British victory in Falklands Malvinas War might spur Argentina to build nukes, CIA feared

Dr Steven Taylor
Sat, 16 September 2023 

The Union flag flying over the British War Cemetery on February 21, 2012 at San Carlos, Falkland Islands 30 years after the conflict began - Getty Images /Peter Hazell

The CIA feared that British victory in the 1982 Falklands conflict would encourage Argentina’s ruling military junta to step up its efforts to construct nuclear weapons, according to a newly uncovered report.

Intelligence analysts at the spy agency examining the issue of nuclear proliferation wrote in a secret report that “the Falkland Islands crisis is raising security issues for Buenos Aires that could influence Argentine attitudes towards the development of nuclear technology.”

The report, dated 24 April 1982, said: “A humiliation in the Falklands probably would encourage the conclusion that the possession of nuclear weapons – or merely the foreign belief that Argentina had such weapons – might have made the UK more accommodating. A major reverse for Argentina in the dispute could persuade it to proceed to build nuclear weapons.”

The report, which has emerged from US archives, also assessed that the political isolation of Argentina following its invasion of the Falklands could also play a part in the junta’s decision to press ahead with their nuclear programme.

Prior to the Falklands War, the US and Europe had provided most of Argentina’s conventional weapons, but the invasion immediately led to an embargo being placed on arms supplies to the country.

The embargo, the analysts wrote, had “underscored the risks of dependence on foreign [arms] supplies” and “almost certainly reinforced the belief among many Argentine officers that nuclear weapons are needed.”

Margaret Thatcher poses with the troops in the Falklands Islands following victory in 1982

However, the report’s authors argued that should Argentina win the war for the Falklands, the position of the moderates within the Argentine government would be strengthened to the point that they would be able to influence the country’s nuclear policy.

“A military or diplomatic victory in the Falklands could reduce the pressure on the government to develop nuclear weapons,” they said. “Advocates of caution would emphasise that success in the Falklands was enough.”

‘Dangerously close’

The CIA report also outlined the status of Argentina’s nuclear weapons programme, which was started in the 1970s after the military seized power, and warned that Buenos Aires was dangerously close to becoming a nuclear power.

“The nuclear program is sufficiently advanced that even a severe economic recession following defeat [in the Falklands] would have little impact on the ability of the Argentines to make a few nuclear weapons,” it said. “Argentina now has almost all nuclear fuel cycle facilities needed to produce fissionable material for a nuclear device,” they said, adding that “a decision now to proceed could result in a detonation as early as 1984.”

The CIA’s fears were shared by Margaret Thatcher, who was concerned that Argentina might be receiving help from the Soviet Union to produce a nuclear bomb.

Days after the Argentine invasion, her Private Secretary John Coles wrote to Cabinet Secretary Robert Armstrong requesting on her behalf an intelligence summary of possible co-operation between Moscow and Buenos Aires, including the sale of heavy water – essential for the production of an atomic bomb – to the Argentines.

On 14 April 1982, Coles wrote to Armstrong: “The Prime Minister would be grateful for an assessment of the significance of the contract between the Soviet Union and Argentina for the supply of nuclear enrichment services and heavy water.”

Despite the fears of Mrs Thatcher and the CIA, Argentina’s nuclear weapons programme was in the end abandoned when civilian rule returned to the country under President Raul Alfonsin in December 1983.