A new fight over the Falklands

“The Malvinas are Argentina’s”, proclaimed the banner carried by the Argentines football team after beating England 2-1 in the 2026 FIFA World Cup Semifinals. This led to outrage in the UK, restarting a bitter debate on who the islands belong to. The then Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street responded: “The World Cup might not be ours, but the Falkland Islands definitely are.” Argentina’s President, Javier Milei, chose a restrained response: “What the players do is understandable; they get carried away by their emotions, they act on impulse and that will likely lead to discussions about a fine.”This reflected Milei’s alignment with the West, despite claiming “non-negotiable sovereignty” after being elected: he did not want to rock the boat and was in fact looking for better relations with the UK. More recently, however, he seems to be changing tack, notwithstanding his longstanding Anglophilia—not uncommon among the Argentine elite—and admiration for Margaret Thatcher, who led the British forces in 1982 against the forces of Argentina’s military junta that was trying to reclaim the islands. Milei now appears to be trading his earlier caution for provocation, using the rift in the US-UK “special relationship” to rally Argentines around the flag.US President Donald Trump’s comments hinting at the possibility that the US may review its neutrality—after Britain chose not to join the US offensive on Iran, though it offered other support—gave Milei something to latch on to. In an address to the nation on September 3, Milei talked about the “winds of change” favouring Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands.Milei’s presidency has struggled in the past months, with his approval ratings sitting at around 24 per cent, according to some pollsters. Taking a harder stance on the subject may help him as his critics in the opposition, particularly the Peronists, have slammed him for being too soft on the issue.Britain initially took control of the islands in 1833. Argentine settlers and a military garrison were expelled by British naval forces. After this, Argentina maintained that the islands, inherited from Spain, were Argentine. The UN got involved in 1965, after the call for an end to colonialism in UN resolution 1514, saying that the contention between Britain and Argentina was an exception and needed to be settled between the two states.This issue flared up in Argentina in 1982, under the military dictatorship of Leopoldo Galtieri, whose popularity was particularly low. In a bid to raise nationalist sentiment, he invaded the Falklands to rally the Argentine people behind him. Argentina’s military government did not expect Britain to respond militarily, but it was mistaken. A 10-week war followed, leading to the death of around 650 Argentines and 250 British soldiers. This defeat hastened the fall of the military government in Argentina. In the UK, it bolstered the popularity of Thatcher, who happened to be struggling with massive economic discontent at home.

Milei addressing the nation from the presidential palace in Buenos Aires on September 3. | Photo Credit: AFP The issue flared up again on the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War under the administration of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. She took the issue to the international stage, employing the rhetoric of decolonisation. She spoke at the UN Decolonisation Committee meeting in 2012. The UK responded by holding a referendum in 2013, where 99.8 per cent of the island chose to remain with the UK, with only three people voting against. The majority of the voters were of British origin.Kirchner denounced the vote as “‘parody”: “It is as if a consortium of occupiers had voted on whether to continue illegally occupying a building. The results were fixed.”The allure of oilIn 2010, oil was discovered in the Sea Lion field, north of the islands. Further exploration over the next two years boosted the islands’ economy, which had long been centred on sheep farming and fishing. Now, with the discovery of oil, the islands acquired a new strategic importance. Nevertheless, Kirchner’s successor, Mauricio Macri, was far less combative and adopted a more moderate approach, leaning towards furthering bilateral relations between the two nations.But the thaw was short-lived. Macri’s successor, Alberto Fernández, undid the agreements signed under the previous government and took up the sovereignty issue forcefully on the international stage.Milei initially sought to avoid confrontation. Now, what with Trump’s comments and the strain in UK-US relations, Milei seems ready to jump at the opportunity to revive the issue. The scale of the offshore oil reserves seems to add fuel to the fire.Reports that Sea Lion—due to begin commercial production in 2028—could nearly quadruple the islands’ GDP have sharpened interest on both sides. This oil is significant for the UK, which has slowed down expansion of its North Sea oil fields that are anyway estimated to be 90 per cent drained.Milei said on September 8 that Argentina would file criminal charges against the Israeli company Navitas, which holds a 65 per cent stake in the Sea Lion project. He has received support from Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who on the same day called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “publicly recognise that the Malvinas Islands are Argentine territory under occupation—territory that the British violently stole from the Argentine people”. While this move has won some approval from Argentines, whether Milei can recover the ground he lost is yet to be seen as he faces elections in 2027.

Argentina's Giovani Lo Celso holds a banner with the words: "The Malvinas are Argentine" at the end of the World Cup semifinal football match between England and Argentina in Atlanta, on July 15. | Photo Credit: REBECCA BLACKWELL/AP Milei’s economic record may not help his chances of re-election, although the opposition, which is trying to build a broader anti-austerity coalition, is fractured. Notwithstanding his promises of a radical overhaul of the Argentine economy, the life of the people under his presidency has not improved. While inflation has been brought down from a peak of 289 per cent in 2024 to 33 per cent in June 2026, wages have fallen by 13 per cent. State subsidies for gas and electricity have been slashed, leading the real income of Argentines to suffer, with many people pushed into debt.The parallel with 1982 is not lost on observers. Galtieri, too, reached for the Malvinas at a moment of unpopularity, although in the end it did not save him. Whether a rhetorical and legal solution can save Milei is an open question. His survival matters to the US, which has propped up the Argentine economy with emergency credit and currency swaps worth $20 billion. Milei is one of the US’ most reliable allies in Latin America—increasingly valuable to Trump as he realigns US foreign policy from a “pivot to Asia” and refocusses on the Western hemisphere, in what some have called a “Monroe Doctrine 2.0”.V. Arjun Reddy is a Modern History PhD student at the University of St Andrews, Fife, Scotland, UK.Also Read | Márquez, Las Malvinas, and cinema of ‘the disappeared’Also Read | It’s imperialism, stupid!