ARGENTINE INVASION OF FALKLANDS

Argentine Invasion of Falklands

Argentine Invasion of Falklands

Introduction

On 2 April 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, an archipelago located about 400 miles off the Argentine coast. The surprise attack brought to a climax 140 years of controversy between Argentina and Great Britain over the sovereignty of the islands (Wahlert, 2012, p. 247-259). Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher responded quickly to the Argentine show of force, and British units recaptured the islands within a month of their arrival. The Falklands War was short-lived, but significant. The outbreak of hostilities was the result of miscalculations on the part of the /Argentine military junta, which risked its political future and the economic stability of the country on a show of military force against a major world power. Unfortunately, Argentine strategy failed to anticipate the strong British popular reaction and the willingness of the prime minister to use the crisis to strengthen the position of her Conservative government at home.

Britain was vulnerable to surprise attack essentially because her intelligence professionals overlooked signs of political unrest and certain military intelligence communications from Argentina (Tulchin, 1987, p. 123-141). The core focus of this paper is to identify exactly the meaning of intelligence failure and then identifying the main reasons and the factors that led to the failure of British intelligence.

The military intelligence is determined by one side and the other capabilities intentions. The first, consisting of what an actor can do and the second the degree of decision or will to do so. Correctly, the technological means at the beginning of the century, may be sufficient and effective to determine the capabilities, but to know the intentions, information from human sources may remain the most valuable. It is very important to understand that the failure in military intelligence occurs when the plans of the military are not executed as decided by the military personnel. The failure of military intelligence is in the Argentine Invasion of Falklands is also discussed as follows.

Discussion

Intelligence Failure

Intelligence failure could be referred to any sort of misunderstanding of a situation that leads the government or the military forces of the government to perform actions that would be inappropriate and unproductivce to the interests of the miliraty and the government itself. Intelligence failure is also considered to be a mistake performed during the implementation of the plans of the military. This commonly happens when the enemies are overestimated or underestimated and the predicted events go unforeseen. It is very significant that the work of intelligence is a product of team work and the failure could occur because of the mistakes and errors of the human endeavour. It would not be wrong to assume that the worst type of intelligence failure could be a surprise attack. A surprise attack could be considered as a lack of responsibility by the bureaucratic department, or poor performance of any responsibility.

Intelligence Cycle

The role of intelligence officer is to keep the commander aware of the enemy and the area of ??operations, the commander requires information ...