The Falklands War (review)

After twenty-five years, perspectives on the 1982 Falklands War (Malvinas War to Argentina), have changed significantly. As an expeditionary war (and still the only high-seas naval war of the missile age) it has many recent resonances, including the British skill in maintaining a fragile consensus for their actions in a state of undeclared war, and the Argentine hopes of spinning out negotiations to prevent a British military response. Its outcome led to the fall of the Argentine junta, and in Britain contributed to almost a decade of domination of domestic politics by Margaret Thatcher, prompting much soul-searching among the country's intellectual elites. Such a short but important war would appear perfect for treatment by the Palgrave-Macmillan Twentieth Century Wars series of short paperbacks, which are intended to provide an introduction for the novice student or generalist who may well read nothing further on this specific topic. But in writing The Falklands War the author, a British political scientist with a background in colonial history, has chosen very much to go his own way. His style is discursive, sometimes repeating the same phrase or piece of evidence within a few pages, and offering various historical analogies of doubtful relevance, such as the British expedition to Buenos Aires in 1807. He devotes only two-thirds of his book to the origins and actual course of the war, in which his focus is very much on the British with little on Argentina and its forces to balance his narrative. The remainder of the book consists of chapters on the war's cultural impact on Great Britain, including its media coverage, the artistic response in such forms as plays, television films, and art exhibitions, and religious concerns regarding the justness of the war. In the chapters dealing with the war itself the author is strongest when dealing with politics and diplomacy, while his military narrative is at times tendentious, and slanted very much towards the land campaign. The result is a lop-sided book which cannot be recommended as an introduction to the war, but which includes some interesting and valuable ideas. 


Unfortunately, The Falklands War is also riddled with presentational errors which should have been caught before publication, including mistakes in its index and bibliography. It also has a number of serious errors of fact and terminology, particularly in its chapters dealing with the military conduct of the war, which suggest a lack of familiarity by the author with this aspect of his subject. By way of typical illustration is the bizarre statement that the British LPD Intrepid "planned to launch her landing platform deck in two waves" (p. 140), footnoted to a page that is actually in the index of the relevant book. One hopes that all these might be corrected in some future edition.