The war that ended the military dictatorship in the Argentine, and cemented into power Margarett destructive regime for a generation. Which country had the better outcome from the war?

What has always stuck in my throat is the hypocrisy of it. Two sets of islands at the other endof the world, the Falklands in the South Atlantic and the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. Both controlled by Britain, aquired by the dubious procedure of landing there and declaring they owned the place. Squatted.

About 1000 people living in the Chagos Islands, on Diego Garcia. About 3000 in the Falklands.

In 1968 the British started to arrange to trade the islands to the USA as tenants so that they could turn Diego Garcia into an airbase. The inhabitants were duly rounded up and transported to a far away strange island, Mauritius, with which they had no connection.Their dogs just got shot. And the islanders never been allowed to return home, and repeated findings by courts that they had the right to do so have been cleverlly evaded by the UK government.

But when the Argentine regime decided to shortcut its longstanding ambition to reclaim the Falklands/Malvinas, after years of negotiation by just moving in (having been given what looked like a strong hint that the British would be OK about that, by the way they have just withdrawn naval support from the Falklands) the fate of these islanders was seen as a sacred duty. No shipping them off to St Helena to live in poverty.

The difference? The Falkland Islanders are White. There are potential minerals and oil in the seas around the Falklands. Argentina is a much poorer country than the USA and wasn't offering to pay. And a timely Patriotic War was a gamble worth taking to get a patriotic people on side and stave off a possible regime change (which was what the Generals also had in mind.)

i'd say the last of those was the crucial one. Together with the first.