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Did Britain reinvade the Falkland Islands following their capture by Argentina in April 1982 because of its ‘identity’? Or did reinvasion follow rather from its ‘role’ in international politics? In this article I show how and why a persuasive constructivist explanation of Britain's response to the invasion must consider not only its identity, which constructivism as it stands would draw attention to, but also the roles it could play in IR at the beginning of the 1980s which would give that identity social meaning, an issue that would likely be overlooked.
Margaret Thatcher's decision to send a naval task force to take back the islands would seem, prima facie, a clear example of when a constructivist identity-based explanation captures better than its competitors the essence of a puzzling event. The decision to reinvade had no economic or geopolitical rationale: Britain's principled sense of Self was at stake,Footnote 1 not its strategic position; its ontological security was threatened,Footnote 2 not its direct physical security nor its economic interests. Unless we are to dismiss international-level explanations altogether and focus instead on domestic factors and individual personalities, as many commentators have done and some IR theorists would have us do,Footnote 3 our best recourse would seem to be to argue that it was in order to affirm Britain's international political identity that a resolute response was necessary.Footnote 4 Such is the intractability of sovereignty disputes in international politics,Footnote 5 anything less than a return to the status quo ex ante was likely to prove insufficient in this regard, pushing strongly in the direction of the use of force.
As for individuals in everyday life, however, the identities of states in IR are affirmed on the basis of social types and categories, commonly referred to as ‘roles’. Identity-based action requires the prior existence of social roles to render both the action itself and the underlying identity socially meaningful.Footnote 6 This point has been largely missed in the constructivist research agenda in IR; roles have either been ignored,Footnote 7 or, where their existence has been acknowledged, they have been equated entirely with identity.Footnote 8 But the two concepts should not be conflated: although roles are taken up by individual actors, they are not owned by them, being part of the culture of international society in which they act.Footnote 9 Since identity affirmation is dependent on role-playing, and impossible without it, states choose to enact roles such as ‘leader’ or ‘reliable ally’ in particular situations in order to make their identity affirming behaviour in international politics meaningful.
An identity-based constructivist explanation of Britain's reaction to the invasion is therefore incomplete without consideration of the roles which Thatcher and her advisors both interpreted Britain's involvement through, and used in their response to, the Falklands crisis: Britain chose and was able to play what can be termed a status quo-oriented power role, with a large stake in the norms of international order, and the capacity and right to remove Argentina by military means. This role was in marked contrast to the colonial power role Argentina attempted to cast Britain into throughout the conflict, with its clear associations to aggression. Importantly, the status quo oriented role Britain tried to play was meaningful because it was accepted by important Others in the international community; this draws our attention away from domestic political explanations and toward the opinions and policies of the US and Britain's European allies that did so much to facilitate the reinvasion.
Not only do we gain a more persuasive interpretation of Britain's response to the crisis by taking note of the social nature of its identity-affirmation, it also becomes clear that even in a seemingly ‘easy case’ such as the Falklands War an explanation grounded solely on the notion of identity is incomplete. This should give us pause before using the concept in less straightforward instances. We also see why this is so: because identity links to action through social categories such as roles,Footnote 10 and not directly, it should not be thought of as an ‘independent variable’ in action: identity-affirmation through role-playing is inherently an interpretive and practical process, involving choice and deliberation, as an analytical concept identity does not therefore sit well with the sort of positivist efficient-causal accounts mainstream IR scholars predominantly employ. Analysis must proceed using appropriately interpretive approaches and methodologies attuned to the realities of international political praxis, and must remain open to the potential for criticism as well as explanation.
In order to make good on these initial remarks, I take the following argumentative steps in this article. I first defend the use of an ideational account. The lack of objective economic interests and a direct threat to national security renders this a relatively simple task, as an interpretation of Britain's interests is clearly required. Second, I assess the viability of an identity-based interpretation, both on empirical and theoretical grounds. I question why Britain's identity should have been affirmed by seeking a military solution, rather than some form of compromise, which leads to a need to account for the social expectations attached to Britain during the crisis, in the form of social roles, which I address in part three. The fourth section then presents a role-based interpretation of Britain's reinvasion of the Falkland Islands, before I conclude by drawing out the implications of this argument for IR theory.
Defining the national interest in Britain's reinvasion of the Falklands
Contrasting two types of constructivist explanation of Britain's reinvasion, a role-based account with one resting on identity, is not meant to suggest that other approaches – realism being the most prominent – would be silent on the Falklands case. Prestige, for example, a keystone of Hans Morgenthau's foundational realist work,Footnote 11 was certainly an element in British thought, as the narrative presented later demonstrates. But Britain's actions require recourse to a constructivist approach because objective material interests, as these are assumed in IR theory,Footnote 12 were not involved, at least not in any genuinely objective manner. Traditional interests such as economic investments, national security, and geopolitical position, were not primary motivations. Although there were rumours that oil might be present in the vicinity of the Falklands,Footnote 13 economic interests have not been prominent within historians’ explanations for the war.Footnote 14 Neither has the reinvasion been primarily explained, nor was it justified, as a straightforward response to an attack on a British security interest, despite the images of the British garrison after its surrender at Stanley. Finally, while the islands were initially taken by Britain in the late 18th century for geostrategic reasons, this was no longer a plausible justification for maintaining control of them.Footnote 15 What British policymakers believed Britain's interest in attempting to recapture the islands to be therefore requires interpretation – something that constructivist scholars have proven is almost always the case with regard to the interests that underpin state behaviour.Footnote 16
Britain's interest in the Falkland Islands – Las Islas Malvinas in Spanish – is certainly puzzling. The Argentine invasion of the islands, which Ronald Reagan referred to as ‘that little ice-cold bunch of land down there’,Footnote 17 and which lie in the South Atlantic some 400 miles northeast of the southern tip of Argentina but some 8000 miles from the UK, brought the existence of the crown colony to the attention of many people in Britain for the first time. This neglect on the part of the British was in stark contrast to the issue's prominence in Argentine politics. Argentina's leaders had kept it firmly on the political agenda since the end of the Second World War, and as of March 1982 the ruling Junta was committed to settling the dispute in their favour, by force if necessary.Footnote 18
Not only were the Falklands at the periphery of Britain's international concerns prior to the invasion, successive governments had appeared to be moving in the direction of accommodating Argentina's demands. Ever since the Argentine claim resurfaced, Britain had been compelled to enter into negotiations over the status of the islands. In 1965, UN Resolution 2065 was passed, which urged both parties to seek a negotiated settlement.Footnote 19 Negotiations began shortly thereafter, and lasted until early 1982. Numerous plans were put forward in the belief that, the sovereignty issue aside, the islands’ future would indeed be better secured by closer and more amicable relations with the mainland. However, initiatives such as a proposed ‘leaseback’ only served to raise the suspicions of the islanders and their powerful lobby in London.Footnote 20 By early 1982 British negotiators were left with few options other than to continue to talk for the sake of talking, with little to offer the Argentines, who would settle for nothing less than a full transfer of sovereignty. The history of Britain's dealings with the islanders nonetheless signalled to many that the islands were an unwanted problem.Footnote 21
Why then did news of Argentina's successful invasion provoke such uproar, and lead Thatcher and those around her to launch a risky reinvasion plan? And risky it certainly was: although Admiral Henry Leach was confident that the islands could be recaptured, a confidence which seemed to have made the decision in Thatcher's mind,Footnote 22 a military success was far from assured.Footnote 23 The window of opportunity for an assault against the islands was narrow with the South Atlantic winter fast approaching, and although Argentina's armed forces were inferior to Britain's, they were certainly not negligible: the Argentine Air Force, armed with French-made Super Étendard jets and Exocet missiles, was a particular threat. Third, the sheer distance of the islands from the UK rendered sustained military operations in the area a serious logistical challenge. Why take such a risk?
Given the lack of interests traditionally understood underpinning Britain's maintenance of the islands, explanations for the decision to attempt reinvasion have tended to focus on domestic politics. Historians and political scientists have discussed at length whether the war affected the government's popularity levels,Footnote 24 and have thus debated the extent to which reinvasion can be explained by Thatcher's desire for the party to stay in office. Elsewhere, Lawrence Freedman has discussed the Falklands case in relation to the Democratic Peace Thesis, showing how the British public proved itself more than willing to go to war on the basis of arguments that stressed national pride and the sovereignty issue.Footnote 25 Others have called the Falklands ‘the War of Thatcher's Face’:Footnote 26 the primary motivation being her own reputation. In sum, because Britain's objective international political interests were absent, scholars have turned instead to domestic political issues for the origins of the national interest: why Britain had to invade has either proven too obvious to mention, or has been deemed impossible to explain.
Yet, the British Government was in fact quite clear in stating what it saw as its interest in the return of the islands to British administration: its rhetoric focused throughout the crisis on a concern for the principles of proper international political conduct and self-determination. Argentina's fait accompli would set a dangerous political precedent if not reversed. In this rhetoric, it was Britain as a country that could not allow such principles to go undefended: Argentina's aggression could not go unpunished so long as it was in its power to prevent it. In other words, British rhetoric suggested that the reinvasion decision was made in order to defend a certain idea of Britain in international affairs – what might be termed its international political identity. The following section therefore assesses the possibilities and problems associated with using the notion of identity to explain state action in the international sphere.
Identity affirmation in international politics
Since IR's (re)discovery of ‘identity’ in the late 1980s and 1990s,Footnote 27 it has become central to several debates in the field.Footnote 28 Not surprisingly it has also become the site of intense struggle, with what identity and its related concepts of the ‘Self’ and ‘Self-identity’ is in the international context being brought into question. Differences of focus and methodology mean that the way in which identity is used is as much a political as analytical choice,Footnote 29 and some social scientists have therefore called for its abandonment.Footnote 30
As a consequence, I restrict myself here to addressing what might be termed the mainstream constructivist perspective on identity and state action.Footnote 31 From this viewpoint, identity is coterminous with the notion of the ‘Self’ of the state – its ‘defining actor properties’ or its ‘basic character’.Footnote 32 This takes the form of a predominant set of ideas and images about what a country is and should be in world politics.Footnote 33
Crucially, for those who have employed this mainstream constructivist perspective on identity to explain state action, identity and action are directly linked. Defined as ‘a property of international actors that generates motivational dispositions’,Footnote 34 this linkage is normally cashed out by considering identity as the basis of the national interests IR theory has long assumed underpin state behaviour. Others have substituted the language of ‘preferences’ for that of interests,Footnote 35 but the idea remains the same: states act because their identities predispose them to certain interests or preferences. More recently, Jennifer Mitzen and Brent Steele have developed this linkage by invoking the concept of ‘ontological security’ from social theory.Footnote 36 Identities create behaviour because they manifest themselves in ongoing habits and practices of foreign policy;Footnote 37 when states are thrown out of these habitual practices or faced with a self-image they are unable to accept, their ‘ontological security’ is threatened, with the result that it must be quickly re-established.Footnote 38
Britain's reaction to the Argentine invasion would at first blush seem a perfect example of identity-based foreign policy action: material interests were absent, but Britain's identity was clearly threatened. On closer inspection, however, this way of conceptualising the links between state identity and state action is more problematical, both empirically and theoretically.
In empirical terms, the arguments given by the British government, which appear to confirm that it was its identity at issue, are not as unique to the UK as the notion of ‘identity’ – that is, sameness across contexts – would suggest. For example, as Winston ChurchillFootnote 39 opined in the Commons on 7 April, a British failure ‘would have repercussions beyond the fate of […] the Falkland Islands themselves […] Britain's standing and credibility in the world, in the eyes of both her adversaries with her allies, will be judged by the resolution and determination with which we meet this challenge […]’.Footnote 40 This statement was typical, yet the notions of ‘standing’ and ‘credibility’ are not unique to Britain: they are meaningful precisely because they invoke understandings and expectations about a state in Britain's position that are held by other actors in the international social sphere. The question is of standing as what, credibility as what: as a sovereign state? As a great power? These are more intuitively understood as ‘roles’ than ‘identities’.
These doubts about the veracity of an identity-based account can be placed in sharper relief by considering the theoretical problems associated with explaining action using identity. In short, there is an agency-deficit in assuming a direct link between identity and action, since identity is not by itself a concept that has action at its heart. Agency has to be imported into identity-based accounts.Footnote 41 Again, this is usually done by viewing states as pursuing interests that are based on their identity: the identities either being assumed, interpreted,Footnote 42 or ‘narrated’ in the course of interest-formation,Footnote 43 as different constructivists have argued. But in either case identity does not underpin agency because it does not directly ‘generate motivational dispositions’. Meaningful identity affirmation does not occur outside social categories, such as roles, as we have already seen in the rhetoric of Britain's behaviour in the context of the Falklands conflict. Identity-based explanations of action therefore leave open the important question of why observed action was socially meaningful in any particular instance, which requires recourse to social roles.
This neglect of the part roles play in state action is in spite of the invocation of the concept by the progenitor of mainstream constructivism: Alexander Wendt. He places roles central to his conceptualisation of the social nature of state action.Footnote 44 Not surprisingly, although explicitly social roles have remained marginal to the constructivist research agenda that largely followed Wendt's lead, implicitly the concept has been invoked on a number of occasions under the misleading name of ‘identity’. Take Jeffrey Legro's recent article on the ‘plasticity of identity under anarchy’,Footnote 45 for example. He discusses how policy ideas change in line with shifts in identity with reference to three ideal-type ‘identities’, which he terms: trustee, hermit, and rebel.Footnote 46 These ‘identities’, however, are clearly more appropriately referred to as ‘roles’. Legro is not alone in this tendency moreover: others have tried to stretch the concept of identity to include ‘multiple identities’ which also take the form of social types, as in Ted Hopf's discussion of Soviet and Russian foreign policy.Footnote 47 But again the multiple ‘social identities’ invoked are in fact examples of ‘roles’.
This neglect of role and the concept-stretching of identity is not without consequence, as we have seen. The next logical step therefore is to show how roles relate identity to action in world politics, before illustrating this linkage in relation to Britain's reinvasion of the Falklands.
Roles, identity, and state action
The neglect of the concept of role within recent constructivist scholarship has been a function of the problems with existing approaches to the relationship between identity, roles, and state action. For Alexander Wendt the international system holds just three roles – those of enemy, rival, and friend – which enables him to prove that the neo-realist vision of world politics, in which each state is an enemy to every other, is but one possible international ‘culture’.Footnote 48 Yet Wendt's choice of three roles is overly restrictive: there is nothing to suggest that the political culture of the international sphere should be limited to these abstract roles.Footnote 49 Michael Barnett, conversely, has argued that the roles states play in international politics derive from their membership in regimes and institutions.Footnote 50 Barnett's approach highlights the restrictiveness of Wendt's conceptualisation, yet his approach is itself insufficiently flexible. It limits the expectations attached to state action in a given context to the formal institutional roles it plays, but these may not exhaust these expectations, as they do not for individuals in everyday life, and may themselves be a product of prior roles. Finally, Kal Holsti has argued that since the international sphere is insufficiently institutionalised, foreign policy springs from the ‘national role conceptions’ of individual states.Footnote 51 Holsti's work has generated a small research agenda within the sub-field of Foreign Policy Analysis,Footnote 52 but it deliberately ignores the key aspect of roles: that they cannot be simply made up by states themselves.
Consequently, I do not adopt any of these approaches here. Instead I briefly show, using a symbolic interactionist approach to the role concept, how roles link identity to action, before illustrating this at length in the following interpretation of Britain's reinvasion of the Falkland Islands.
Despite the limited set of roles Wendt develops in his influential Social Theory of International Politics, he understands roles in symbolic interactionist terms and therefore makes clear how they work in international interactions.Footnote 53 For symbolic interactionists, roles are not sets of rights and duties attached to structural positions, as they are for Role Theorists in sociology.Footnote 54 Instead, roles are viewed as sets of expectations about the proper behaviour of an actor in a given social position.Footnote 55 Using this approach means we must dispense with the notion that roles are detailed scripts actors dutifully follow in interaction, and grasp a more fluid conceptualisation, one which sees roles as used by individuals to gain a sense of the structure of a particular situation, and the possibilities and constraints on their action therein.
Three concepts illuminate the nature of role-based action from this symbolic interactionist viewpoint. The first, drawn from the work of George Herbert Mead, is ‘role-taking’.Footnote 56 The Self ‘takes the role of the Other’ in interaction by assuming its perspective on the situation – in effect, putting oneself in another's shoes. In so doing, the Self gains an understanding of the relevant expectations attached to its own proper behaviour. These Others can be states or individuals in their respective positions; the ‘generalized Other’, which is what ‘one’ does in a given situation;Footnote 57 or the past ‘Self’, if the Self recognises the structure of the situation already. The second concept is ‘role-making’.Footnote 58 On the basis of ‘role-making’ the Self chooses how to act: ‘making’ a role for itself that is appropriate to the situation. In the process of role-taking and role-making the Self may also perceive the presence of ‘alter-casting’ – the third concept. Alter-casting refers to behaviour, verbal or otherwise, that is specifically designed to ‘cast’ another Self into a role complementary to the one the Self wants to make.Footnote 59
It should be immediately apparent, therefore, that viewing action from a role-based perspective places agency, which the identity agenda in IR currently lacks, at its heart, while maintaining the importance to action of identity in the form of the Self. It was one of Mead's key insights that it is through the process of role-taking – assuming the perspective of the Other in interaction – that activity is transformed from unthinking response to a stimulus to meaningful social action: in his terms, that the pre-social ‘I’ becomes the social ‘me’.Footnote 60 The taking and making of roles is the very process by which socially meaningful action on the part of the Self – or one's ‘identity’ – is made possible: role-playing and identity affirming are thus inextricably bound up with one another. Identity-based explanations of action are literally meaningless without recourse to the social roles, not because identity is not involved in action, but because in order to be affirmed identity requires the prior existence of social roles which give that identity meaning. It is not surprising then that IR scholars who have sought to prove the importance of identity to state behaviour have ended up conflating these two concepts.
This does not mean that all state or individual behaviour is role-based. Social norms underpin much of our non-cognitive and habitual daily behaviour,Footnote 61 and have, alongside identity, duly been central to the constructivist research agenda. Emotions are also a prominent part of human action, and are beginning to gain significant attention in IR.Footnote 62 In the case of the Falklands crisis, the emotions of shame and guilt were certainly part of the reason Thatcher's government took the risk of sending the Royal Navy.Footnote 63
However, meaningful social action in international politics – contrasted with mere behaviour – is usually role-based, since it is concerned with consciously taking a stand on a particular political issue in a given social position in order to act, rather than going through the habitual motions or acting unthinkingly on emotion. This symbolic interactionist perspective on the link between roles, identity and action underpins the central argument of this article: that a complete constructivist account of action must include both identity-affirmation and role-playing in international politics. It also further highlights the puzzling neglect of international roles within the constructivist research agenda, which has otherwise brought interpreting political action based on meaning back in to IR with such force in recent years.
Before exploring Britain's reinvasion of the Falklands from a role-based perspective in the following section, a few words on method and methodology are in order. Specifically, the use of an interpretive approach, one which focuses on the rhetoric of British elites for evidence to back up its arguments, should be defended. These remarks should also serve to clarify how to recognise role-based action when we see it.
This can be done by noting that the choice for an interpretive approach, one that analyses the rhetoric of British elites in relation to the Falklands crisis, does not follow simply from the constructivist IR theory framework this article falls within. As David Rousseau has shown, constructivist work can employ mixed methods to powerful effect.Footnote 64 It follows from the nature of role-based action itself. For Mead, taking the role of the Other as the basis of all meaningful social action is itself an interpretive process – stepping into the shoes of the Other in order to interpret the scope of appropriate behaviour. Moreover, this is only the first stage of what is a double hermeneutic: the processes of role-taking and role-making, and the resultant decisions over which role to play, both take place discursively. It is through language and rhetoric that the effects of social roles as sets of expectations about appropriate behaviour are comprehended and thus felt, and that the reasons for action given as a result are meaningful.Footnote 65 Taken together, therefore, interpretive methodology follows from the choice to use a symbolic interactionist account of role-playing applied to state action in international politics. Since the account is explicitly state-centric, finally, it focuses on the rhetoric of the top levels of the British government.
The following section uses these reflections on the relationship between role, identity, and action to present a role-based account of Britain's decision to reinvade the Falklands in 1982. This should not be considered the definitive interpretation of the crisis, but a demonstration of the importance of role-playing to identity affirmation in international politics. It assesses both the roles that were available for Britain to play in order to give its identity meaning, what behaviour was appropriate to that role, and how Thatcher and those around her tried hard throughout the crisis to ensure that Britain perform it in the correct way, thereby also showing the parameters of British identity as it manifested itself in the conflict.
A role-based interpretation of Britain's reinvasion of the Falklands
Argentina's seizure of the Falklands Islands brought to the fore two sets of meanings about Britain in international politics in 1982, and two corresponding roles Britain could play in response to affirm its identity. The first role saw Britain as a power able to take the islands by force, and one that was in the right in so doing because of its support for the principles of international conduct. This role, which Britain ‘took’ by assuming the perspective of Britain's European allies and the US, can be termed a status quo oriented power, or in Legro's terms, a trustee role.Footnote 66 It could even be considered as a great power role, according to the definition of Hedley Bull.Footnote 67 But in order not to suggest that Britain was in fact still a great power in 1982, I stick here to the former label. The second role was that of a colonial power: a role with no basis in right or might to retake the islands by force, which Britain was strongly cast into by Argentina from the outset of the crisis.
The story of Britain's decision to reinvade the Falklands, a decision put in motion by the sending of a task force on 5 April but not finally taken until 20 May when the invasion orders were given, is that of how Britain succeeded in rejecting the role of colonial aggressor, instead affirming its principled sense of Self by making a status quo oriented power role, standing up for the principles of international order. This interpretation tells this story by first assessing the critical expectations of relevant Others that gave Britain's identity its meaning in the crisis, before then focusing on the role-making and identity-affirming elements a solely identity-based account would lay emphasis on.
Exchanging alter-casts: Britain or Argentina as ‘aggressor’?
Almost immediately after Argentine forces had taken control of the Falklands their leaders began to cast their foes as a ‘colonial aggressor’. This entailed, on the one hand, playing down Argentina's violation of international law by arguing that if Las Malvinas was sovereign territory, the use of force could not constitute aggression.Footnote 68 This argument was strengthened by the largely bloodless operations on the Falklands and South Georgia,Footnote 69 and by assurances given to the islanders that property rights would be guaranteed and generosity would follow their acceptance of the new status quo.Footnote 70 By presenting the invasion as a peaceful fait accompli Britain secretly desired, Argentina sought to deny it any substantive reason to respond militarily.
This process was reinforced by the Argentine leadership's continued emphasis on the colonial nature of Britain's possession of the islands, stressing its history as the imperial power par excellence in the mind of the instinctively anti-colonial international community. Foreign Minister Carlos Mendez thus told US Secretary of State Alexander Haig on 15 April that ‘I think no one can challenge Great Britain on her title of world champion on the use of force in the conquest of her territories.’Footnote 71 Pointing out the obvious historical inconsistencies that accompanied pictures of a British armada setting sail for the South Atlantic was almost sufficient to achieve this casting of Britain into the role of colonial aggressor, coming to engage in a little gunboat diplomacy.
British role-taking therefore immediately came up against this strong alter-cast from Argentina: this was far from a case of identity affirmation in a contextual vacuum. But Buenos Aires did not succeed in equating military action with colonial aggression, as policymakers in London attempted to reinforce what to them seemed the more obvious role assignment that emerged following the invasion, with Britain this time as the clear victim of aggression. Thatcher began this process in the Commons emergency debate on 3 April: she condemned the ‘totally unprovoked aggression by the Government of Argentina against British territory […] It has not a shred of justification and not a scrap of legality.’Footnote 72 The Ambassador to the UN, Sir Anthony Parsons, had done likewise two days previously: ‘We are not the aggressors, as my Argentine colleague has again and again suggested we are […] What possible or conceivable reason could we have for aggressive intent?’Footnote 73
While the Argentines thus tried to amplify the colonial nature of the issue throughout the crisis, Britain attempted to play down this aspect at every turn, since the ‘more the Falklands could be presented as a matter of colonialism, which is how it had previously been developed in the General Assembly, the more awkward Britain's position would become.’Footnote 74
To the British, of course, this was not in fact a colonial issue at all: ‘There is no question in the Falkland Islands of any colonial dependence or anything of the sort’Footnote 75 Leader of the Opposition Michael Foot told the House on 3 April to wide approval. But while this argument may have satisfied the British public, in some ways this was immaterial, since a majority of UN members had more than a little sympathy with Argentina's position. As UN Secretary General Pérez de Cuellar later wrote, even his Under-Secretary Rafeeuddin Ahmed, whom he put in charge of a negotiating task force, ‘being a Pakistani […] could not help but be hostile to colonialism in any form, and the Falklands were unquestionably a colonial possession’.Footnote 76 Overt signs of jingoism on the part of the British would thus be interpreted as the revival of its old imperial ways, ill suited to the supposedly post-imperial international environment of the early 1980s. Here the impact of the international political context of the conflict are clearly again on view, bringing into further doubt the extent to which a domestic politics argument alone can account for Britain's actions.
This exchange of alter-casts continued throughout the crisis, but Britain gained a crucial advantage in its initial phase through a diplomatic coup pulled off by its UN ambassador Anthony Parsons in the form of the passage on 3 April of Security Council Resolution 502. The resolution called for an immediate cessation of hostilities, the withdrawal of all Argentine troops, and the commencement of diplomatic efforts to solve the dispute.Footnote 77 Although Argentina came up with its own interpretation of the resolution,Footnote 78 in the minds of most observers it solidified Britain's view of if not the rights of the case, then at least the wrongs, helping to deflect sufficient pressure to allow London to consider the use of force. Importantly, the resolution also served to move the diplomatic action away from New York during the first phase of the conflict. This suited Britain, as it helped to mute voices of international concern over the colonial overtones of the expedition, until Britain's forces had reached the islands.
Other roles to take: Britain finds support from Europe and the US
If Britain did not see its role as that of a colonial power, as it might have done in the past, what other roles could it play and what other Self could it thereby affirm? How did important Others expect Britain to react to such a humiliating ejection of its troops and administration from British sovereign territory, and what alternative roles did they thereby create? These questions lead us to assess the expectations surrounding Britain's possible courses of actions from its European allies and the US, from where we can get a sense of an alternative role Britain could assume – that of a status quo oriented power.
First, Britain's rejection of the colonial connotations of its action was bolstered by significant and unusually forthcoming moral and economic support offered by its European partners in the dispute's opening phase.Footnote 79 The French were particularly staunch: according to Defence Minister John Nott, ‘In so many ways Mitterrand and the French were our greatest allies.’Footnote 80 The supply of French-made Exocet missiles, for example, which were to cause significant damage to the British Task Force, was swiftly halted, not only to Argentina but to likely third country suppliers such as Peru.Footnote 81 Technical information on French Mirage jets – also in service with the Argentine Air Force – was also provided, along with jets sent to the UK for training purposes.Footnote 82 Furthermore, French officials persuaded Senegal to allow British aircraft to land in Dakar, which released some of the mounting pressure on the Wideawake airfield on Ascension Island.Footnote 83 Of course, France's support was not altruistic in nature: Britain's actions in response to the Argentine invasion had serious implications for France's own remaining overseas territories and possessions.Footnote 84 It had a strong reason therefore to back Britain's attempt to play a role that included a strong response, military if needs be, but nevertheless was not invalidated by colonial connotations.
European support for Britain's attempt to play a non-colonial power role extended to the institutional arena of the EEC, which moved quickly to echo the sentiment heard at the UN – indeed, ‘The Community and its member states have rarely moved with such speed as they did in the Falklands case.’Footnote 85 An arms embargo was immediately put into place, while a ban on imports came into effect on 16 April. As Argentina's largest market, the embargo had significant potential to damage the Argentine economy.Footnote 86 Not all European states were fully in support of Britain. The embargo had the potential to hit Italy's textile industry particularly hard,Footnote 87 and Ireland baulked at the colonial overtones of the task force,Footnote 88 but they both eventually gave grudging backing. This helped the Thatcher government fend off charges of aggression and to respond to the invasion militarily while not confirming the suspicion that it was playing the role of imperial power.
However, it was the position of the US with regard to the appropriate British response that was of the most consequence. Except for the unlikely event of Soviet intervention, only the US wielded sufficient leverage to prevent Britain from attempting to retake the islands – indeed, it has been argued that, had it not been for American military equipment and satellite intelligence, Britain would have failed.Footnote 89
The Falklands crisis represented ‘a very difficult situation for the US’, as President Reagan stressed on 6 April, because the US was ‘friends with both of the countries engaged in this dispute’.Footnote 90 The friendly state of Anglo-American relations is well known,Footnote 91 and the personal relations between Thatcher and Reagan particularly warm; it was always unlikely that the US would not share at least some part of Britain's sense of grievance. But Washington had also been wooing Buenos Aires as a partner in the fight against Communism in Latin America.Footnote 92 While London expected unequivocal backing from the outset, therefore, many in Washington were more concerned with the possible side-effects of siding early on with the UK. Conflict appeared to open the door to Soviet interference precisely at a time when Reagan wanted to appear tough on Communism, particularly in Latin America.Footnote 93
Rather than take sides openly from the outset, therefore, the US decided to provide mediation assistance in the hope of reaching a negotiated settlement, since a diplomatic settlement offered the best hope for a solution to the dispute that would not serve to damage its perceived interests. Mediation was also backed by a number of key figures in Washington: notably the group of so-called ‘Latinos’, headed by Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Ambassador to the UN, and Thomas Enders, Under Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs. Although aware of the value to the US of Britain, they argued against the ‘Europeanists’ – Under Secretary of State for European Affairs Lawrence Eagleburger and Secretary of Defence Caspar Weinberger among them – that America's best interest would be served by neutrality.Footnote 94 Soon after the task force had sailed, Secretary of State Alexander Haig began a mission of shuttle diplomacy, inspired by his predecessor Henry Kissinger's efforts in the Middle East nine years before.Footnote 95
Yet despite this purported impartiality, crucial actors in Washington leaned towards London from the outset. This was most evident in defence cooperation, particularly important being the provision of Sidewinder 9-L missiles and satellite intelligence.Footnote 96 It was Weinberger himself who decided to continue the traditional cooperation in this sphere, without explicit authorisation from above. ‘Some of us’, he later noted, ‘felt that if the British were going to start a counter-attack to retake the Islands, we should, without any question, help them to the utmost of our ability.’Footnote 97 Shortly after the task force was sent Weinberger therefore ‘passed the word to the Department that all existing UK requests for military equipment, and requests for equipment or other types of support, short of actual participation in their military action, should be granted immediately.’Footnote 98
A degree of American support can also be discerned in the April negotiation effort, although this was not recognised by many British officials, who felt that the US should have been fully behind them from the beginning. By tempering the worst consequences of a White House unsure as to how to deal with the conflict, the Haig shuttle served a useful purpose for Britain, as its full participation helped convince international opinion that it was genuinely in favour of finding a peaceful solution to the dispute.Footnote 99 In so doing, it allowed the British to continue military preparations in case force was needed, and thereby to retain the initial pressure on Argentina to comply with Resolution 502 and withdraw its forces, restoring the status quo ex ante.
Indeed, when it became evident by the end of April that a diplomatic solution was not in sight, the US openly ‘tilted’ towards Britain.Footnote 100 Military exports to Argentina were suspended, Export-Import Bank credits and guarantees were cancelled, and Commodity Credit Corporation loans were frozen.Footnote 101 Finally, military assistance, until this point largely secret, was no longer to be kept quiet. Rather than support the alter-casting of Britain as the colonial aggressor, as it had over Suez,Footnote 102 this mixed American reaction to the invasion enabled Britain to make a role for itself that included conducting an overt display of military force in support of seemingly colonial possessions, without affirming the colonial connotations of this action.
Washington's response begs the question why the US ultimately supported Britain's assessment of the role assignments and not Argentina's. An identity-based explanation, and a liberal argument too for that matter, would focus on the similarity in British and American regime types, and their antipathy towards Argentina's dictatorship. Identity considerations would also draw our attention to the cultural and linguistic similarities between the two countries. There would be much to support this thesis. But we cannot understand America's initial hesitation at becoming involved and its hesitation before offering full-scale support, nor its support in the defence sphere and then its eventual ‘tilt’ towards Britain, unless we consider its actions in light of its own international role.
As leader of the West during a context of heightened Cold War, America's role was central to its actions in the conflict. Although both Argentina and the UK were allies, the UK's support in the Cold War was more important to the US than Argentina's influence in Latin America, especially given the unsavoury nature of the latter's regime. Since Britain's defeat or worse still its unwillingness to fight would send unwanted signals to the Soviet Union, for the Americans a negotiated solution, which it tried first, or a quick return to the status quo ex ante, which it promoted once it was clear a negotiated settlement was impossible, were the best alternatives, and the US accordingly worked hard to achieve them.
Role-making: a status quo oriented power
Britain's ‘role-taking’ in the Falklands crisis – its assumption of the perspective of key Others – convinced the Thatcher government that there was space in the international political context of 1982 for action in response to the Argentine invasion that would previously have been considered colonial in nature and thereby condemned. This role then was explicitly not that of a colonial power, as the Argentines believed, but what might be termed a status quo-oriented power role. Consideration of the contents of this role requires analysis of the role-making strategies undertaken by the government, and the way in which these played on the expectations coming from their supporters.
In responding to the Argentine invasion, Britain's role-making manifested itself in rhetoric focused not on the sovereignty of the islands or the future of their population but on the violation of certain principles of international conduct, and the risk that this would set a precedent in international affairs.Footnote 103 These principles were self-determination, the sanctity of international law and the non-use of force to settle disputes in the international arena. Although the invasion provided the substance of Britain's grievance with Argentina, therefore, it was these principles that Britain claimed it was acting to uphold.
Britain's role-making thus gave central place to the defence of international law and order, as displayed by its rhetoric surrounding the war. Michael English's declaration in the House that ‘The most important thing is that what we are defending is the rule of law in the world’ was typical in this regard.Footnote 104 So too was Foreign Secretary Francis Pym's assertion that Britain must ‘see to it that Argentina's illegal and intolerable defiance of the international community and of the rule of law is not allowed to stand.’Footnote 105 This legalistic argument underpinned a more general concern with the fabric of international order, loosely but not entirely equated with international law. As Pym reiterated on 29 April, ‘The re-establishment of international order on proper rules will bring an enormous amount of relief to an enormous number of countries and millions of individuals.’Footnote 106 Put simply, if Argentine ‘got away’ with their invasion of the Falkland Islands, what was to stop others around the world taking their disputes into their own hands? The number of similar territorial conflicts was too large to contemplate, beyond the most obvious examples of Taiwan, Gibraltar and the Sakhalin Islands.
However, if Britain conceived of itself as a defender of international order, and perceived a good degree of support the US and Europe in that regard, it is unsurprising that accusations of colonialism levelled against her appeared strong to other members of the international community – namely the ex-colonial states that made up a majority of the UN. The same principles it sought to defend were those that upheld a status quo that many outside the most developed states considered effectively colonial. The fact was not lost on the Argentines: as Mendez reported to the Argentine Cabinet on 8 April on his recent trip to Washington, ‘The major powers wished to preserve the international status quo and were unhappy with the precedent created by Argentina in the South Atlantic.’Footnote 107
The roles of ‘colonial’ and ‘status quo’ power therefore were two sides of the same coin. Britain's attempts to play a status quo-oriented role were based on a particular understanding of the status quo: namely the status quo of the American-led West, including Europe. Two elements of this understanding of Britain's status quo power role should be highlighted.
First, it is significant that while Britain claimed a deep ownership of the principles of the international community, justifying its military response in terms of moral principles and legal arguments and by casting itself into the role of defender of international order, its leaders also strived throughout the crisis to avoid any implications of this stance that might have hindered its ability to launch a risky and potentially costly military occupation. As a status quo-oriented power, Britain had to abide by the other principles and norms that could be considered to go along with that role, namely proportionality of response and a commitment to finding a peaceful settlement if at all possible.
The sinking of the Belgrano on 2 May with the loss of 321 Argentine lives was therefore a notable turning point in the conflict, when the horrors of warfare were made plain.Footnote 108 From that point until the end of the hostilities, concern over the consequences of sustained military confrontation grew and support for Britain weakened – despite the loss of HMS Sheffield the day after the Belgrano attack.Footnote 109 An immediate consequence was the redoubling of diplomatic efforts aimed at bringing about a peaceful end to the dispute. Within hours of the ship's destruction, a peace plan sponsored by the Peruvian President Belaunde Terry was put on the table.Footnote 110 This Peruvian plan was quickly replaced by an offer to mediate on behalf of the UN Secretary General, Javier Pérez de Cuellar, whose efforts continued even after Britain's reinvasion, and at one stage again came close to securing a cease-fire.
However, both initiatives came to nought as the negotiating posture of both sides hardened.Footnote 111 Hence, while UNSC Resolution 502 had been an initial triumph for the British in that it called for an immediate withdrawal of Argentine forces, it also called for the two belligerents to ‘seek a diplomatic solution to their differences and to respect fully the purposes and principles of the Charter of the UN’.Footnote 112 The very least Britain might have been prepared to accept, however, would have been an American interim administration on the islands. Throughout the conflict, British policymakers attempted to walk a tightrope between steadfast refusal to show weakness in the face of aggression, including an acceptance of the military consequences of that stance, and the necessities of rejecting the role of colonial power. Crucially, however, this understanding of the status quo, and what it meant in military and negotiating terms, was not objective, but in many respects the other side of the ‘colonial power’ coin.
The second element of Britain's status quo orientation worth highlighting is its Western orientation within the conflict's Cold War context. As Defence Minister John Nott later made clear, ‘we were in the middle of the Cold War […] and as Secretary of Defence I was not really thinking about anything else.’Footnote 113 Britain's status quo-oriented role therefore only went as far as that was equated with the West's understanding of the status quo. Although the sending of the Task Force was in large measure to defend universal principles, thus justifying such a significant out-of-area operation, specifically Cold War considerations focused on the issue of the West's determination to defend its own principles in the face of the threat, ideological as well as military, represented by the Soviet Union. As Haig later noted, ‘[…] Britain's action in the Falklands may have marked a historic turning point in what has been a long and dangerous night of Western passivity.’Footnote 114 Indeed, although the US was worried at the possibility of a resounding British military victory, it was also aware of the danger of a British defeat, and especially that having been the fault of American neutrality. Such a scenario would prove that the West had indeed become militarily ineffectual due to moral degradation resulting from its social decadence, as the Soviets would have liked to believe. As such, it would convince the Soviet Union that the West was too peace-loving to stop its advances anywhere else in the world.
Identity affirmation
After having explored at length the expectations attached to Britain that made identity affirmation possible, we can now complete the interpretation by addressing the reasons the British government gave for why Britain was the type of actor that must make a role for itself based upon the defence of international principles, and the demonstration of resolution in the face of aggression.
As Thatcher later made clear, ‘We were defending the honour of our nation.’Footnote 115 In this sense, Britain's defence of the rule of law and of right international conduct was related to more abstract notions such as the ability of Britain as a state to ‘hold its head high’ in the world, and indeed the ability of British people to walk with their heads held high abroad.Footnote 116 This desire for international esteem chimed in with a prevalent feeling that Britain had lost its way internationally over the course of its recent history. Although typically exaggerated, Alan Clark's diary entries for the initial phases of the conflict are indicative. ‘It's all over’, he exclaimed on 2 April, ‘We're a Third World Country, no good for anything.’Footnote 117 As Michael Foot asked during the emergency debate, ‘What has happened to British diplomacy?’,Footnote 118 Bicheno has argued that it became commonplace for diplomats to be asked, prior to the Falklands War, ‘what has happened to your country?’Footnote 119 Indeed, until the moment the task force reached the islands, many felt that there was still time for Britain to show the weakness many considered to have characterised her recent history: ‘The entire history of British foreign policy since Suez suggested that, after a period of prolonged dithering, a diplomatic settlement on the Falklands would be reached.’Footnote 120 As MP Eric Ogden accused the Government on 7 April: ‘I smell the smoke of appeasement. I smell a sell-out.’Footnote 121
Thus, the idea that Britain should negotiate with the Argentines following what represented a clear breach of international law was difficult for the Thatcher Government to stomach for reasons that went beyond its own immediate survival. Negotiating would send a signal that Britain was no longer prepared to fight. This was recognised by Admiral Leach, who, when ‘[…] he learned of the imminent Argentine invasion […] bypassed the chain of command to tell his Prime Minister that if a counter-invasion were not undertaken and carried through to a successful conclusion, then Britain would be a different country, one whose word would count for little.’Footnote 122 Britain's reputation and international prestige were at issue, the importance of which should not easily be discounted.Footnote 123
Unsurprisingly, this process raised the usual historical analogies – however badly these fitted the situation at hand. The first analogy was Suez, which proved something of a ‘how not to do it guide for Thatcher’Footnote 124 – particularly regarding the need to assure US backing. Another common historical ‘lesson’ invoked was Munich: the charge of appeasing dictators. Pym told the Commons in no uncertain terms on 7 April that ‘Britain does not appease dictators.’Footnote 125 Thatcher repeated the sentiment the following day.Footnote 126 Making this analogy offered another form of rationale behind the necessity of supporting international law and the status quo under these specific circumstances: ‘what was the alternative?’ Thatcher later argued, ‘That a common or garden dictator should rule over the Queen's subjects and prevail by fraud and violence? Not while I was Prime Minister.’Footnote 127 Failure to respond strongly would have been tantamount to appeasement in this interpretation: as Anthony Kershaw MP argued, ‘If we do not defend the Falkland Islands, some may believe that we will not defend other territories and interests. Would we be led, step by step, down a road of appeasement, which some of us have seen before? Would we defend ourselves in NATO? Would we even defend ourselves on this island? If such questions were asked and were not answered clearly, sooner or later the choice would be offered to us again and again until finally our option would be world war or defeat and humiliation.’Footnote 128 That such far-fetched analogies were deemed meaningful at all is testimony to the strength of feeling concerning the need to confirm Britain's wounded sense of identity.
Indeed, beyond both of these historical analogies lay a less coherent, but perhaps more powerfully held belief in the body politic that since Suez, Britain had indeed lost something and had been unable to regain it. Clark again captured this feeling when he said in the Commons, ‘I believe that this is the last chance, the very last chance, for us to redeem out history over the past twenty five years, of which we may be ashamed and from which we may have averted our gaze.’Footnote 129 This idea found most resonance in charges against the Government, and particularly against the Foreign Office, that it had brought shame upon Britain by attempting to negotiate a transfer of sovereignty to Argentina.Footnote 130This shame found its most powerful image in the photograph of the British garrison at Stanley lying in a line face downwards after having surrendered to the Argentine invaders. It was for the sake of British honour, therefore, that Argentina's invasion required an assertive response.Footnote 131 This went beyond the question of Thatcher's job or the ability of the Conservative government to remain in power; the choice of Britain's response involved the issue of the country's very viability in the future. As Haig noted, ‘Mrs Thatcher's objective, after all, was to demonstrate that Britain was still Britain.’Footnote 132
In other words, Britain's identity predisposed it to make the attempt to recover the islands, since it was clear from the outset that this would be impossible by diplomatic means alone. As Clark suggested, the least Britain deserved was that ‘If we are going to go […] let us go out in a blaze – then we can all sit back and comfortably become a nation of pimps and ponces, a sort of Macao to the European continent.’Footnote 133 Even here, the implication that Britain must be something in the world is clear, even if it is merely an offshore hedonist paradise. Nonetheless, this account has showed that this identity affirming process was dependent on the existence of and support for a certain role for Britain to play in the world – a status quo oriented power role, of a certain kind.
Conclusion
In this article I have shown that an identity-based explanation of Britain's decision to reinvade the Falkland Islands is incomplete without taking into consideration the roles that served to give meaning to Britain's actions. Britain's principled sense of Self was brought into doubt by the invasion, its ontological security threatened, but the way in which it could affirm its identity was crucially dependent on the international social context of its response. Britain's ability to launch and maintain sufficient support or at least acquiescence for a military response was aided by the expectations and actions of key actors such as the US and Britain's European allies, which helped constitute its role as a status quo-oriented power. Had these players considered Britain's decision to send a task force to re-take the islands as the moves of an antagonistic colonial power, there is little doubt it would have been forced to back down.
The final task is briefly to draw out two further implications of this argument. A first implication is that the concept of role is in need of re-positioning at the heart of the constructivist research agenda. As I have shown, roles never really went away in IR theory: the most prominent theories have long debated the expectations attached to the behaviour of the most important actors in international politics, the ‘great powers’,Footnote 134 thereby implicitly assuming the existence of roles while avoiding directly engaging with the concept. More recently, with the exception of Alexander Wendt, the constructivist research agenda has also come close to accepting the importance of the concept, but has all too often conflated it with identity. The result has been that constructivist approaches are now often viewed as insufficiently social, leading to the impression that constructivists see everything as at all times completely in flux. Since ‘anarchy is what states make of it’, they are thought to be able to make of it what they like. Noting the importance of roles and the expectations of Others in international interaction, and thereby on the international social pressures on states, this analysis should re-balance this misperception: since roles are the link between identity and social context, Self and society, a role-based constructivist approach demonstrates that both the agent and the structure within which it is embedded matter in international interaction.
The second implication is that this study has opened up a number of interesting theoretical questions it has not, for reasons of space, been able to itself address. It has made the case that a full understanding of the British decision to reinvade the Falklands must include reference to the international roles that gave its identity affirmation meaning. But in so doing it has opened up many more interesting questions: what other roles exist in contemporary international politics? What types of international order underpin these role structures? And what happens when those orders or role structures change? There are thus a number of potential ways forward for the role-based analysis of state action.
Let me briefly point out two I consider to have particular potential. First, given the relationship between role and social context, the approach has natural associations with the English School's notion of an international society.Footnote 135 Questions concerning the roles states play in international affairs, where these roles come from and what practices sustain them might therefore fruitfully be addressed through a historical reconstruction of the development of the society of states. Second, I have only scratched the surface here of the dramaturgical origins of roles – given the increased amount of attention being paid to the aesthetics of IR,Footnote 136 and the evident importance of the media in this sphereFootnote 137 – this would seem to be another area of particular potential. I have restricted myself in this article to proving that Britain's identity affirmation in the Falklands case was role-based, further research on this and other cases might therefore evaluate how states go about matching their actions to their expectations that constitute the roles they play in international politics, perhaps deploying insights such as those of Erving Goffman on the presentation of Self in everyday life,Footnote 138 in order to question the problems of diplomacy and foreign policy impression management entailed by role-playing.
A third and final implication of this argument is that role-based analysis calls for a different type of theory than is predominant within IR and political science more generally. Since role-based action is interpretive in nature, role as an analytical concept must also seek to interpret; roles do not therefore sit at all well with positivist analysis. The aim is not to explain behaviour in light of a supposedly pre-existing role-set, but to account for behaviour by way of interpreting the meaning of roles that were in fact taken and made, and which roles players were alter-cast into. This type of theory is also practical in nature, as opposed to the technical knowledge mainstream IR on the whole seeks.Footnote 139 Because both constraint but also the taking of strong choicesFootnote 140 are built in to action from this perspective, role-based analysis aims for interpretation of the difficult decisions faced by decision makers, with a view to aiding them in their future political projects.
