We can predict everything except the future!
Argentina invaded and captured the Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982. The British Government promptly dispatched a task force to repel the invaders. Diplomacy meandered back and forth while the ships sailed to the south Atlantic. British troops established a foothold on the islands by the end of May and made steady if bloody progress from there. The Argentinian forces surrendered on 14 June. 255 British and 649 Argentine servicemen lost their lives.
The following month, the British Government announced the establishment of a different “task force”. This was a committee of political and establishment grandees to review and report on the Government’s discharge of its responsibilities in relation to the Falkland Islands “in the period leading up to the Argentine invasion on 2 April 1982”.
The Committee was chaired by the bluest of blue chip establishment heavyweights: Lord Oliver Franks OM, GCMG, KCB, CBE, PC, DL, former UK Ambassador to the US, former Chairman of Lloyds Bank and Friends Provident, and continuing Chairman of multiple Trusts, Boards of Governors and high Committees of State.
The Committee duly reported its findings in January 1983.
Much of the 121-page report is a survey of the evolution of the engagement between Britain and Argentina over the islands’ sovereignty from 1965 to the date of the invasion. The report acknowledges that over this period, different decisions and actions might have been taken that might have altered the direction of events. But, as with any abstract discussion of counterfactuals, there was no certainty that those different decisions and actions would have had the specific consequences intended for them or, indeed, that they would have prevented the eventual invasion.
Nonetheless, the report is decisive and unambiguous in its overall verdict:
…we conclude that we would not be justified in attaching any criticism or blame to the present Government for the Argentine Junta’s decision to commit its act of unprovoked aggression in the invasion of the Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982.
Of course, “2 April 1982” is carrying a lot of weight of justification for that conclusion. It is indeed obviously true that, until a very few days beforehand, the Government could hardly be blamed for not anticipating an invasion on that specific date. But it is equally true that the probability of an invasion some time ebbed and flowed between unquantifiable levels, but all above zero for a long time beforehand.
Still, 2 April 1982 goes down in history as one of those dates when something serious happened “out of the blue” with ripple effects far beyond the immediate context. Britain’s decisive, efficient and swift victory rescued Mrs. Thatcher’s first government which had previously been languishing in the polls and set her up for two more sweeping general election victories. In contrast, the war also contributed to the downfall of the military junta and the restoration of democracy in Argentina the following year.
But the war had deeper and longer-term ripple effects that have not yet entirely settled.
On 31 March 1982 with the invasion now seemingly imminent rather than merely possible, amidst a plethora of gloomy official advice that nothing could be done either to prevent or overturn it, Mrs. Thatcher asked Sir Henry Leach, the First Sea Lord, whether the islands could be retaken. According to The Economist in its 40th anniversary reflections on the war last year:
“Yes,” he answered decisively “And in my judgment, we must.” “Why do you say that?” snapped Thatcher. “Because if we do not,” Leach replied, “if we muck around, if we pussyfoot…in a very few months’ time we shall be living in a different country whose word will count for little.”
Thatcher gave Leach a “cold stare”, and then cracked a grin. Leach had given the prime minister her mission.
Britain’s victory slammed the brakes on the embedded post WW2 narrative of irrevocable continuing national decline and sowed the seed for the buccaneering Britain mindset, always the political religion of a minority but always a minority growing in self-confidence and zeal, that eventually fostered Brexit. The unexpected outcome of the referendum of 23 June 2016 sets that date on the same plinth as 2 April 1982. There is every prospect of the ripple effects of that referendum result being as enduring as it was surprising.
24 February 2022 was another such “game changing” date though, by then, the likelihood of a Russian invasion of Ukraine had already risen from an abstract to a distinct possibility. But the invasion itself was still unlikely enough to count as a significant surprise though probably not as great a surprise as Russia’s failure to achieve a brisk victory like Britain’s in the Falklands. Instead, we seem to be locked in stagnant attrition, the eventual outcomes of which are impossible to determine with any specificity, even though many possible outcomes are regularly predicted.
In the last respect, 24 February 2022 sits alongside 28 June 1914. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo was certainly a surprise and one that was always likely to reverberate beyond the Austro-Hungarian empire. But at the time, few foresaw its principal consequence of four years of largely pointless carnage on an unprecedented scale in Europe — and its subsequently messy aftermath with consequences still to settle even now.
11 September 2001 presented us with an even more unforeseeable contingency the consequences of which are also still unfolding across the world. Saddam Hussein’s decision to order his Iraqi troops across the border into Kuwait on 2 August 1990 was another surprise that was a contributory factor if not the primary cause or pretext for the events of 9/11. And the US/UK intervention in Iraq in 2003 was a consequence of 9/11 but also of Saddam Hussein’s misstep of two decades earlier. Connections abound across time and geography.
The Brexit buccaneers don’t dwell long on Britain’s military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan during this century. For one thing, both were conducted under Labour governments. Maybe more important, in both cases, the UK was the junior partner to the US. Such servitude does not sit well with exaggerated notions of sovereignty. Above all though, both expeditions were entirely unsuccessful.
Coming up to date, 7 October 2023 delivered an altogether unexpected event with the Hamas “incursions” into Israel. But, like Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands, it was one to which a probability greater than zero could and maybe should have been assigned to its occurrence some time if not on the specific date. Arguably, it qualified as unexpected mainly because of neglect and complacency — blame for which has several authors, local and global.
As always, a rough lattice of conventional wisdom regarding the consequences is asserting itself among the cadres of experts who failed to tell us it was coming. In similar vein, the practiced pundits who generally failed altogether to alert us in advance are suavely explaining to us the rise of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and of Javier Milei in Argentina, as if neither event came as a surprise to them. Incidentally, the latter has spoken of re-activating his country’s claim to the Falklands.
Remember the response attributed to Chinese Premier, Zhou-en-Lai when asked by President Nixon in 1971 for his view of the effects of the French Revolution almost two centuries earlier. “It is too early to tell.” Wise words indeed.
We can be totally certain only of death. We can be reasonably certain of most everyday things. The light will normally come on when we press the switch. But of complex global events, wide-ranging in their origins and impacts, it is difficult to be certain of much at all.
Coming closer to home, will the riots in Dublin cause 23 November 2023 to survive in the Irish memory as a date of substance and significance? The hot takes are treating it as a dark date on which all changed, changed utterly. A cooler take is that it will change little. But it will take much longer for time truly to tell.
