Airstrip One

Some response - at last.

My piece on the remnants of the British Empire got three responses. One pro, one anti, one in between:

Pro

the only positive I can see in the falklands war was that it brought the lunatic argentinian generals to their knees. for the rest, almost your entire argumentation in favor of closing the books on the falkland component of the British empire (and the other components too), is "spot on" as my British friends like to say.

I believed that we should have fought the war because we should not have been seen to surrender to military force, but that said it's nice to be liked.

Anti

You sound as though you have worked for Foreign Office whose motto should be "to appease our enemies by betraying our friends". This of course is an excellent way of maximising enemies and minimising friends. We have been experts at it for several hundred years.

The point I made was that these colonies were hardly in our national interest. Defending the national interest is hardly a speciality of the FCO. (I never worked for them if you're wondering)

In Between

NOOOOO! As a libertarian Yank, the last thing in the world I want to see is the Washington bureaucracy strangling yet more outposts of freedom, however trivial that freedom may be and however minuscule the outposts.

A suggestion: Your objections to British defense of the Falklands -- principally that it costs nearly £40,000 per British subject defended -- are well taken. How about offering the Argentines clear title to British possessions in the Caribbean in exchange for an agreement to take care of the defense of the Falklands (Malvinas) but otherwise to respect British sovereignty there? Argentina is too weak to do nearly as much damage to the customs of a faraway possession as the US would (and the Caribbean is as far from them as the Falklands are from you), but they're strong enough to wreak havoc on the nearby Falklands unless somehow restrained.

Of course, it's been about a decade now since I suggested to President Bush (père) that he resolve the Baltic crisis by offering to trade Gorbachev Lithuania for the District of Columbia. It would have worked out so beautifully, since the inhabitants of DC love socialism as much as the Lithuanians hated it. But he didn't listen either...

You can't fault this for lack of originality, although I doubt I'd be writing for antiwar.com much longer if I said that the US should be entering into defense guarantees in the South Atlantic!

My first citation

Well for the web log any way. From an e-mail newsletter, POIROS - POT POURI OF WHAT MATTERS ON THE NET on the fuel air bomb. I'm chuffed.

There is a more interesting article in there:

BUSINESS FOR SENSIBLE PRIORITIES WRITE BUSH - Business leaders and retired military officers calling for a new approach to defense spending have written an open letter to George W. Bush urging the new president to resist the call of the military-industrial complex for more defense spending. The issue is bad management, not more money. An example: - "Nuclear Warheads. You said it best when you called nuclear weapons "expensive relics of dead conflicts." Yet, America has over 11,000 warheads in its arsenal, costing many billions to maintain annually. Even Pentagon officials have lobbied to cut our nuclear arsenal. Republicans and Democrats agree that America can maintain deterrence with a fraction of the weapons."

It may be a bit left wing, but the letter makes an interesting set of points and is worth a read. It also brings me to one of my personal bugbears - are there a set of non-interventionist special interests waiting to be mobilised? Part of the "leave me alone coalition"?

Surely there must be, but just who benefits from peace?