Strategic Gateway: Klaus Dodds on the Geopolitics of the South Atlantic and Antarctica in the context of the reignited Falklands-Malvinas dispute

Yeah, good morning.

It's a pleasure to be back again in conversation with you, Eric.

You know what? For me, it was almost like Groundhog Day because many, many years ago, I published a book called Pink Ice, Britain and the South Atlantic Empire.

And my favorite chapter in Pink Ice was, was about Falklands football and foot and mouth.

And this was about the 1960s when England played Argentina in the World Cup hosted in London.

England won.

It was a very, very ill-tempered game.

They went on to win the World Cup.

But famously, Antonio Rattin was sent off by a West German referee.

And it just exploded in Argentina into a story about conspiracy against Argentina that Britain and West Germany were in cahoots to try and steal the World Cup from Argentina in 1966.

Now, fast forward.

to 2026 we're back again high stakes semi-final game and before you know it this time Argentina have triumphed and we have that familiar banner Las Malvinas on Argentinas so As I say, this is something that has this extraordinary capacity to flare up, then to die away a little bit, and then to flare up again, depending on circumstances.

And there's a kind of shape and rhythm to it.

At this moment in time, we're back in, I think, a more tense phase.

But the truth of the matter is the 1982 conflict did not resolve the disputed question of who owns the Falklands Malvinas.

Now, Britain and the Falklands community might have thought it was resolved in June 1982.

The reality is successive Argentine presidents... have never relinquished that counterclaim to those islands and other islands, which no doubt we'll consider later on in our conversation.

So it's a live issue, as much as that might be painful for a British or Falkland Islands observer to note.

Can you give us even a little longer background as well? This goes back to the 19th century, this conflict over the Falkland Islands and who has sovereignty over it.

Why does it come up and then die again? Is it just random football games and political posturing or is there some other factors that cause this to become a hot issue over and over again?

So one of the things that you quickly discover when you start to study, I'm just going to say these islands, and I hope that's clear enough, rather than constantly say Falklands Malvinas or Falklands or Iles Malvinas.

So these islands are absolutely caught up in a series of rival narratives about their history and geography.

The rupture point, as far as Argentina is concerned, is the 1830s, when the Falklands becomes this crown colony and the United Kingdom begins to settle and develop those islands.

over the intervening period between 1833 and the current day.

In the 19th century, the importance of the Falkland Islands, and this time I will use that term, was very much because of its location.