Military Might-not

"Las Malvinas Son Argentinas"

We saw signs with that slogan a few times whilst travelling round Argentina, some from the union of bank employees, and one even inside the bank's plate-glass front window. With the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War this year, many Brits (including us) would like to know whether we face a re-run.

Obviously, I formed a view on this during the trip and here it is: No.

The 1982 "South Atlantic Conflict" occurred under just one from a series of military dictatorships ruling Argentina. During the period 1976-83 between 20,000 and 30,000 people were killed within Argentina, mostly in 77-78. The war is listed in the Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism, on the edge of Buenos Aires, along with walls listing SO many names of the disappeared, as one of many crimes inflicted on the people.

Argentina is now a fully democratic country, and economically very advanced. My belief (however naive) is that democratic countries don't often go to war with other democratic countries.

I think the Argentine political classes are manipulating popular feeling. They know that the basis of international law since the second world war has been national self-determination, and that the people of the falklands are pretty much all set on staying British. I think they're stirring up public opinion and claiming unremarkable British steps as escalations (HMS Dauntless, Prince William) in order to pressurise Britain into sharing revenues from oil and mineral deposits recently found.

So I expect no new Argentine invasion (and probably not much of a revenue-sharing deal either).

Scared of China

A background to the China trip for me has been in two related questions asked by our guide: "You know about the Opium Wars, of course?" and "Why are you frightened of us, we've never invaded anybody?"

I don't think many Brits have heard of the Opium Wars. They're small in our history but huge in China's. I'd only heard about them in the context of giving back Hong Kong last century. I did know that we invaded China for our right to continue dealing drugs into their population!

Look it up on Wikipedia, like me. Basically, we wanted Chinese tea, but they'd only take payment in silver. Instead, we shipped in Opium from India and got an increasing proportion of their population addicted. When they tried to stop us, we invaded. Then we wanted to force China to accept our ambassadors and so we and the French fought our way to Beijing and burned down the Old Summer Palace.

This started a "Century of Humiliation" for the Chinese in the face of foreign powers.

How did we beat them? Because the Chinese had inferior military technology (just like the Incas facing a tiny number of Spanish). Same story in the Opium Wars and the Japanese invasion. One can only support their decision to have a strong military now, learning the lessons of history.

So is it true that the Chinese have never invaded? Back to Wikipedia for the Korean War, and I see they didn't start to fight until the U.N./U.S. crossed the international treaty line of the 38th parallel while fighting back against the North's invasion. So that looks in line with what our guide said.

My thoughts are that the Chinese government has its hands completely full coping with the pace of economic change in the country, and resisting political change while they do it. I saw a statement that they were addressing "human rights" very actively by raising the economic state of the people, housing, healthcare, etc. Interesting.

I think that, for the foreseeable future, China would only use military power externally if someone forced a significant loss of face upon then, which the Chinese self-image couldn't bear and so that would be incredibly stupid.

The catch is Taiwan. Three different guides have referred to the map of China being in the shape of a rooster, with two feet being the islands of Taiwan and Hainan. China without those would be (is) a crippled rooster.

While I loathe such "folk politics", it's clearly what a mass of Chinese strongly feel. As they believe it's part of China anyway, would going there be an invasion? Hence the big question is whether the Taiwan issue can be left alone or, if violently addressed, avoid becoming the spark for a wider conflict?