The renewed loud noises from Argentina about the Falkland Islands are an interesting example of diplomatic negotiation in action.

When I give training and speeches on Diplomacy I ask the punters this question:

Which great modern leader best explains why international diplomacy is so difficult?

After they shuffle nervously in their seats and mutter words like ‘Kissinger’ and ‘Mandela’, I give them the answer.

Shrek!

In the first Shrek movie, our eponymous ogre is trudging off to rescue Princess Fiona from the tower. Annoying Donkey is hopping along behind and trying to make friends. Shrek says that Donkey does not understand ogres:

“Ogres are like onions – they have layers. Ogres have layers!”

And, I say, foreign policy issues are like onions and ogres. They have layers.

Take the Falklands/Malvinas dispute:
UK v Argentina
Falkland Islanders v Argentina
Falkland Islanders v UK
Argentina v Chile
Latin v Anglo-Saxon
South America v Europe
Obama v Bush
UN Security Council members v Everyone Else
Republican v Democrat
Is v Ought, Right v Might
Peace v Justice v Security

A lot going on here, on all these layers and more.

From the Argentinean point of view, it is bad enough those far-flung Brits controlling these scraps of land far from their own foggy island. It’s another the Brits drilling for oil and maybe making loads of money from a part of the world which ‘surely’ belongs in good part to those people who live next door to it on the mainland.

This time round there looks to be significant Latin American sympathy for Argentina’s assertions, with eg big-hitters Brazil and Chile supporting their arguments at the UN as well as Venezuela’s Chavez raving away in the same sense. Plus whereas (albeit not without some difficulty for London) President Reagan’s Republican Washington came down firmly on the side of the UK when the issue slumped into open conflict, Obama’s Democrat Washington may find aloof detachment much more to its liking. Look at the way President Obama scrambled to sign a pseudo-deal at the Copenhagen Climate Summit with assorted politically correct foreigners (China, India, Brazil and South Africa) rather than any dull Dead White Men from Europe.

On the other hand, many Falklands layers are themselves far away from the core issue. Brazil is playing the question to advance its claim to UN P5 membership. Obama’s Democrats don’t care. Chile will be wary about letting Argentina get too feisty. Argentina itself in part is frothing things up for domestic benefit.

Hence the core negotiation. Argentina knows that it will be very difficult to launch a successful attack to seize the Falklands, which are now much better defended. So instead they plan to strive to drive up the political and cash cost of any oil exploration off the Falklands, in the not unreasonable hope of getting a good slice of any eventual oil action.

The UK in turn will sigh and look hard at how best to keep those extra costs down. But the supply-line questions are difficult enough anyway without a lot of extra hassle. Plus who knows? Maybe a deal with Argentina to give them a slice of the Falklands’ putative oil wealth might be a good way of putting all those tedious sovereignty issues in the long-term Not Today tray, with all concerned concentrating on working together to get richer.

So, if all goes well (enough), the issue is not the principle but the price. How much will the UK – and the Falklanders – be prepared to pay to buy Argentinean cooperation?

Thus it suits Argentina to be as difficult and vociferous as possible, to drive that price up. And it suits the UK to play it watchfully but nonchalantly in public, giving the impression that the project will succeed regardless of what Argentina does, so keeping the price down.

In watching this one unfold, keep an eye open for which layer is being discussed by whom. Then it might make some sense.

Charles Crawford, a former British Ambassador turned blogger and policy pundit, looks at how UK policies shape global events – and how global events shape UK policies. For more information or to contact Charles Crawford, click here.

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