On the decrepit walls of La Boca, on the facades of public schools, even on the bus shelters in the city center, in Buenos Aires, the Falklands are everywhere. Stenciled silhouettes of soldiers, hastily scribbled maps. More than forty years after the war, the Falkland archipelago, lost in the South Atlantic, remains an open wound. An obsession passed down from generation to generation, taught in school textbooks and sung in stadiums. This week, thousands of kilometers away, Donald Trump just put his finger on it.
An internal memo, revealed by several American media, suggests that the Trump administration could “reevaluate” his position on British sovereignty of the islands. Officially, Washington has always maintained an ambiguous line on the question: recognizing the British administration de factowithout ever fully assuming sovereignty de jure. A subtle nuance, inherited from decades of diplomatic triangulation. But the idea of a shift, even just outlined in a working document, had the effect of an explosion in London.
Sanction European allies
According to this memo, the maneuver would not be motivated by any renewed interest in Latin America nor by an ideological revision of American positions. It would aim more prosaically to sanction European allies, first and foremost the United Kingdom, judged to be too timid, too slow, too reluctant on the Iranian issue. In other words: use the Falklands archipelago as a means of diplomatic pressure. The islands, their 3,000 inhabitants and their sheep transformed into currency in a poker game!
In Downing Street, the response was immediate. Keir Starmer’s government, already weakened by the upcoming local elections which promise to be catastrophic for the Labor Party, has insisted that “sovereignty is beyond doubt” and insistently recalled a principle that he considers indisputable: that of the self-determination of the inhabitants. During the 2013 referendum on the archipelago, 99.8% of residents chose to remain under British administration. A Soviet score but difficult to dispute.
The fact remains that this certainty is rooted in a more brutal history, which London has never forgotten. On April 2, 1982, Leopoldo Galtieri’s military junta launched its troops on this wind-whipped archipelago, 13,000 km from London. Thatcher’s response was immediate: a fleet was sent to the South Atlantic. Ten weeks of fighting, 649 dead on the Argentinian side, 255 on the British side. On June 14, Buenos Aires capitulated.
Javier Milei never renounced Argentine sovereignty
On the eve of King Charles III’s four-day official visit to the United States – a moment supposed to celebrate the “special relationship” between the two countries – this episode takes on the appearance of a snub. The Anglo-American alliance, this pillar of the Western order since Churchill and Roosevelt, is in dire straits. In Buenos Aires, on the other hand, there is cautious hope. President Javier Milei, who has boundless admiration for Trump, has never renounced Argentina’s historic claim to the Malvinas – the Spanish name of the islands, used by all Argentines without exception, right and left.
The Argentine government is paying lip service to the possible opening of new negotiations. Beyond the divisions, the question of the Falklands remains what it has always been: a powerful political force, capable of uniting a nation that is divided by everything. Trump knows it.
