offs of domestic politics, her clear-cut sense of righteousness was a mixed attribute – a source of strength up to a point, but also a weakness which narrowed her capacity for human sympathy. In war it was pure strength. It was the job of her colleagues in the War Cabinet to weigh the risks, and specifically the job of Pym as Foreign Secretary to pursue every diplomatic possibility of averting war – if only to keep world opinion on Britain’s side. As it happened, she was right to see from an early stage that there was no genuine compromise available. She recognised that General Galtieri could no more back down without winning the sovereignty of
Yet the fact remains that even she, with all her determination, still could not have retaken the islands if the Chiefs of Staff had not advised her that it was militarily possible, or if they had judged the risk too great. Theirs was the real responsibility. Mrs Thatcher’s role was to make and sustain the political judgement that if the military said it could be done, then it should be done. By the force of her own conviction she won and kept the backing of her Cabinet for her unswerving line. It is this judgement that colleagues doubted that any other modern Prime Minister, or potential alternative Prime Minister in 1982, would have made. In the event, she won her war and liberated the islands, with relatively little loss of life; and the victory was judged to have been worth the cost. Nevertheless the cost was high – 255 British lives; six ships sunk and others damaged; the huge cost of defending the islands for an indefinite future – and it could very easily have been much higher. The risk was never properly calculated in advance, and the Argentines should have inflicted much heavier damage than they did. It was in fact a very close-run thing. All the elements of the task force were operating at the extreme limits of their capacity, with virtually no margin for error; some units outside Stanley were down to their last six rounds of ammunition when the Argentine surrender came.14 The peacemakers were right to explore every possibility of averting Mrs Thatcher’s appalling gamble.
The diplomacy of war
As the task force steamed slowly south during April and early May, Mrs Thatcher’s position was very delicate, since she had to be seen to be willing to accept a reasonable settlement, if one could be negotiated, even though she was personally determined to agree to nothing less than the full recovery of British sovereignty over the islands. She recognised that she must keep the diplomatic option open in order to retain world and above all American opinion on Britain’s side – though she had difficulty understanding how the Americans could fail to support their most faithful ally against what seemed to her a clear-cut case of unprovoked aggression. In fact, the first instinct of the Reagan administration, which had taken office in Washington at the beginning of 1981, was to remain neutral. There was a strong lobby, most powerfully represented by the outspoken Ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, which considered the preservation of good relations with Latin America more important than pandering to British imperial nostalgia. President Reagan himself, bemused by the importance Mrs Thatcher attached to what he called ‘that little ice-cold bunch of land down there’, stated on 6 April that America was friends with both Britain and Argentina.15 It was on this basis, to Mrs Thatcher’s fury, that Secretary of State Alexander Haig set out to try to broker an even-handed settlement.
It was not, as is often assumed, Mrs Thatcher’s special relationship with Ronald Reagan which swung American sentiment in Britain’s favour over the next few weeks, but a brilliant exercise in old-fashioned diplomacy by two paladins of the despised Foreign Office – Sir Anthony Parsons, Britain’s Ambassador to the United Nations in New York, and Sir Nicholas Henderson, the British Ambassador in Washington. In addition, and crucially, the US Defense Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, accorded Britain on his own initiative vital military cooperation – the use of the US base on Ascension Island, with unlimited fuel and spares, accelerated purchase of Sidewinder missiles and access to American intelligence – long before the White House had officially come off the fence, and despite the fact that the US military viewed the attempt to retake the islands as ‘a futile and impossible effort’ which could not succeed.16 For this help beyond the call of duty Weinberger was awarded an honorary knighthood after the war.
Anthony Parsons pulled off an extraordinary coup, just one day after the invasion, by persuading the UN Security Council to pass a resolution (Resolution 502) condemning the Argentine action and calling for the withdrawal of the occupying troops pending a diplomatic solution. To obtain the necessary two-thirds majority – discounting the Communist and Latin nations – he had to twist the arms of Togo, Zaire, Uganda, Guyana and Jordan. He managed the first four, before calling in Mrs Thatcher to make a personal appeal by telephone to King Hussein. She succeeded. The Argentines had never imagined that Britain could mobilise the UN in support of an imperialist quarrel. As in Rhodesia, Mrs Thatcher would much rather have done without the involvement of the UN. But in the eyes of the world, Resolution 502 gave priceless legitimacy to Britain’s claim to be standing up for freedom, self-determination and international law. Over the next few days Nico Henderson toured the television studios of Washington projecting Britain’s cause to the American public. Most crucially, the French froze the export of Exocet missiles and spare parts for those they already had. Mrs Thatcher was always grateful for President Mitterrand’s prompt and unconditional support. Within a week of the invasion Galtieri and his junta – who had expected no more than token protests – found not only Britain in arms but most of the world arrayed against them.
This gratifying approval, however, was accorded on the assumption that Britain remained ready to negotiate. The six-week hiatus before the task force reached the South Atlantic allowed ample time for a peaceful settlement to be found as Al Haig shuttled back and forth between London and Buenos Aires. Even after hostilities had started, Reagan never ceased to beg her to accept a ceasefire. In fact Mrs Thatcher played an extraordinary lone hand against the entire foreign-policy establishment of both Britain and America to ensure that all their well- intentioned peace-mongering should not forestall the military victory which she was convinced was the only outcome Britain could accept. But she recognised that she would forfeit international support if she appeared inflexible.
Haig’s initial proposals provided for Argentine withdrawal from the islands followed by an interim joint administration while a permanent settlement was negotiated. Over the next two months numerous variations were spun on these three central ideas.Through all the comings and goings, however, Mrs Thatcher remained adamant on two points: first, that the occupying force must withdraw before anything else could be considered and second, that the wishes of the islanders in any eventual settlement must be ‘paramount’. But Galtieri and his colleagues were equally adamant that the islands were Argentine and they would not let go what they had seized without a guarantee of eventual sovereignty. Between these two sticking points there was no compromise. But thanks to Parsons’ diplomatic coup Mrs Thatcher had UN authority for her position. Resolution 502 not only called for Argentine withdrawal and guaranteed the right of self-determination; Article 51 of the UN Charter asserted the right of self-defence against aggression. So long as she showed a willingness to compromise on hypothetical details the Charter endorsed her essential demands.
At first she did not have too much difficulty holding her line. On 23 April, to her disgust, Pym bowed to intense American pressure and was persuaded to recommend a package which she described as ‘conditional surrender’.17‘I could not have stayed as Prime Minister had the War Cabinet accepted Francis Pym’s proposals,’ she wrote in her memoirs. ‘I would have resigned.’18 She averted that necessity, as she often did before crucial Cabinets, by squaring Willie Whitelaw in advance. As usual he did not let her down. Rather than send Pym back to Haig with a flat rejection, however, Nott proposed that they ask him to put his package to the Argentines first, in the expectation that they would reject it – as they duly did. ‘It was the Argentine invasion which started this crisis,’ she told the Commons, ‘and it is Argentine withdrawal that must put an end to it.’19 That was relatively easy. Next day came news of the recapture of South Georgia, and a few days later the US Government formally came out on Britain’s side, promising material and intelligence support. ‘We now have the total support of the United States,’ Mrs Thatcher announced, ‘which we would expect and which I think we always expected to have.’20
The next time round the track was much more difficult. On 2 May the British submarine
