After the Falklands

Abstract

On 15 June 1982, the Argentine garrison in Port Stanley surrendered. The war¹ of the Falkland Islands was over after two and a half months of intense activity, including six weeks of heavy fighting during which well over 1,000 men died. For the British Army this was the heaviest fighting since Korea — for the Royal Navy since the Second World War. It was an unexpected and rigorous test of the British services from which, by and large, they emerged with credit. The government, too, gained in popular standing from the conflict. This was despite the fact that the outbreak of the war could be seen as a result of a major foreign policy failure and the reliance on the Royal Navy in its prosecution as an indictment of established defence policy. It also presented a challenge to a defence policy that had only been forged some nine months earlier.

This chapter appeared as ‘British Defence Policy After the Falklands’, in John Baylis (ed.), Alternative Approaches to British Defence Policy (Macmillan, 1983) pp. 62–75.