Face-Off on the High Seas

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of nuclear superpowers, Britain, the onetime mistress of the seas, hovered on the brink of an old-fashioned territorial war with faraway Argentina. Even the immediate issue behind the threatened conflict seemed anachronistic: sovereign control over a scattering of rocky, inhospitable dots on the map of the South Atlantic (see following story). The two potential combatants, however, saw the matter quite differently. For the Argentines, it was a question of reclaiming by military means territory that they argue had been taken from them in the same fashion nearly 150 years earlier. For the outraged British, the issue was a matter of deep principle: the sovereign territory of Great Britain had been invaded; 1,800 British subjects had been seized, an act of unprovoked aggression that thwarted the self-determination of the islands' residents, who cling determinedly to their ties to the mother country.

The implications of the bizarre confrontation went far beyond who should rule the Falklands. The futures of two decidedly different governments and their leaders were at stake: Britain's Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Argentina's President Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, head of his country's ruling junta. If either government were forced into a humiliating backdown, it undoubtedly would fall. The crisis had already cost Britain the services of its ablest Cabinet minister, indeed one of the world's best diplomats, Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, who resigned last week after taking the main responsibility for not having prevented the Argentine action. Said Carrington in his letter of resignation: "The invasion of the Falkland Islands has been a humiliating affront to this country." How the emergency was resolved thus would have consequences for NATO, as well as for Latin America, whose countries anxiously waited to see if the U.S. would countenance, in any way, the use of force in the area.

Caught in the middle was the Reagan Administration, which was trying to maintain ties with its oldest and staunchest ally in Western Europe without damaging its budding friendship with Argentina, a country that the U.S. hopes, without much evidence to date, will help its campaign to oppose the spread of Communism in the Western Hemisphere. Reagan's public ambivalence at first created the unfortunate impression that the U.S. could not choose between Britain and the country that not only was the aggressor but had also had a bloody history of human rights violations.

To try to resolve the crisis over the Falklands, President Reagan sent Secretary of State Alexander Haig winging off to London and Buenos Aires in search of a peaceful solution. After discussions in London, Haig said he was "highly impressed by the firm determination of the British government." Next day in Buenos Aires, he spent a total of eleven hours in talks with President Galtieri and other Argentine officials. Early Sunday morning, in a sudden change of plans, Haig announced that he would return to London later that day with what an aide described as "some specific ideas."

The looming war was one that neither Britain nor Argentina wanted or could afford, a factor that offered some hope that all-out fighting could be prevented. Late in the week, there had been a sign of encouragement when Argentine Foreign Minister Nicanor Costa Méndez said