TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/82/82win

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                                                                                June 28, 1982 

WORLD

And Now, to Win the Peace

Thatcher exults, Galtieri falls and Reagan faces Latin anger


"Today has put the Great back in Britain."  So said an exultant
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher last week as she greeted the
euphoric crowd that had gathered outside 10 Downing Street,
cheering and singing Rule Britannia, to celebrate Britain's
victory in the ten- week war for the Falkland Islands. An
emotional Thatcher shook hand after hand, and declared, "This
is a great vindication of everything that we thought was right.
What a night this has been for Britain! What a wonderful
victory!"

So it was. But hardly had the white flags of surrender been
hoisted over the island capital of Port Stanley when a set of
new, potentially more formidable problems emerged. Three days
after Britain's triumph, Argentina's top generals ousted
President Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri. He was temporarily
replaced as President by yet another general, Interior Minister
Alfredo Oscar Saint Jean, and as army chief by Major General
Cristino Nicolaides. Said Galtieri, following his removal from
power:  "I am going because the army did not give me the
political support to continue."  In fact, Galtieri's fall may
have been hastened by crowds of a very different sort from those
that greeted Thatcher. Frustrated and angry at their country's
defat, some 5,000 Argentines had gathered in the Plaza de Mayo
in central Buenos Aires, throwing coins at the President's
palace to symbolize a "sellout" surrender, and chanting."
Galtieri to the wall!"  It was one of the worse displays of
public discontent since 1976. For those who experienced the
chaos of that earlier, turbulent era, the demonstration was a
reminder of the volatility that has marred so much of
Argentina's history, and once led to the kind of nationalistic
populism that was the hallmark of the late dictator Juan Domingo
Peron.

At week's end Argentina's leaders still refused to admit
military defeat. Clinging to the position that had doomed all
efforts at a negotiated settlement before the guns were
unleashed in the South Atlantic, the Argentines insisted that
their claim to sovereignty over the Falklands to be negotiated
as part of any settlement. Buenos Aires warned that any
cease-fire in the Falklands would be "precarious" so long as
British forces remained on the islands. While the Argentines
seemed willing to suspend hostilities for the moment, they left
open the possibility of further fighting. If the fragile
cease-fire broke down, the conflict could easily escalate into
a new and possibly even more violent confrontation, since the
British have not ruled out the possibility of answering
additional attacks with the bombing of Argentine airbases and
the mining of Argentine harbors.

Britain's hard-won victory, paradoxically, added to the woes of
a U.S. Administration preoccupied with the new conflict in the
Middle East. Some Latin Americans, and especially Argentines,
were blaming Washington more severely than London for the
Falklands debacle. They claimed that Britain had won only
because it had received extensive support from the U.S., notably
in the form of sophisticated, high- tech weapons--a view that
was promptly dismissed in London and Washington. Latin American
bitterness was already beginning to undermine U.S. efforts to
create a non-Communist consensus in the Western Hemisphere, and,
in the long run, might offer significant opportunities to the
Soviet Union. Officials in Washington were deeply concerned that
U.S. relations with all of Latin America would be severely
harmed unless, as Secretary of State Alexander Haig has put it,
Thatcher was "magnanimous" in victory.

But with Britain's loss of 255 lives in the recapture of the
Falklands, Thatcher was in no mood to compromise. She insisted
that Britain would "uphold its commitment to the security of the
islands, if necessary, alone."  Brushing aside suggestions that
the Falklands be handed over to some form of international
administration, such as a United Nations trusteeship, the Prime
Minister said, "I cannot agree that [British troops] risked
their lives in any way to have a United Nations trusteeship.
They risked their lives to defend British sovereign territory,
the British way of life and the rights of British people to
determine their own future."  Thatcher announced that Rex Hunt,
the islands' former governor, would return to Port Stanley as
"civil commissioner" to administer the territory with the
victorious British field commander, Major General John Jeremy
Moore.

Moore's victory in the final battle for Port Stanley came with
unexpected swiftness. British troops, who had been poised atop
Mount Kent, ten miles outside the capital, began closing in on
the Argentine garrison that had formed a defensive horseshoe
around Port Stanley. The combat was fierce. Said Moore:  "It was
a bloody battle, with hand-to-hand fighting. It was fighting
with bayonets in the end."  The British advance was punctuated
by a heavy Royal Navy bombardment of the last Argentine
positions on the heights outside the Falklands capital. The
combination of artillery pounding and determined British
pressure on the ground was too much for the Argentines.
Suddenly, they broke and ran. Said British Journalist Max
Hastings, who traveled with the attacking troops:  "I think
their soldiers had simply decided that they had had enough. The
Argentine generals had to recognize that their men no longer had
the will to carry on the fight."

From their commanding positions, the British could see hundreds
of Argentine soldiers streaming back into Port Stanley. Within
hours, the Argentine commander, General Mario Benjamin Menendez,
was in contact with General Moore, offering a temporary
cease-fire. Moore, agreed to talk, ordering his troops to hold
their fire unless attacked. The rival commanders met in a
government building in the center of Port Stanley. There,
Menendez agreed to capitulate. Said Moore:  "I feel absolutely
great. Now, happily, the killing stops."

Menendez made only one significant change in the four-paragraph
surrender document presented to him by the British. Apparently
mindful of his superiors' threat to continue the war, he crossed
out the word "unconditionally" to describe his capitulation.
According to Moore, Menendez also gave his personal assurances
that there would be no further attacks from Argentina on the
British forces in the Falklands.

Moore immediately radioed the good news to London. Said he:
"The Falkland Islands are once more under the government desired
by their inhabitants. God save the Queen."  Then the British
commander strolled down the main street of Port Stanley to meet
some of the 600 residents who had stayed in the settlement
during the final assault. At the West Store, a large, barnlike
emporium, a crowd of about 125 Falklanders gave the general a
huge cheer of welcome. Responded the British commander:  "I'm
sorry it took us three weeks to get here." Whereupon the kelpers
lifted Moore onto their shoulders and sang For He's a Jolly Good
Fellow.

Even before the surrender, Journalist Hastings, who was waiting
on the outskirts of the capital along with members of the
Parachute Regiment, had changed his military fatigues for
civilian clothes and set off alone toward the capital. Waving
a white handkerchief high over his head, he talked his way past
Argentine guards. Then Hastings encountered "hundreds, maybe
thousands, of Argentine troops milling around, marching in
columns through the streets, some of them clutching very badly
wounded men and looking completely like an army in defeat with
blankets wrapped around themselves."

Amid the detritus of war left by the Argentines were a few
surprises. One was a plentiful supply of ammunition, indicating
that the British air and sea blockade of the Falklands had been
less successful than claimed by London's Defense Ministry.
Despite repeated bombing attacks on the Port Stanley airport,
Argentine C-130 Hercules transport aircraft had managed to land
on the pockmarked 4,000-ft.- long strip, delivering supplies to
the garrison. In addition, it was learned the Argentines had
sneaked a ship, the Formosa, through Britain's naval blockade.

The British also reportedly discovered packing crates for a
land- based version of the French-built Exocet missiles that had
sunk the British destroyer H.M.S. Sheffield and the cargo vessel
Atlantic Conveyor. The Argentines had used the land-based
Exocets against the British light cruiser H.M.S. Glamorgan,
killing 13 Royal Navy crewmen and injuring 17 others, during the
climactic shelling of Port Stanley.

The biggest shock of all for the British was coping with the
number of Argentine soldiers ashore in the Falklands. By
preliminary estimate, there were some 11,000, including the
garrison on neighboring West Falkland. Hard pressed to supply
their own troops, the British were overwhelmed by the flood of
P.O.W.s, who patiently handed over their arms and then awaited
aid. Said a worried Rear Admiral John ("Sandy") Woodward:  "They
are already suffering from malnutrition, exposure, trench foot,
scabies and diarrhea, brought on by lack of food and pure water,
proper clothing, shelter and sanitation. Even feeding them for
a week presents huge problems."

At week's end London and Buenos Aires agreed on the return os
most of the P.O.W.s to Argentina, and two British ships left the
Falklands carrying nearly 6,000 Argentines home. But British
officials declared that about 1,000 selected prisoners, most of
them officers and commanders, would be held in response to
Argentina's refusal to accept an unconditional end to the
Falklands hostilities.

Argentina's leaders had only belatedly prepared the country's
population for the impending defeat. Upon getting news of the
surrender, knots of angry Argentines gathered on the Plaza de
Mayo in front of the country's presidential Casa Rosada to hear
a scheduled balcony speech by Galtieri. As evening fell, the
mood of the crowd turned ugly. "They lied to us," said a
student. "We went to war with our hearts full, and now they are
empty."  Said an airplane mechanic:  "We have been cheated, and
our young conscripts have died for nothing."  Finally riot
police armed with shotguns and tear-gas launchers moved in on
the crowd, firing rubber bullets and canisters of the
eye-stinging gas. The mob scattered, setting fire to garbage
cans and vehicles on side streets. The unrest continued for
several hours. Galtieri never did come out on the balcony. He
confined his oration to a twelve-minute television address in
which he maintained that Argentina had lost a battle but not the
war.

The next night, Argentina's army commanders convened in their
Buenos Aires headquarters. During the heated midnight-to-6 a.m.
meeting with his top 14 generals, Galtieri insisted on pursuing
the war with Britain as if Argentina still had something left
to right with. When the others demurred, Galtieri offered to
resign. "O.K.," he said, "I can't count on the army."  With
that, he retired to Campo de Mayo, the sprawling barracks of the
First Army Corps on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. There he
remained until the head of the army's general staff, Jose
Antonio Vaquero, brought word that Galtieri's "voluntary
resignation" had been accepted.

Few Argentines appeared to miss their deposed leader,who had
been President only since December. Said the English-language
Buenos Aires Herald:  "Galtieri lasted not quite six months and
managed to plunge the nation into a farcical war which
besmirched the honor of the military."  Proclaimed a prominent
businessman:  "He should be hung. No, drawn and quartered. No,
it is better to let him live with his dishonor, 24 ours a day
for the rest of his life."  That outraged judgment seemed far
from fair in a country that has been teaching its children for
more than a century that the Malvinas, as the islands are known
in Latin America, are Argentine. Says Jose Dumas, a business
consultant:  "It was the junta as a whole that made the
decisions. Galtieri is the sacrificial lamb."

For the time being, Galtieri's powers were divided between two
generals. Major General Alfredo Oscar Saint-Jean was appointed
President, but only temporarily. More significant perhaps was
the announcement that Major General Cristino Nicolaides, a close
Galtieri friend and protege, would be the army's new commander
in chief. That automatically made the tough anti-Communist and
right-wing nationalist a member of the junta. His promotion does
not augur well for a return to civilian rule in Argentina.

In the immediate future, the greatest danger for Argentina is
that it will continue its obsession with the Falklands, while
neglecting its political and economic stability. As the Buenos
Aires Herald said last week, "It is time to get down to the
serious business of building the kind of strong, stable,
democratic nation Argentina could be and to leave behind forever
the embarrassing stigma of the underdeveloped world where power
struggles and stagnation are the order of the day."  The economy
is in even worse condition than when the war began. Inflation
stands at 140% and unemployment at 13%. The worse possible
outcome for the country might be a return to the intensely
nationalistic and ultimately destructive economic policies that
were repeatedly tried under the banner of Peronism between the
1940s and 1976.

Those concerns were far from the minds of the war's victors. In
London, Prime Minister Thatcher's announcement to the House of
Commons that Argentina had surrendered drew a thunderous cheer
from all political parties--and her first smile in the Commons
since the Falklands crisis began. From his front-bench seat on
the opposite side of the parliamentary chamber, Labor Party
Leader Michael Foot rose to tender his congratulations. Said he:
 "Perhaps there will be arguments about the origins of this
matter and other questions, [but] I can understand that at this
moment the anxieties and pressures may have been relived, and
I congratulate [Thatcher] on that."

One of the few notes of recrimination in the Commons was sounded
the following day by Radical Labor M.P. Tony Benn, who demanded
a full analysis of the "costs in life, equipment and money in
this tragic and unnecessary war, which the world knows very well
will not provide an answer to the problem of the future of the
Falkland Island." Thatcher's reply:  "He [Benn] called it an
unnecessary war. Tragic it may have been, but he would not enjoy
the kind of freedom of speech which he puts to such excellent
use unless people had been prepared to fight for it."

In the flush of victory, Thatcher might imagine that she could
be disdainful of opposition attacks. Last week a British Gallup
poll put her public approval rating at 51%, 17 points higher
than before the Falklands crisis began. Fully 64% of Britons
polled said that the handling of the Falklands crisis had made
them feel more favorable toward the government. Approval for
Opposition Leader Foot, meanwhile, stood at a mere 14%.

But Thatcher's triumphal moment is unlikely to last. Two
parliamentary investigations have been ordered into the conduct
of the Falklands war. The first will examine the handling of
earlier negotiations with Argentina for the island. Many Labor
M.P.s have been claiming that the Thatcher government misread
Argentina's intention to invade. The other investigation will
focus on the British Defense Ministry's censorship of
information from the South Atlantic. Other questions are bound
to arise, including Britain's decision to prune its conventional
navy in favor of a strategic, submarine-based nuclear strike
force, and the ultimate cost of Prime Minister Thatcher's
determination to defend the Falklands.

Thatcher's commitment to British sovereignty and institutions
in the Falklands has steadily hardened during the war. For the
1,800 Falklanders, she now favors a form of self-government just
short of independence. In effect, the Falklands would cease to
be a British colony and become a protectorate of the British
Crown. Queen Elizabeth II would be represented by a High
Commissioner with responsibility for defense and foreign
affairs, who would govern with a six-member executive committee
drawn from an elected legislative assembly of 20 to 30 members.

Thatcher still hopes to ensure the security of the Falklands
with a multinational military force that might include troops
from the U.S., Jamaica and Brazil. As an additional guarantee
of the islands' security, she may even invite certain countries
to station diplomatic representatives in Port Stanley. Though
Thatcher refuses to budge on the issue of British sovereignty,
Whitehall hopes that at some future date the Falklands will
become a de facto multinational protectorate. But if Thatcher
is unsuccessful in obtaining international guarantees for the
islands' status, she is prepared to defend them by leaving 3,000
troops and major elements of Britain's naval task force in the
South Atlantic.

The Prime Minister's attitude reflects not only her own
hardheaded views but a phenomenon that is new for postwar
Britain:  an upsurge of nationalism similar to what France
experienced in the 1960s under President Charles de Gaulle. Said
a member of Thatcher's War Cabinet:  "In the Falklands, Britain
regained her self-respect, and in the process a new
determination to play a major role in world affairs."  That
change could have broad implications. As Malcolm Rutherford,
assistant editor of London's Financial Times, put it, Britain
could "become more demanding toward Europe, less tolerant of the
Irish Republic and generally a more awkward ally, taking a
pride in British cussedness rather as the French took pride in
being different under DeGaulle."

Although Thatcher's Western European allies supported her
decision to regain the Falklands, they share the U.S. view that
Britain must now show the flexibility to find a long-term
solution that will avoid another war in the South Atlantic. Says
a French Foreign Ministry spokesman:  "Talk of turning the
islands into a kind of aircraft carrier is not the answer."
Similarly, West Germany is anxious to lift the economic
sanctions that were leveled against Argentina at the beginning
of the crisis. Belgian Foreign Minister Leo Tindemans noted that
the main purpose of the sanctions was to bring pressure on
Argentina to negotiate over the Falklands. Whether the
sanctions remain in force, he added, "depends on whether action
for peace develops."

Britain's next moves will be watched throughout Latin America,
where many countries have charged the U.S. with violating the
1947 Rio Treaty by supporting a European "aggressor" in the
hemisphere. Yet despite the anti-U.S. sentiments, Argentina's
Latin neighbors have taken widely differing positions on the
Falklands war. Colombia, South America's largest democracy,
opposed the use of force to seize the island. Says Colombia's
Interior Minister, Jorge Mario Eastman: "Argentina's defeat is
a triumph for the [view] that international disputes must be
resolved through legal procedures and not aggression."

The most powerful Latin countries in the hemisphere, Brazil and
Mexico, have carefully maintained support for the principle of
Argentine sovereignty over the Falklands but without endorsing
the invasion that precipitated the South Atlantic war. Some of
the smaller Latin countries have been positively relieved by
Argentina's defeat. One example is Belize, which is claimed by
neighboring Guatemala. Protected by an 1,800-man British
garrison, Belizeans saw the Falklands war as a dry run of their
ability to survive as an independent nation.

In Chile, officials regarded the Falklands ware with foreboding
from the start. Chile and Argentina almost went to war in 1978
over three tiny and barren islands in the remote Beagle Channel
at the southern tip of the continent. Many Chileans are
convinced that Argentina's assault on the Falklands was part of
a broader plan that also included a takeover of the Beagle
Channel islands. But Chileans have not been heartened by
Argentina's defeat. They are worried that Buenos Aires will lash
out in their direction as a kind of psychological compensation.
Says an official in Santiago:  "The situation is very
dangerous."

In fact, support for Argentina's invasion of the Falklands has
come from only a handful of Latin American countries. Chief
among them are Peru, a traditional Argentine ally on the South
American continent; Ecuador, which smarts from the loss of more
than 70,000 sq. mi. of territory to Peru in various wars;
Bolivia, which lost a Pacific coastline to Chile a century ago;
and above all, democratic Venezuela, which claims about half of
neighboring Guyana's territory. In an interview with TIME's
Carribbean bureau chief William McWhirter, Venezuelan President
Luis Herrera Campins warned that the U.S. "would have to bear
the brunt of all the feelings of anticolonialism now rising
across Latin America" as a result of U.S. support for Britain
in the Falklands war. Said Herrera Campins: "The U.S. has
probably never taken a greater risk in its international
relations. We never thought that the U.S. would take an active
part in a war against Latin America in this part of the 20th
century."

The U.S. Administration has opted for a balancing act that
combines strong public declarations of support for Thatcher with
delicate hints that the U.S. would prefer negotiations. "The
President fully supports Mrs. Thatcher, not as a matter of
national bias but as a matter of principle," Secretary of State
Haig said in New York City Friday. He added:  "It remains to be
seen if a framework can be put together to remove the pervasive
animosities that will continue if this is improperly managed."

Since the current mood in Britain is not likely to lead to
negotiations soon, the wisest course for the U.S. might be to
address demands that Latin Americans have been making for
decades:  more economic aid from the U.S. and freer access to
U.S. markets. Says former CIA Director William Colby:  "There
is nothing terribly new in Americans choosing their European
friends over their Latin friends. But Latin Americans will look
to their own economic interests first." Says Robert Wesson of
the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace:  "There is
little to be done but say 'sorry about this' and then go on to
increase trade, build a new life, so to speak, after the
Falklands."

But for the time being there was no easy way to patch the
breach opened by the lamentable Falklands war. As long as
emotions remained a guiding force both in Britain and in
Argentina, the only U.S. option, in the words of a State
Department official, was "quiet encouragement."  The best hope
was that time would heal the wounds opened so brutally, that a
rational appraisal of each country's best long-term interests
would eventually prevail, and that the hard-won peace would not
unravel.


Special Section

Just How Much Did the U.S. Help?

The Argentina military establishment had no trouble last week
explaining why Britain was able to recapture the Falklands:
massive U.S. military assistance. Despite the Reagan
Administration's declaration of support for Britain, Argentina's
accusation is based much more on diplomatic posturing than fact.
British officials emphatically point out that almost all the
assistance made available to Britain by the U.S. was the result
of longstanding agreements within NATO. Whitehall officials say
that at least 90% of the equipment used in the Falklands was
British. "All these claims that U.S. technology won the
Falklands war for Britain are nonsense," says a senior British
official. "It played a part, and we are very grateful for that,
but it was not the decisive element in our victory."  Included
in the military aid that the U.S. did supply:

Fuel. As part of a routine agreement, the U.S. sent 1.5 million
gal. of aviation fuel to the joint U.S.-British airbase at
Ascension Island. It also made KC-135 aerial tankers available
to Britain, but these were never sent to the South Atlantic.
Instead, the Royal Air Force used its own KC-135s for midair
refueling of Vulcan bombers making the 3,800-mile trip from
Ascension to the Falklands, while U.S. planes in Europe were
reassigned to British NATO duties.

Ammunition. The U.S. sold Britain an unspecified quantity of
20-mm shells and supplied sonar-equipped buoys for use in
antisubmarine warfare. Washington officials will not say if any
of this equipment was ever used on the islands.

Missiles. The U.S. sold Britain about 100 AIM-9L Sidewinder
missiles (for $48,000 apiece). Of 27 Sidewinders fired by
Harriers during the war, 23 scored hits. These, however, were
most probably British missiles; the U.S.-supplied Sidewinders
were apparently used only to replenish inventories in Britain.
Also supplied were highly effective laser target indicators for
British ground forces and a radar system for the Royal Navy's
Seawolf surface-to-air missiles.

Intelligence and Communications. As a NATO ally, Britain always
had regular access to the U.S.-built Defense Satellite
Communications System, which relays encrypted messages around
the world. Routine information from U.S. meteorological
satellites was also available, although their effectiveness was
severely limited by bad weather over the South Atlantic.

By no means did London get everything it wanted. Lacking an
effective airborne early-warning system to protect its naval
task force from surprise air attacks, the British asked to
borrow an undisclosed number of U.S. AWACS. Washington refused
on the grounds that American servicemen, who would be necessary
to main the aircraft, should not become involved in the
conflict.

Ironically, the most impressive weapon in the war came from
Argentina's arsenal:  the French-built Exocet missiles, which
sank the H.M.S. Sheffield. And in the final analysis, military
experts agree, Argentina was defeated not by sophisticated
weaponry but by the superior training, tactics and morale of the
British forces.

--By George Russell. Reported by Bonnie Angelo/London and Gavin
Scott/Buenos Aires