemy and have to use brute force – and do it all again in 30 years time.
