It's a Geography study weekend because the president of Argentina is saying that the Falkland Islands ~ or Malvinas if you swing that way ~ will be returned to their natural home in due time.
Although the UK now has more than sixty marines stationed there, and in fact has four Typhoon fighter jets locally ~ combat still remains a numbers game. And that is not only in numerical terms, but in terms of the numbers of kilometres involved.
In 1982 during the last dispute the UK's military comprised 323,000 with 160,000 serving in its army. The figures now are circa 183,00 and 74,000 and to my mind that is roughly half.
Its navy still boasted some 90-odd fighting vessels as against a couple of dozen now and its air force had nearer 1000 aircraft compared to (a surprising) 700ish today.
But what the Ukraine has taught us is that the jets replacing those marines, or supplementing them, may be as useful as those deployed by Russia in 2022: which is to say more vulnerable to attack than capable of inflicting such in the long term.
At the end of the day it is all about distance. The UK operated Hong Kong for some 150 years until it became obvious that defending it from occupation no longer added up... as surely will be the fate of Taiwan a little further along the coast.
In 1982 we'd a Prime Minister too who as Steve Coogan has said, would now be diagnosed with a mental pathology; beside a supportive US president and logistical assistance that went with it.
I doubt many UK citizens could put a pin on a map that pin-pointed the islands, and now that its oil reserves have been highlighted the stakes are higher altogether.
I flew once with an ex-Navy man who'd a mountain on South Georgia named after him, tho' unhelpfully I've forgetten his name.
And I flew in China with ex-Hong Kong citizens who were required to adopt either UK citizenship or Chinese. He chose the latter, which given the fact airlines in China were racing to the top as those in Europe were racing to the bottom, any other pilot would have done too.
Increasingly war will involve drones or nukes, so let's hope we stick with the lesser of the two evils; whilst offering the good people of the Falklands free passage to the Isle of Wight.
Ed. This is probably a time to recall Lord Haw Haw was hung in 1946 in Wandsworth prison by Albert Pierrepoint, the go-to hangman for celebs at the time.
