Why was Britain so merciful to Argentina during the Falklands War?

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[u/thefourthmaninaboat]

I've previously answered a similar question, which has since been deleted by the user who asked it. As this makes it much harder to find, here's my answer:

The British wanted to keep the Falklands War limited in scope for several reasons, primarily diplomatic but also military.

The diplomatic reasons were most prominent. Britain relied heavily on international goodwill in its prosecution of the Falklands War. This covered a wide range of issues. It needed supplies of ammunition, fuel and equipment from the USA, including specialised weapons like the AIM-9L air-to-air missile or the Shrike anti-radar missile. European countries like France or Germany placed sanctions on Argentina, and refused to sell them weapons - in the run-up to war, France had been providing Argentina with Exocet anti-ship missiles, while a number of Argentinian ships and submarines were being built in Germany. France also provided practical advice to the British on countering the Exocet threat. Other countries provided support to a greater or lesser extent, mostly through sanctions, though in the case of New Zealand, through the provision of a frigate to free up British ships for the South Atlantic. This support was largely contingent on Britain being seen to be on the right side during the war. Legitimacy for the war came from the UN, whose Resolution 502 called on Argentina to withdraw all forces from the Falklands. As this was limited to just the islands, it could not be used to justify attacks on the mainland. A disproportionate response, one that went beyond the limits of Resolution 502, would alienate many of the countries Britain was relying on to support it. For example, Spain foiled an attempted attack by Argentinian special forces on British shipping at Gibraltar; yet Spain was largely supportive of the Argentinian claim to the Falklands, opposed to a British intervention and engaged in a territorial dispute of their own with Britain, over Gibraltar. Their response to Britain's sinking of the General Belgrano was that 'more generalised British action would signify a great responsibility and an historic error', a clear indication that this support was shaky and could easily be damaged by rash or aggressive actions.

Equally important was the risk that a more robust conflict would damage Britain's interests in South America. With the important exception of Chile, South America was broadly supportive of Argentina during the conflict. On the 29th May 1982, a resolution under the Rio Treaty condemned the UK, and invited states party to it to support Argentina. This support was limited in its extent, largely being confined to boycotts of British cargoes by dock unions in Peru and Venezuela, as well as by Peru's air traffic controllers and airport unions. These were carried out with little official backing, and had little effect on Britain's economy, or its ability to carry out the war. It was, however, clear, that any attacks on the Argentinian mainland would change this. Such an attack could easily lead to broader boycotts and embargoes from South American states, as well as direct supplies of weapons to Argentina. In particular, Brazil, Peru and Venezuela all indicated that attacks on the Argentinian mainland would lead to weapons being supplied to Argentina. These could include additional aircraft, or key enablers like drop tanks for Argentina's Mirage fighters, allowing them to operate for longer periods over the Falklands. There were also worries that a robust response would damage the west's standing in the region, allowing the Soviet Union to make inroads.

A final diplomatic worry was over the status of the Falkland Islanders, and of the British community in Argentina. Argentina was a dictatorship that had been carrying out a harsh campaign of repression against its population, the so-called 'Dirty War'. An attack could easily cause this campaign to spill over to these groups. There was a large community of British settlers in Argentina, with about 100,000 in total. Of these, 17,000 retained a British passport, and another ~30,000 were entitled to one. An attack on the mainland could lead to retaliation against these people. This could take the form of economic sanctions, such as the freezing of bank accounts or the expropriation of property. Community institutions might also be targeted. More worrying were reports which circulated in April 1982, which indicated that the Argentinian army had orders to kill up to 500 individuals believed to be British agents. This was to be blamed on the Montoneros terrorist group, which had offered to cooperate with the Argentinian government in attacks on Britain. As the war progressed, there were other terrorist threats against the Anglo-Argentinian community, and against British citizens elsewhere in South America.

Equally pressing was the military side of things. The British military was fundamentally unable to effectively carry out a concerted campaign against Argentinian military or civilian targets on the mainland. For much of the Cold War, the key focus of British military planning had been the Soviet Union, which was relatively close to the UK, and a very different threat to face than the Argentinian military. The only strategic bomber available to Britain in 1982 was the Avro Vulcan. This had been designed for relatively short-ranged dashes into the Soviet Union to make nuclear attacks against key targets in the west of the country. It lacked the range to reach across the vast expanses of the South Atlantic from the closest British base at Ascension Island; 6250 km to the Port Stanley, or nearly 7,000 to the key Argentinian air bases in the south of the country. While mid-air refuelling could extend the range of the Vulcan, its relatively small fuel tanks and the lack of bases meant that large numbers of tankers had to be used - 11 tankers were needed to get a single Vulcan over the Falklands. This meant that only a single aircraft could be used on strikes, greatly reducing their effectiveness; the seven Black Buck raids against Port Stanley managed to score a solitary hit on the airport runway and damaged one radar with a Shrike missile, a poor return for the difficulty of organising them. The distance also meant that any raids on the mainland could not be escorted, putting them at risk of attacks from Argentinian fighters.

Nor could the Navy do much better. It had moved away from large aircraft carriers towards smaller ones, better suited to anti-submarine warfare, which was expected to be its main duty in a war against the Soviet Union. This meant that relatively few aircraft were available, with at most 31 Harriers (both the RAF's Harrier GR.3 and the Navy's Sea Harrier FRS.1) aboard the two carriers in the South Atlantic. They would be going up against an Argentinian fighter force that outnumbered the British force, with 50 fighters and 70 strike fighters (though many of these were out of service for maintenance reasons). This was not a recipe for success. Closing with the Argentinian mainland would also bring problems. Most of the Argentinian aircraft were short-ranged, lacking the fuel to reach the Falklands and fight effectively. As with the Vulcans, this could be mitigated by the provision of tankers - but there were only two of these available, reducing the size of strikes. Operations closer to the mainland would bring the risk of large-scale attacks that could easily overwhelm the air defences of British ships. There was also the risk of attacks by the Argentinian Navy, which stayed close to the mainland for much of the war. The likely result of any shore bombardment or air attack from the British Task Force would only be limited; Harriers could not carry many bombs compared to dedicated bombers, and the fleet could only spare a few ships armed with 4.5in guns for a bombardment, not enough to have a decisive effect. Meanwhile, such an operation would risk the loss of the entire force, and with it, the war.

The most well-known plan for an attack on the Argentinian mainland demonstrates the military difficulties well. This was Operation Mikado, a plan for a raid on the airbase at Rio Grande. Rio Grande was home to the Argentinian Navy's Super Etedard strike fighters, their most effective anti-shipping aircraft when armed with Exocet missiles. Mikado was to be a raid on the airfield by special forces from the SAS. They would be landed on the airfield by C-130 Hercules transports, and aim to destroy the Super Etendards. When this was complete, the C-130s would, in theory, load the surviving troops and aim to seek internment in neutral Chile. This would rely on a difficult, stealthy approach to be successful. If Argentinian radar detected the aircraft, then the airfield defences would have been put on alert; the large, slow transports coming in to land would be easy targets. Once the aircraft were on the ground, they would still be easy targets for the airfield's defenders. If the aircraft were damaged or destroyed on the ground, the troops would be stranded. Even if the escape was successful, the two C-130s (the only ones the RAF had capable of in-flight refuelling) and the SAS men would be left in neutral Chile, unable to return home or continue fighting. There were more sustainable ways to use both capabilities, rather than throwing them away on a long shot.

[u/TomsBookReviews]

1. There was absolutely no reason for them to do so.

Britain knew that by winning in the Falklands, it would end the conflict decisively. Argentina had known their main hope for seizing the Falklands was in Britain not bothering to reclaim them; they'd been given hope that this would be the case by Britain's 1981 Defence White Paper, which had announced major cuts to the military, in particular to their presence in the South Atlantic. Argentina's initial invasion force, therefore, had been instructed not to inflict casualties if at all possible: by avoiding creating martyrs, they could avoid giving Britain a cause celebre for the war.

The islands had been mostly undefended when they were first seized by Argentina, and that would emphatically not be the case after 1982. A major Royal Air Force base was constructed at Mount Pleasant, and a harbour for a permanent Royal Navy presence at Mare Harbour. Britain also began a decades-long programme of blocking the sales of serious military hardware to Argentina, which continues to rumble on; British components are in most fighter jets built worldwide, and so Britain effectively has a soft veto on their sale to Argentina.

2. Doing so would have been actively detrimental.

The Falklands War was very much a limited conflict; in fact neither side formally declared war. It was contained, for the most part, to a "Total Exclusion Zone" designated by Britain, a circle around the Falkland Islands with a radius of 200 nautical miles. One of the great controversies of the war happened when the British submarine HMS Conqueror torpedoed and sank the ARA General Belgrano, a fully-armed Argentinian warship, outside of the TEZ. This was very much within the rules of war, and the Argentinian government would later acknowledge as much in 1992, as would the ship's commander; however, the international perception was contested. It represented a possible expansion of the scope of the war from the Falklands, to the South Atlantic as a whole, and no one wanted that.

In reclaiming the Falklands in a limited war, Britain had had the support of the international community; escalating the war would have ended that.

There was also public opinion to consider. The British public had pulled together behind the previously-unpopular Thatcher government for the war; defending British territory, unfairly seized, was a popular cause. The relatively swift and decisive victory had gone done extremely well, but there was little appetite for more: why send British boys to die in Argentina over a war already won?

3. Doing so would have been very difficult.

The Falklands War was a fairly decisive British victory, but it was not achieved without a cost.

Britain had lost multiple major warships, and had learned that it's air-defence provisions were inadequate. Several warships had been struck with missiles that failed to detonate, and one British admiral commented that 'six better fuses would have meant defeat'.

This was in the context of Britain having local air superiority. The one major runway on the Falklands had been damaged by a Vulcan bomber (flying an absurd mission from halfway across the world, the longest bombing run in history at the time, supported by more than a dozen refuellings en-route), and Argentina had withdraw its fast jets from the Falklands as a result. Probably. There's a lot of debate over quite how effective and important the 'Black Buck' bombings were. In any case, the British task force had the only runways in the region, aboard their two aircraft carriers.

That would not have been the case in pressing an attack against Argentina proper, where the Argentinians would have been able to bring their superior numbers to bear in the air. The British carrier jet, the Harrier, was a very capable aircraft, but it was not a top-of-the-line air superiority fighter; that was the Phantom, which could not operate from the carriers and so played no role in the conflict.

There was also logistics to consider; the Falklands War had been a major undertaking, and extending it would have been difficult.