A special relationship?

Christopher Hitchens

The British case in the quarrel over the Falkland Islands rests on the moral and legal authority of the United Nations Security Council. The United States voted for the mandatory resolution requiring Argentina to withdraw its forces. So, guess Who said this on national television a few days ago:

'Now, look, one has to be clear about this, I think. Armed aggression would take place in a clear-cut way against ter- ritory on which there was clear-cut ownership. The Argentines, of course, have claimed for 200 years that they own those islands. And the British have claimed that they own those islands. Now if the Argentines own the islands, then moving troops into them is not armed aggression.' The author of that remark was Ms Jeane

Kirkpatrick, Reagan's ambassador to the United Nations. She was not making an off-the-cuff or an unprepared comment. She had been invited on to the CBS pro- gramme Face the Nation precisely because, on the very night of the morning that the Argentine troops took Port Stanley, she had been guest of honour at an Argentine embassy dinner. She knew that she would be asked which side she was on, and that Was her reply. Her argument is demonstrab- ly a false one — as the New York Times Pointed out, it would have allowed Hitler the Sudetenland. But she did make one other remark which, to the immense regret and embarrassment of the British Govern- ment, is undeniably true. She said that 'the United States has never taken a position on the ownership of those islands'.

This is the thing which the official British community here will writhe and euphemise to avoid admitting. But the fact remains that, after decades of unswerving loyalty to American purposes and designs, they are being treated as if they were on a par with the Argentines. Sir Nicholas Henderson, Her Britannic Majesty's extremely popular ambassador and plenipotentiary to Wash- _IngtOn, took the unusual step of criticising J":1s Kirkpatrick in public for attending the dinner. 'We are not thrilled,' he drawled in Just that tone of forceful understatement that American newsmen expect of British spokesmen in a tight corner. He added that if he had been invited to the Iranian em- bassy on what turned out to be the night of the seizure of the American hostages, he Would have had no hesitation in disappoint- ing his hosts.

The American Administration knows that to be true. It also knows that Britain has nowhere else to go, whereas Argentina has. It was this knowledge which made Francis Pym's visit to Washington such a dismal and pathetic spectacle.

I once heard Sir Anthony Nutting say of another distinguished Conservative that he was `so wet you could shoot snipe of him'. The remark came back to me forcibly as I watched Mr Pym deliver his exiguous brief- ing to British correspondents in the em- bassy which stands next to the missions of Brazil and Bolivia on Massachusetts Avenue. He just could not bear to admit that the Americans were cutting him loose. He had been awarded a one-hour working breakfast with Judge William Clark, a privilege normally reserved for the foreign ministers of Haiti and Bangladesh. Clark, now National Security Adviser, became briefly famous for admitting at his confir- mation hearings that he had never heard of Robert Mugabe or P. W. Botha, that he could not identify many important coun- tries on the map, and that he had never before taken any interest in foreign affairs. Nothing had come of the meeting, or Mr Pym would certainly have mentioned it in his very attenuated progress report. Had he seen Alexander Haig? Yes he had, and hoped to see him again.

Had he seen Ronald Reagan? No. Had he asked to see him? Apparently not. Would he like to meet him? 'That's a matter for him.' If it came to a shoot-out, did he ex- pect American solidarity? Yes, 'But that's only an opinion'. (In other words, no assurances.) I asked him if the British Government had any fresh official euphemisms with which to describe the con- duct and the statements of Jeane Kirkpatrick and he said that he would not like to comment on that, though Sir Nicholas, who had artfully disguised himself as a head waiter for the occasion, did have the grace to let out a laugh. After a few more equally unrevealing and evasive answers of this sort (' wouldn't like to com- ment on that,' I really think that's a matter for him') Mr Pym scurried off to attend on General Haig. I noticed for the first time that he's one of those people who, by com- bing their hair, draw attention to a bald patch which they imagine they are conceal- ing.

All this came only a few days after a meeting of the Organisation of American States had voted to develop a collective policy of reprisals and sanctions against Britain. At this meeting, the United States abstained. To make sanctions mandatory, the OAS has to achieve a greater unanimity than that. This unanimity can probably be prevented by Washington from emerging — there has never been a time when the OAS, which after all the US created, has not done its bidding. But abstain? It is yet another example of the spurious 'even-handedness', which has marked the whole policy of the Reagan Administration.

The easiest way of making this point is to consider the dogs that have not barked. In the last few years, the United States has ex- erted itself to change many governments, regimes and policies in the region. As I write, the small countries of Nicaragua and Grenada, both emerging from gruelling wars and revolutions, are being quarantined by Washington. Why? Because they are accused of keeping company with the Cubans and accepting weaponry from the Soviet bloc. Argentina is a close friend of the Soviet Union, both militarily, politically and economically. Many of its own internal practices, too, would not have disgraced the Gulag. It is receiving direct military aid and counsel from Moscow in the present crisis. It single-handedly undid the American at- tempt at the imposition of a grain embargo on the Soviet Union. The governments of Chile, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Brazil, to name only the most salient examples, were literally demolished by the United States for less. Whence comes the sudden tender-mindedness in Washington about General Galtieri?

In the first place, Argentina, whose army has had more counter-insurgency ex- perience than most, is proving an invaluable ally against the popular insurrections in Central America. After her visit to Buenos Aires last summer Ms Kirkpatrick (for it was she) said in public that she hoped for an enduring alliance between the two countries against the threat of subversion and revolt. So there's that, to which it should be added that Ms Kirkpatrick and her faction have always hated Lord Carrington for his counsels of moderation in the war against `terrorism' and are, with their Israeli counterparts and friends, highly delighted to see him go. General Haig didn't shed many tears either.

The second consideration is an ideo- logical one. Argentina was selected quite early on by this Administration as the prov- ing ground for its human rights policy. Everybody knows the famous distinction between 'authoritarian' and 'totalitarian' regimes, first brought to Ronald Reagan's attention by Ms Kirkpartrick, whom he hired on the spot. What is less familiar is the operational consequence of this distinc- tion. It means that the regime in question is given a clear run against dissent and is sold the weaponry with which to enforce it. It means that it is defended and justified, where feasible, in international meetings. It means trade credits, large contracts and cer- tain valuable immunities. All of these have been lavished on the Argentine junta since Jimmy Carter lost office.

During General Galtieri's visit to the United States a few months ago, he was asked why he had attracted so many senior politicians and generals to his official lun- cheon. He replied, honestly enough, that Washington now understood that Argen- tina should be playing an international role. It's hard to find an official here who will not admit, however reluctantly, that the dragon's teeth of Argentine aggression were sown by Washington. That does not mean that the Pentagon and the State Depart- ment knew how promiscuously Galtieri would use his new sinews (though there is some fascinating evidence that they knew precisely that). But, in either event, they are in no position to disown their muscular lit- tle illegitimate at this late stage. I was in respectable company when I heard the radio stations report General Haig (unat tributably of course) referring to the junta as 'a bunch of thugs with nobody in con- trol'. The majority reaction was, 'So now he tells us'.

For Britain turned out to have more friends than anybody thought. The House and the Senate are teeming with them. The national press is almost unanimously and often embarrassingly pro-British. Senator Henry Jackson described the line-up as

`from coast to coast — from the Wall Street Journal to the Village Voice'. Yet even

these allies have served to emphasise the irony of Mrs Thatcher's position. She has been so pliant and obedient to our policy, runs the argument, that it would be a real shame to let her down. I don't discover that I am the sole expatriate to find this sort of sympathy a bit rebarbative.

When Francis Pym met the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he was con- fronted by Senator Joseph Biden.

Democrat of Delaware, who proposed what he termed the 'Milton Friedman solution'.

Under the rubric of this device, the Argen- tine regime would pay $50,000 to each *kelper' family to vote the right way in a future plebiscite. Mr Pym, according to witnesses, looked as if a cigar had blown up in his face. But he did not, as the saying goes, 'rule anything out'. I should say that Senator Biden regards himself as an anglophile, and was trying to be helpful.

William Satire, the senior conservative columnist and one with close ties to the Reagan entourage, wrote the other day that he was 'rooting' for Britain because, with Israel and Zaire, it was almost America's only automatic ally. Thanks a lot. Every- body knows what happens to allies who let themselves be taken for granted.

I write this as South Georgia is recap- tured. If, by the time you read the above, lives have been lost in the South Atlantic, it means there will have been a great sell-out. Those lives, Argentine as well as British, will have been lost in a British attempt to undo an aggression that the United States could and should have prevented. They will have been lost in an effort to protect a government in Buenos Aires which, in a region famously callous, is still a byword for cruelty.

More deplorably still, they will have been lost in disproving a pseudo-intellectual theory — the theory of benign authorita- rianism. It was a tenet of the theory, now being rather sardonically recalled, that mere 'authoritarian' governments did not prac- tise expansionism. They might be foul to their own people but at least they would leave neighbours and allies alone.

I wonder how Ms Kirkpatrick now rates

this bizarre piece of special pleading. I wonder how the British diplomats, now privately calling for her head, rate their earlier admiration of the woman. The Falklanders were, in their quaint and in- convenient fashion, a free people. They did not govern any people of another nationali- ty against their will. They did not, as must be obvious, harbour any extraneous air or naval bases. Yet they went under to a sur- prise attack from an American client and it is no mitigation to say, as I have heard said privately here, that the islands were not all that big. Ms Kirkpatrick's argument is therefore shown to be void — and not a minute before time.

But it will not be she or her political patrons who pay the price for that vacuity. One does not wish to sound like Captain Waterhouse or the jingo rabble of the old Suez group. But this was the week when the `special relationship', even in its benign ver- sions, was exposed as a one-way street.