{"id":13608,"date":"2012-02-17T09:22:28","date_gmt":"2012-02-17T14:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=13608"},"modified":"2012-02-21T12:31:06","modified_gmt":"2012-02-21T17:31:06","slug":"colby-cosh-on-the-current-drama-around-the-falkland-islands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/02\/17\/colby-cosh-on-the-current-drama-around-the-falkland-islands\/","title":{"rendered":"Colby Cosh on the current drama around the Falkland Islands"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last time Colby Cosh discussed the Falkland Islands, we had a bit of a discussion on Twitter, with my pessimism about Britain’s strategic situation finally persuading him to say “You\u2019ve convinced me to worry about this a little more than I would\u2019ve” (summary in this post<\/a>). He’s now posted a new article at Maclean’s<\/em><\/a>, which I think accurately captures the situation in the south Atlantic:<\/p>\n

\n

Argentina, the world press tells us, intends to rename its top soccer league the \u201cCruiser General Belgrano First Division\u201d, in honour of the Argentine ship sunk by the Royal Navy during the 1982 Falklands War. Far be it from any outsider to prescribe how a country honours its war dead, but honour is not what the move is about: it\u2019s part of a continuing, exhausting barrage of Falklands agitprop from Argentina\u2019s Kirchner government. Kirchner is scrambling to keep Argentine economic growth rolling, barracking businesses and workers in the classic caudillo<\/em> manner as inflation outpaces the dubious official statistics. She has tried, with some success, to close off Southern Hemisphere ports to boats flying the maritime flag of the Falklands and to weld traditionally UK-friendly neighbours into a regional bloc against \u201ccolonialism\u201d. Tensions are high and the Falkland Islanders are feeling besieged.<\/p>\n

Britain is passing through a phase of relative strategic vulnerability when it comes to the Falklands. The islands are garrisoned much more strongly than they were in 1982 and the RAF has a proper airfield. But the UK has sold off its Harrier fleet, and its naval force-projection capacity is a little threadbare; public austerity has forced the Royal Navy to wait until 2016 for a new Nimitz<\/em>-sized aircraft-carrier class to come into play. General Sir Michael Jackson, often considered the top UK commentator on military affairs (how many General Sirs are there?), recently summed up the situation by suggesting that the Falklands could be defended\u2014but if Argentina captured them in a coup de main<\/em>, as it did in \u201982, its soldiers could probably not now be driven off. From a game-theoretic standpoint, the situation is a nightmare.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Update, 21 February<\/b>: Brendan O’Neill<\/a> explains that in the modern celebrity-fuelled world, the Penn really is mightier than the sword:<\/p>\n

\n

Easily the most extraordinary thing about Sean Penn\u2019s recent comments on the Falkland Islands is the impact that they made. The tidal wave of furious commentary has tended to focus on Penn\u2019s undoubted combination of daftness and arrogance, with enraged British hacks asking \u2018where does Mr Madonna get off holding a press conference to pontificate about the serious affairs of the South Atlantic?\u2019. That is indeed a good question. But a better and more pressing one is this: how on earth did the musings of one muppet make such a massive impact, intensifying the stand-off between Argentina and Britain, generating acres of newsprint, and even provoking a huge protest in the Falkland Islands themselves under the banner \u2018Falk You, Sean\u2019?<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

The Penn affair confirms the extraordinary and terrifying power of celebrity today. It shows that in our celeb-obsessed era, the famous and allegedly fabulous are no longer used simply to advertise booze or to titillate the readers of gossip columns — they have become actual tools of global politics. (In both senses of the word \u2018tool\u2019 — \u2018a device used to carry out a particular function\u2019 and \u2018one who lacks the mental capacity to know he is being used\u2019.) Indeed, Kirchner\u2019s use of Penn in her war of words with Britain shows that she is a sussed and wily leader — she recognises that, today, a comment from a celeb is a far more effective political manoeuvre than readying a warship or making a stern speech at the United Nations. Her message is basically: \u2018I\u2019ll see your Prince William and raise you Sean Penn\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last time Colby Cosh discussed the Falkland Islands, we had a bit of a discussion on Twitter, with my pessimism about Britain’s strategic situation finally persuading him to say “You\u2019ve convinced me to worry about this a little more than I would\u2019ve” (summary in this post). He’s now posted a new article at Maclean’s, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[465,4,7,5],"tags":[492,31,432,493,30,310],"class_list":["post-13608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americas","category-britain","category-history","category-military","tag-argentina","tag-army","tag-diplomacy","tag-falklandislands","tag-navy","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3xu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13608"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13668,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13608\/revisions\/13668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}