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rfmcdonaldThe news that the Soviet Union may have lent intelligence support to Argentina during the Falklands War didn't really surprise me.
Rachel Schmidt's 1989 excellent survey of Argentina's relationship with the two Cold War superpowers makes the very critical point that even a radical left-wing Argentina wouldn't welcome that much Soviet influence. Peronism is an ideology that opposed the West and the East in the Cold War, after all, and was strongly attached to the Non-Aligned Movement. Argentina under the junta certainly wasn't a radical left-wing country, for all that the generals were willing to make use of the Soviets (and the Soviets, likewise). Besides, Argentina has a very long history of seeing itself as a Great Power, a rival to Brazil and Chile, independent of the Northern Hemisphere powers, and a force in the world. That self-conception might have changed now, in the wake of Argentina's economic decline and Buenos Aires' signing onto a secondary position in Brazil's continental plans, but again, the generals were strongly attached to that vision of Argentina.
So, grateful that the Argentines exported enough food to keep the Soviet citizenry happy, the Soviets returned the favour by supplying the Argentines with the satellite data necessary for them to give a bloody nose to one of their principle Cold War antagonists. What's surprising about that?
As it fought the British task force in the struggle for the Falklands, Argentina was receiving help from the Soviet Union, a Russian writer has claimed.
Moscow made an unlikely ally for the right-wing junta that had occupied the islands but the journalist Sergei Brilev has uncovered evidence that the Soviet Union was spying on the British at the height of the 1982 conflict.
He concluded in a recent book that the Kremlin came close to thwarting the Falklands expedition and the career of Margaret Thatcher by passing vital intelligence to the Argentina Air Force from Soviet satellitespositioned over the war zone.
Mr Brilev interviewed former KGB and Red Army generals who confirmed that Moscow was tracking the Royal Navy around the Falklands during the war. He told The Times: “The exact data passed is still classified but there are coincidences of chronology that show that several Argentine successes may have been the result of what the Soviets provided.”
A satellite launched on May 15 was particularly helpful as British troops were landing and coming under constant attack infrom Argentine jets at San Carlos Bay, known as “bomb alley”. Argentine missiles sunk HMS Coventry and the support ship Atlantic Conveyor on May 25, raising fears in London of a catastrophic military defeat if more vessels went down and the task force could not support the soldiers on the ground.
“Argentina did not have the intelligence capability to track those ships. It’s quite possible that they got the co-ordinates from the Soviets,” said Mr Brilev.
The Soviet satellites may also have played a role in the war’s most controversial incident, the sinking of the General Belgrano by a British submarine with the loss of 368 lives. Mr Brilev said that Norway intercepted Soviet satellite photographs showing the Belgrano’s position and passed them to Britain as a Nato ally.“So it may have been the USSR that helped the British to hit the Belgrano,” said Mr Brilev, who is an anchor and deputy director of the Rossiya state television channel in Moscow.
While the Kremlin hoped to damage Britain as a Nato enemy, Mr Brilev suggested a more basic reason for its support of the right-wing junta. Argentina was one of only two countries that ignored an embargo on exports of key foodstuffs to the struggling Soviet economy after Moscow’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
“The commercial interchange reached $2 billion (£1.3 billion), which was a fantastically big sum at that time. The USSR owed them something,” he said.
Rachel Schmidt's 1989 excellent survey of Argentina's relationship with the two Cold War superpowers makes the very critical point that even a radical left-wing Argentina wouldn't welcome that much Soviet influence. Peronism is an ideology that opposed the West and the East in the Cold War, after all, and was strongly attached to the Non-Aligned Movement. Argentina under the junta certainly wasn't a radical left-wing country, for all that the generals were willing to make use of the Soviets (and the Soviets, likewise). Besides, Argentina has a very long history of seeing itself as a Great Power, a rival to Brazil and Chile, independent of the Northern Hemisphere powers, and a force in the world. That self-conception might have changed now, in the wake of Argentina's economic decline and Buenos Aires' signing onto a secondary position in Brazil's continental plans, but again, the generals were strongly attached to that vision of Argentina.
So, grateful that the Argentines exported enough food to keep the Soviet citizenry happy, the Soviets returned the favour by supplying the Argentines with the satellite data necessary for them to give a bloody nose to one of their principle Cold War antagonists. What's surprising about that?
