{"id":184862,"date":"2012-01-01T20:04:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-02T01:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/01\/01\/and-no-carriers-what-a-bummer\/"},"modified":"2012-01-01T20:04:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-02T01:04:00","slug":"and-no-carriers-what-a-bummer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/01\/01\/and-no-carriers-what-a-bummer\/","title":{"rendered":"And No Carriers, What a Bummer"},"content":{"rendered":"

It looks like the Latin American customs union, Mercosur, has declared that Falklands Islands flagged ships are banned from their ports<\/a>, which amounts to a (rather porous) blockade:<\/p>\n

Argentines call them las Malvinas. The British call them the Falklands. In news jargon, many assume that to use one name over the other is to take a side, mostly because these islands are the source of an acrimonious dispute that led to a non-declared war between the two countries in 1982.<\/p>\n

Enter Mercosur, the trade agreement between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay – with Chile as one of the associated member states – which, a week ago, decided to ban ships that fly the Falklands flag from their ports. The measure, a blockade in simple terms, was taken to show solidarity with Argentina on the issue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, things are different from 1982.<\/p>\n

The British no longer have any aircraft carriers, and won’t for many years to come, and the Chinese are explicitly endorsing the Argentine claim.<\/p>\n

Truth be told, the only Falkland’s flagged ships out there are probably a few fishing boats, but the fact is that if this escalates, there is very little that the UK can do to to maintain its controls over the islands.<\/p>\n

Truth be told, I think that any escalation would come from the British side, as Cameron, remembering Thatcher’s electoral benefit from the earlier war, will try to make a similar play for electorate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It looks like the Latin American customs union, Mercosur, has declared that Falklands Islands flagged ships are banned from their ports, which amounts to a (rather porous) blockade: Argentines call them las Malvinas. The British call them the Falklands. In news jargon, many assume that to use one name over the other is to take …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[964,1068,1098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foreign-relations","category-latin-america","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}