Post by Johnmcd on May 8, 2005 8:23:39 GMT -3
The Future of Falklands Islands
British attention on the Falklands Islands will no doubt magnify with the 25th Anniversary of the Falklands Conflict in 2007. This will be a time where Parliament together the people of the United Kingdom will catch up on the development of the islands, how they live, how they are governed and how they might see the next 25 years unfurl. I imagine the British people will again be surprised, as we were in 1982, to learn that Britain still has actually ‘overseas territories’ headed by UK appointed decision making Governors with the islanders simply governing their own social and economic affairs leaving foreign political issues to a far away land owner. We might think, in our surprise, that the last ‘Governor’ was Chris Patten who left Hong Kong in1997. Again, we will learn and be surprised that their nearest neighbour, Argentina, still claims the islands despite the military defeat of 1982 - this time not as a military governed nation but as a maturing democracy. We will of course ask ‘why?’ and seek to discover why this sovereignty dispute has such longevity with no reasonable expectation of resolution.
The British, in 2007, will, I am sure, be given many reiterated references from those closely associated with islands, both from the political side and military side and we will notice the uniqueness of the islands; this piece of ‘Hebridean’ Britain that is so far away. Maybe we will be reminded of our colonial past that is still active today as it was when empire meant a red covered atlas of the world. “The Falklands Islands” means the colony of the Falklands Islands as explained on page 1 of the islands own constitution. We might also learn that the self -determining will of Falklands, just like that of Gibraltar and the other remaining British Overseas Territories cannot be over ruled if it is deemed by their own tiny electorate to be against their express wishes. So we will learn that our freely elected Parliament must abide by those wishes, no matter how contentious they may be to the development of our own wishes - where our international interests might be best served. This, we will discover, is the nepotic result of post empire Britain, long gone, and hardly reflective of modern British politics in the 21st Century, but a reality none the less.
In my own association with the islands stemming back to the conflict when I served with the Royal Navy, against the invading Argentine forces, I have continually wondered why the islands, effectively self-governing since 1983, have not gone coherently independent from the UK and voted for their own First Minister to replace the appointed Governor; more so since they have complete ownership of all their own natural resources, dictate immigration and, since 1985 enjoy their own constitution. (The Falklands constitution is very impressive and states in its opening chapter: …“all peoples have the right to self-determination and by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development and may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations…”)
Dr. Lyubomir Ivanov, an exceptional mind on the SW Atlantic, and once an active Falklands - Malvinas forum contributor, recognised that the islands could not go on forever holding onto the UK where need required while conducting ambitious efforts to define its own distinct place in the SW Atlantic. Lyubo’s own paper on the Future of the Islands makes very interesting reading, if, I may state reather one sided:
www.falklands-malvinas.com/Lyubospaper
2007 will also see revived interest from Argentina. This time a new generation of Argentineans, born into democracy and free from military rule, may be more ambitious to challenge the destructive influence of past imposed national governments to generate a more enlightened effort to direct Argentina away from memories of murder, deceit, torture, oppression and tyranny. The ‘Malvinas’ may also be placed into this same context. 2007 will not then be an anniversary remembered as a euphoric national moment when Argentina took back what was always ‘rightly’ theirs, but a time when a failing fascist government used violence against a small, largely undefended community, that was never a threat to anything Argentine.
The present Argentine government still pursues policies of national claim before peaceful coexistence; heard most acutely by the islands community even today - denying the islanders no open door to share their unique culture and robust economic venture with the mainland. Direct ‘head to head’ political participation and even competition would be far more acceptable than hard territorial demand. Why Argentina does not encourage direct links to engage in commonalities with islands, beyond the ground breaking 1999 Joint Agreement, is a question that begs to be answered. Relationships where communities border, in this instance a 400 mile sea stretch, must surely consider a willing integration based on:
Free Trade
Customs Union
Common Market
Economic Union
It seems that the Falklands already have this type of relationship with Chile under development but still feel nothing but threatened by Argentina.
For the Falklands to engage with Argentina and Argentina with the islands will need imaginative, if not visionary diplomacy, of the type once pioneered by Guido De Tella. He had his critics but no one can really deny that he tried. However, I’m not naïve enough to realise that this will require the Falklands Islands Government taking whole control of joint Island/Argentine relationships rather than the useless Anglo/Argentine interface where the islands are concerned. The islands are already able to do this under their own constitution and need no approval from the UK before doing so. (as if they ever did!) So while Argentina can be so easily criticised - so then can the islands own elected Government.
Looking further ahead
The ’us’ versus them tendency rooted in the over hanging sovereignty claim is to be dismissed as redundant when we consider the next 25 years. Those years might see the further expansion of the EU economic process with Brazil and Argentina. Here we consider that Argentina’s biggest trading partner is Brazil and not the US as once was before and now linked into Mercosur with variable success together with other S. American pacts that includes Venezuela and Colombia. The islands might well exist in a future as an isolated peripheral EU outpost, but challenged to act as part of a larger economic process that out grows existing profitable internal venture. We should consider that the islands are a facility based economy and as such must trade where partnership and buyer takes them. Oil is much mentioned in the Falklands but any economic strategist will warn that oil is a 20th century phenomenon and will be replaced to be become as cheap as Polish coal is today. It is of course possible for the Falklands oil basins to emerge becoming a ‘southern Venezuela‘, but it is hard to see where the billions of dollars will come from to extract this oil in profitable amounts. Take the example of North Sea oil and the huge support industry required just to get the resource ashore. Will it be worth it since no short term gain can be guaranteed for long term economies that are shifting into 5th generation industry.? No matter, Argentina will be keen to maximise this resource which lies on their door step too and co-operation with the islands is a certainty and consultations do take place to ensure a co-ordinated approach is made regardless of the sovereignty issue.
The next 27 years will demand more from the existing framework that the Falkland Islands Government is presently able to provide. Politically, the islands must move on. The islands democratic deficit will need to be addressed. Failure on this front will expose the islands as blatantly hanging on to a ‘status quo’ with a government more interested in supporting an oligarchy rather than advocating further democratic appeal. The British Parliament cannot go on forever under writing this while keeping relationships with Argentina fresh. The answer is quite clear. The Falklands will be required, in the years to come, to chance independence as a past British colony no different from Australia, New Zealand or Canada and certainly no different from Gibraltar.
Gibraltar, as many will be aware, has now effectively entered into the Southern Spanish economy, through common economic union, and all sides have agreed to put the sovereignty dispute to one side because it is in their national interests to do so.
Argentina might well consider that the Gibraltar way is far more advantageous than banging a drum that no one, even in the international community, listens to anymore. This doesn’t mean that Argentina need lift their sovereignty claim over the islands but it should mean a prepared willingness to shelve the claim and allow the normal diplomatic process to develop - normally. In the same breath the islands will consider the advantages to be gained by not complaining of threat and see the day when the Mount Pleasant military complex and airport are civilianised to accept long haul flights from all parts of S America and the world.
2007 will be a date to look forward to. Perhaps a time of resurgent Argentine island relationships with a 400 mile ‘bridge’ that crosses the divide of a past created in another time that has no relevance today. I personally look forward to being on the islands in 2007 and I hope I will be able to meet many of the Argentine conflict veterans there too.
Best wishes,
John.
British attention on the Falklands Islands will no doubt magnify with the 25th Anniversary of the Falklands Conflict in 2007. This will be a time where Parliament together the people of the United Kingdom will catch up on the development of the islands, how they live, how they are governed and how they might see the next 25 years unfurl. I imagine the British people will again be surprised, as we were in 1982, to learn that Britain still has actually ‘overseas territories’ headed by UK appointed decision making Governors with the islanders simply governing their own social and economic affairs leaving foreign political issues to a far away land owner. We might think, in our surprise, that the last ‘Governor’ was Chris Patten who left Hong Kong in1997. Again, we will learn and be surprised that their nearest neighbour, Argentina, still claims the islands despite the military defeat of 1982 - this time not as a military governed nation but as a maturing democracy. We will of course ask ‘why?’ and seek to discover why this sovereignty dispute has such longevity with no reasonable expectation of resolution.
The British, in 2007, will, I am sure, be given many reiterated references from those closely associated with islands, both from the political side and military side and we will notice the uniqueness of the islands; this piece of ‘Hebridean’ Britain that is so far away. Maybe we will be reminded of our colonial past that is still active today as it was when empire meant a red covered atlas of the world. “The Falklands Islands” means the colony of the Falklands Islands as explained on page 1 of the islands own constitution. We might also learn that the self -determining will of Falklands, just like that of Gibraltar and the other remaining British Overseas Territories cannot be over ruled if it is deemed by their own tiny electorate to be against their express wishes. So we will learn that our freely elected Parliament must abide by those wishes, no matter how contentious they may be to the development of our own wishes - where our international interests might be best served. This, we will discover, is the nepotic result of post empire Britain, long gone, and hardly reflective of modern British politics in the 21st Century, but a reality none the less.
In my own association with the islands stemming back to the conflict when I served with the Royal Navy, against the invading Argentine forces, I have continually wondered why the islands, effectively self-governing since 1983, have not gone coherently independent from the UK and voted for their own First Minister to replace the appointed Governor; more so since they have complete ownership of all their own natural resources, dictate immigration and, since 1985 enjoy their own constitution. (The Falklands constitution is very impressive and states in its opening chapter: …“all peoples have the right to self-determination and by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development and may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations…”)
Dr. Lyubomir Ivanov, an exceptional mind on the SW Atlantic, and once an active Falklands - Malvinas forum contributor, recognised that the islands could not go on forever holding onto the UK where need required while conducting ambitious efforts to define its own distinct place in the SW Atlantic. Lyubo’s own paper on the Future of the Islands makes very interesting reading, if, I may state reather one sided:
www.falklands-malvinas.com/Lyubospaper
2007 will also see revived interest from Argentina. This time a new generation of Argentineans, born into democracy and free from military rule, may be more ambitious to challenge the destructive influence of past imposed national governments to generate a more enlightened effort to direct Argentina away from memories of murder, deceit, torture, oppression and tyranny. The ‘Malvinas’ may also be placed into this same context. 2007 will not then be an anniversary remembered as a euphoric national moment when Argentina took back what was always ‘rightly’ theirs, but a time when a failing fascist government used violence against a small, largely undefended community, that was never a threat to anything Argentine.
The present Argentine government still pursues policies of national claim before peaceful coexistence; heard most acutely by the islands community even today - denying the islanders no open door to share their unique culture and robust economic venture with the mainland. Direct ‘head to head’ political participation and even competition would be far more acceptable than hard territorial demand. Why Argentina does not encourage direct links to engage in commonalities with islands, beyond the ground breaking 1999 Joint Agreement, is a question that begs to be answered. Relationships where communities border, in this instance a 400 mile sea stretch, must surely consider a willing integration based on:
Free Trade
Customs Union
Common Market
Economic Union
It seems that the Falklands already have this type of relationship with Chile under development but still feel nothing but threatened by Argentina.
For the Falklands to engage with Argentina and Argentina with the islands will need imaginative, if not visionary diplomacy, of the type once pioneered by Guido De Tella. He had his critics but no one can really deny that he tried. However, I’m not naïve enough to realise that this will require the Falklands Islands Government taking whole control of joint Island/Argentine relationships rather than the useless Anglo/Argentine interface where the islands are concerned. The islands are already able to do this under their own constitution and need no approval from the UK before doing so. (as if they ever did!) So while Argentina can be so easily criticised - so then can the islands own elected Government.
Looking further ahead
The ’us’ versus them tendency rooted in the over hanging sovereignty claim is to be dismissed as redundant when we consider the next 25 years. Those years might see the further expansion of the EU economic process with Brazil and Argentina. Here we consider that Argentina’s biggest trading partner is Brazil and not the US as once was before and now linked into Mercosur with variable success together with other S. American pacts that includes Venezuela and Colombia. The islands might well exist in a future as an isolated peripheral EU outpost, but challenged to act as part of a larger economic process that out grows existing profitable internal venture. We should consider that the islands are a facility based economy and as such must trade where partnership and buyer takes them. Oil is much mentioned in the Falklands but any economic strategist will warn that oil is a 20th century phenomenon and will be replaced to be become as cheap as Polish coal is today. It is of course possible for the Falklands oil basins to emerge becoming a ‘southern Venezuela‘, but it is hard to see where the billions of dollars will come from to extract this oil in profitable amounts. Take the example of North Sea oil and the huge support industry required just to get the resource ashore. Will it be worth it since no short term gain can be guaranteed for long term economies that are shifting into 5th generation industry.? No matter, Argentina will be keen to maximise this resource which lies on their door step too and co-operation with the islands is a certainty and consultations do take place to ensure a co-ordinated approach is made regardless of the sovereignty issue.
The next 27 years will demand more from the existing framework that the Falkland Islands Government is presently able to provide. Politically, the islands must move on. The islands democratic deficit will need to be addressed. Failure on this front will expose the islands as blatantly hanging on to a ‘status quo’ with a government more interested in supporting an oligarchy rather than advocating further democratic appeal. The British Parliament cannot go on forever under writing this while keeping relationships with Argentina fresh. The answer is quite clear. The Falklands will be required, in the years to come, to chance independence as a past British colony no different from Australia, New Zealand or Canada and certainly no different from Gibraltar.
Gibraltar, as many will be aware, has now effectively entered into the Southern Spanish economy, through common economic union, and all sides have agreed to put the sovereignty dispute to one side because it is in their national interests to do so.
Argentina might well consider that the Gibraltar way is far more advantageous than banging a drum that no one, even in the international community, listens to anymore. This doesn’t mean that Argentina need lift their sovereignty claim over the islands but it should mean a prepared willingness to shelve the claim and allow the normal diplomatic process to develop - normally. In the same breath the islands will consider the advantages to be gained by not complaining of threat and see the day when the Mount Pleasant military complex and airport are civilianised to accept long haul flights from all parts of S America and the world.
2007 will be a date to look forward to. Perhaps a time of resurgent Argentine island relationships with a 400 mile ‘bridge’ that crosses the divide of a past created in another time that has no relevance today. I personally look forward to being on the islands in 2007 and I hope I will be able to meet many of the Argentine conflict veterans there too.
Best wishes,
John.
