In reply to Bruce Hooker:
> but coming back to the actual subject, I don't think anyone would deny that the British revival of interest in the Malvinas is linked to oil finds and the general growing awareness of the importance of sea bed mineral rights, they were on the point of handing them back to Argentina not that long before.
What revival of interest? You're not talking about the political gesturing from Cristina the last few years? Got to take minds of that economy my friend, not to say Cameron didn't profit here also. There were discussions before the war but the islanders quite vehemently opposed it so any idea of a handover was scrapped. Seems fair enough to me.
At present we are in the rather absurd position whereby a country with claims to many little rocks, can, by the enormous extension of territorial waters over the last few decades, lay claim to huge areas of fishing and mineral rights. My point is that the old colonial powers like Britain and France are milking this windfall gain to the hilt but appear to get upset when other nations attempt to do the same.
I suppose the whole idea of idea of arbitrarily splitting up land and resources must be quite strange following this logic. Who are Britain and France mad at?
> I don't think this will end in war, despite the usual US brinkmanship - they really didn't need to send two B52s to deliberately fly over a dispute lump of rock, did they? China, unlike the USA, Britain, France and the rest of the NATO rogue states has not gone to war outside it's territories for quite a while. The difference is that now they are showing that they will no longer allow themselves to be pushed about by countries with imperial ambitions as they had to in the past. The world is changing, for the better in many ways, and we had all better realise this... declining colonial powers will not be able to play the bully boys for much longer.
I thought we're talking about sea territory here and not a particular 'lump of rock'. I get the feeling that the U.S patrols were a regular feature anyway, happy to be corrected here. China has had it's moments of bullying others not to mention it's piss poor humanitarian record, but quality of life for so many is improving and I hope they will settle into their superpower role in years to come. Anyway as far as laying claim to this stretch of water, isn't it a South Korea, Japan and China dispute? America arent flying through to assert sovereignity but I'm sure you know this.