The Falklands War was a just conflict

It was more than a fight between UK and Argentina, it was a battle between democracy and tyranny

Forty years ago today, the brutal dictatorship in charge of Argentina sent an army, largely made up of conscripts, to conquer the Falkland Islands.

To many, it seemed that the UK would be unable to defend this faraway island territory, but the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, took the decision to send a British force to retake the islands.

Two months later, on June 14 1982, following the deaths of more than 900 people, the Argentinian commander on the islands surrendered and, just three days after that, the head of Argentina’s “junta”, General Leopoldo Galtieri, resigned.

Victory for the UK in the Falklands War stopped the islanders from falling under the control of a vicious dictatorship, but it also helped to end a regime infamous for waging the so-called “Dirty War” in Argentina. Thousands of student activists, intellectuals and others who sought to oppose the junta had been tortured and murdered, in some cases by being thrown out of planes into the Atlantic Ocean.

Before the year was out, Raúl Alfonsín, a lawyer who had defended victims of the regime’s oppression, was democratically elected president.

Today, as the world reels from the invasion of another democratic country, Ukraine, by forces commanded by another murderous despot, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, it is worth remembering why the Falklands War was a just war.

Most see it as a conflict between the UK and Argentina, but it can also be viewed as a battle between democracy and tyranny. Whatever the rights and wrongs of Britain and Argentina’s competing, historic claims to the islands, the people living there had a right to be free, to live without fear of being thrown out of a plane, and Britain had a duty to defend them.

That same battle is now raging in Ukraine as Putin forces conscripts into the ranks of his army to die for his vainglorious ambition, while lying to his own people.

Just as Galtieri and co were responsible for all of the deaths in the Falklands War – 649 Argentinian, 255 British and three islanders – Putin is responsible for all the deaths, on both sides, in Ukraine.

Ukrainians have a right to fight for their freedom and every democratic country has a duty to help them.