British defence secretary Wes Streeting has said Argentina lacks the military capability to seize the Falkland Islands and that the United Kingdom is able to defend the archipelago.
Asked by The Sun on Sunday whether Britain could protect the islands if Buenos Aires sent warships, he answered that it could. “This isn’t 1982,” he said.
Streeting accused Argentine President Javier Milei of recycling a long-standing claim and said the matter had been settled by the war of 1982. He said the islanders had repeatedly chosen to remain British and that London backed them.
Milei told the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 23 that the islands were a national cause for Argentina. He accused the organisation of looking the other way and invoked resolution 31/49, adopted in 1976, which calls on both parties to avoid unilateral changes while the dispute remains open.
The Argentine President has escalated the row since a televised address on September 3, when he announced sanctions against companies working at the Sea Lion oil field and funding for a naval base in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina’s southernmost province. His government has since brought forward a security bill that would tighten penalties on firms extracting resources around the islands without Argentine authorisation.
The row has already reached Westminster, where Reform UK said a government led by Nigel Farage would use force to crush any Argentine move on the islands.
Brussels holds no common position on sovereignty, a gap that became public in 2023 when a joint declaration with Latin American and Caribbean states used the Argentine name for the archipelago and forced the European Union into a climbdown.
Argentina is now a partner under the EU-Mercosur interim trade agreement, provisionally applied since May 1 after ratification in Buenos Aires in February. At the most recent EU-Argentina joint committee, the bloc took note of the Argentine position on the islands without endorsing it.
The dispute has also drawn in Washington, where US President Donald Trump has said he is reviewing long-standing American support for British sovereignty. The option was floated earlier this year in an internal Pentagon email as leverage against European allies.
Argentina’s military dictatorship invaded the islands on April 2, 1982. The war killed 255 British service personnel, 649 Argentine troops and three islanders before Buenos Aires withdrew after just over two months of fighting.
Falkland islanders voted almost unanimously to remain a British overseas territory in a referendum in 2013, a result Argentina does not accept.
