And Now, to Win the Peace

By George Russell

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 we have done. It proves that 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 Fortunate 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 defeat, 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 worst 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 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 (see box). 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 ceasefire. 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 of 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 fight 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 hours 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 worst 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 relieved, 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 Islands." 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 islands. 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 De Gaulle."

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 war 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 Caribbean 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. --By George Russell.

Reported by Bonnie Angela/London and Gavin Scott/Buenos Aires

With reporting by Bonnie Angela, Gavin Scott

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