Operation Paramour: Executive Summary
Prologue
Second Falklands Islands War
Appendix 1: Argentina Military Modernization
The ability of the British Armed Forces [BAF] to defeat Argentina in a repeat of the Falklands War remains in serious doubt. The retirement of the entire fleet of GR9 Harrier attack aircraft and the HMS Invincible carrier class represents all of the UK Royal Navy tactical force projection and leaves only a small fleet of ballistic nuclear missile submarines that have no clear role beyond intimidation in a Falklands conflict and an even fewer modern air defense destroyers.
Queen Elizabeth is Britain’s first supercarrier and is designed to meet the UK NATO commitments for the new century. However, it will not be ready for active duty until late 2020. Accelerating the deployment of the Queen Elizabeth supercarrier remains the most effective option. Queen Elizabeth is the United Kingdom’s largest and most powerful surface vessel ever and would surely tip the scales in favor of the UK. Queen Elizabeth and its 36 F-35C fighters have the ability to completely dominate the current/future Argentina Air Force. The CV remains on track but frequent cost overruns and delays in construction have moved the date on which the ship will enter service in the Royal Navy to 2020. The Royal Navy does not have the fleet size to keep a large flotilla (8-10 ships) in the South Atlantic to discourage Argentina’s provocations. Protection of commercial oil & shipping interests which are continuously harassed by Argentina will not allow the UK or Falklands Island flagged vessels into ports in Argentina or into territorial waters.
The Argentines have continued diplomatic pressure again the UK, and it is only a matter of time before the Argentines gain enough military confidence to believe that they could invade the islands and have enough military force to make re-taking the islands nearly impossible without a major mobilization of UK army forces. In this weakened state, the Argentines believe that the UK will seek to resolve the conflict through dialogue using the UN and avoid an embarrassing defeat against superior Argentina military forces.
The Argentines continue to build the military capacity to engage in a confrontation with the UK but are still as of today seeking diplomatic efforts to regain control of the islands. Despite public statements supporting this notion, MI6 believes that the Argentines will opt for military action only when the conditions are outlined in the DNIEM policy. The GoA military is aware of their long-term tactical weakness and favors a quick war where they can seize control of the islands and then leverage good diplomatic ties with the US and Brazil to provoke a large military reaction from the UK. This combined with nearly 12,000 km of sea-going geography many in the AAF opinion that the UK will not send a fleet, and will sue for peace from a position of strength by controlling the islands. They currently enjoy a favorable world opinion in regard to their historical claims against the island despite the historical fact that the Falklands have been under the control of the British domain for nearly 150 years. Many South American nations support Argentina’s claims and some have to various degrees made statements that included an allusion to military support either overt or covert if the GoA retook the islands.
When combined with a perception of weakness on the part of the UK forces and essential no strong pushback from the United States on the Falklands issue, the GoA has continued to press the UK to come to the table and negotiated a settlement for the islands. The UK’s position has continued to be one of ignoring these requests and using the native islanders’ right to self-determination as grounds for the continued presence of UK military forces on the island. The vast majority of Islanders wish to remain part of Great Britain and thus the UK can avoid being forced into negotiating away the island. The GoA feels that they have to racket up the amount of economic leverage they can use in order to prevent using force.
The GoA has raised this issue to the UN repeatedly and has not received any binding agreements. This in their view would prevent the need for the GoA to retake the Falklands by force, which the FM of GoA declared in an editorial in an interview with Clarin. In this same article, the cabinet official states that the Argentina government will conduct an economic war against the UK if it can not win a military war.
The Government of Argentina has numerous economic options to continue to make oil exploration in the Falklands more difficult. The GoA has denied access to their ports for any UK-flagged ship moving into the South Atlantic without permission from the government. British diplomats also told EconCouns that several companies involved in the planned exploration had received warning letters from the GoA threatening to cancel (or prevent) their operations in Argentina if they participate in the Falklands/Malvinas exploration without GoA permission. In addition to Desire Petroleum, these include Danish shipping giant Maersk, which is towing the oil rig to the planned drilling site. The British believe that the intent of the letters is to pressure companies into dropping all Falklands-related activity; they did not rule out GoA sanctions against these companies for continuing Falkland-related activities, even if such action would also damage the Argentine economy. Maersk, in particular, handles approximately 20% of Argentina’s foreign shipping, including an estimated 50% of Argentina’s soy exports, the country’s top export commodity and a critically important source of export tax revenues for the GoA. The tax revenues have been fueling a massive military spending spree by Argentina.
The exposure of the British banking firm Barclays’ to a 4.5% major investment in Argentina’s 10th largest exporter a copper, gold, & minerals mining company, and investments in food production industries has been put on the table by Argentine congress as leverage; they have threatened to repossessed these shares and can then hit British firms further with sanctions. The British bank is violating UN decrees which force them to seek Argentina’s permission to continue oil exploration in the region through the financing of the exploration efforts. The discovery of vast oil and gas fields in the Falklands during the 1970s is at the heart of the dispute between the UK and Argentina. While being a major discovery, at the time oil was not economically viable to extract from the islands, this has changed as prices have risen and many major international oil companies have set their targets on the Falklands. The Falklands contain gas fields the size of the North Sea field. The companies are in order of investments British BP [234m], Dutch Shell [79m], American Exxon [54m], and France Total SA [29m] who are trying to purchase the rights from local oil companies the largest being Desire Petroleum which is already operating two wells in the Northern basin. The conglomerate of local oil companies controls one of the last large untapped oil fields in the world and many believe it is one of only a few remaining untapped basins which are accessible without major deep-sea drilling. The new push for oil and natural gas in this region comes as oil prices continue to climb past $100 a barrel. There are numerous estimates by private and government sources which claim 60 billion barrels of oil in the ground and nearly 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in nearly 380,000 square miles which can be extracted. It represents nearly 6 trillion dollars worth of commercial fossil fuels, this factor is reason enough for Argentina to attempt to retake the islands, the oil exports from this would be equal of nearly 100 years of their current export levels.
While the GoA seeks to prevent foreign companies from participating in oil exploration activity in the waters off of the Falklands/Malvinas, it is not clear how much it is willing to risk real harm to the Argentine economy as it exploits a nationalistic issue for political gain. Argentina lacks the domestic ability to extract the oil on the scale to make the Falklands the Saudi Arabia of the South Atlantic, and is reliant on foreign oil developers, disputing the acquisition of Spanish oil exploration company Restore. For now, the GoA is being scrupulous to couch its actions in terms of adherence to UN resolutions and international law. MI6 has detected some movement by SIDE(GoA intelligence service) to establish intelligence networks operating out of the London and Paris embassies for the purpose of gaining insight into the direction of the European government’s decision on the Falklands. It remains committed to using international pressure to force in the absence of an unlikely British-Argentine accord on the Islands. The GoA will, in all probability, continue to ratchet up economic pressure on Falkland Islands residents directly who are much more vulnerable to economic warfare. Tourism is an important cash generator on the island and until oil exploration is further developed represents one of the only major income engines for most of the island’s 4,000 residents. An aggressive position on the issue unites Argentines behind their unpopular government which continues to flounder as economic conditions deteriorate, and there is still a long way to go before the steps contemplated by the GoA cause any real damage to the Argentine economy. Whether the GoA is willing to risk this damage to is economy depends on how it views it could exploit the re-taking of the islands. If the GoA believes that it can seize the islands without damaging the ability to export the oil the calculus could swing in favor of military action which is viewed as a quick and dirty solution but would allow the Argentines to negotiate from the position of controlling the islands. The damage to the economy by a conflict with Britain would be limited and a cut-off from the European credit markets could be mitigated by selling future oil contracts to energy-hungry Asian nations which are more than willing to fill the void and underwrite the Argentina government’s credit line. current ship traffic between Argentina and the Falklands (as well as the other islands) is limited, and the impact of the decree on the U.S. and other companies will likely also be limited for now. Thus keeping the US out of the equation, which greatly favors Argentina. The long-standing historical military alliance between the US and the UK seems to work recently only one way, and despite the vast presents of the US Navy in the world’s oceans, the US would most likely not support military action by the UK to retake the islands. This would further complicate the UK’s ability to retake the islands by force. The US has on occasion referred to the Islands as the Malvinas which is the name for the islands used by the GoA, this subtle sentence carries a huge political message behind the scenes and further fuels Argentine ambitions to retake the islands. However, this could change if the GoA ups the ante and imposes significant sanctions on companies such as tour cruise ship operators with current activities in both the Falklands and Argentina, harming both the companies and the Argentine economy. Many of these companies are in fact US companies and this would disrupt many operators’ logistic chains further eroding US support for GoA behavior.
Responses
The UK military can take several critical steps needed to effectively stop the abilities of Argentines from invading the Falklands. This represents a near decade in which the Argentines can build the capacity to not only counter the carrier threat but also procure weapons that can give them both a credible threat and greatly increase their ability to project power in the South Atlantic. Argentina has restarted its local nuclear reactor program with the intent of building an advanced indigenous nuclear-powered attack submarine. They have the support of the US Navy which is advising the GoA Navy in the construction of the submarine. As the Argentines Navy grows more and more powerful the UK is left with considerably fewer options to respond. This fact alone leaves only one real option for the British government to increase local defenses on the island. This has both advantages and disadvantages in the near and long term. In the near term increasing the defenses on the island furthers the storyline that the UK is militarizing the conflict.
The long-term effect would be to cement to the GoA that only a military confrontation using overwhelming force would be sufficient to remove the UK forces on the island. Only the deployment of heavy weapons including tanks and artillery on the islands can change the likeliness of the local defense force repelling an invasion. The FIDF is largely a paramilitary force with access to only small arms and a limited number of shoulder-fired anti-tank and anti-air missiles.
Without Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy lacks any carriers to launch air operations against the forces on the island, or supply Falklands Island Defense Force paramilitary units and must mount a major amphibious sea landing to retake the islands. Considering the UK has not conducted a major amphibious sea landing in over 50 years this is extremely risky. Once the beaches are under control the Argentine Army can quickly deploy MLRS systems on the island which will block any landing force from establishing a beachhead and retaking the islands.
The UK military still remains superior to the Argentina Army in both land and naval forces but geography and geopolitical climate favor the Argentines. The biggest unknowns are the position of Brazil in the dispute and the United States both of which are influential in any action taken by both sides. The Brazilian government has supported Argentina’s claims to the Falklands in the past. But Brazil is recently heavily involved with international efforts in seeking a permanent seat on the UNSC after the announcement of two new permanent seats which were voted by the general assembly in 2016. Brazil is currently playing a balancing act of supplying Argentina with weapons modernizations and the means to invade the islands, while the public hedge its efforts to gain one of the two seats up for grabs by not publicly supporting their claim. The vote for one of the seats in the UNSC is heavily favored to go to Germany and leaving Brazil in the running with India for the last remaining seat. If Brazil sides against the UK in any military action between the UK and Argentina, the UK will surely block its appointment to the UNSC. The UK must be aware of these geo-political factors as it considers it response to the rising tensions in the region. The combination of oil, geographic distance, and perception of a lack of resolve to defend the islands makes this one of the most likely flare-up points in the next 10 years.