On 5 September, my new book, THE DICTATORS, is published. It contains 64 essays on 64 different dictators from Ancient Rome to the present day. I think it's the best book in the series, which started with THE PRIME MINISTERS, so far. You can order a copy HERE.
I have written the chapter on General Galtieri, of Falklands fame. As a taster for the rest of the book, here's my essay.
When lEopoldo Galtie ri died in January 2003 of pancreatic cancer, he was under house arrest. He was remembered for only one thing – as head of the military junta in Argentina he ordered the ill-fated invasion of the Falkland Islands in April 1982, a decision that led to the humiliation of his country and precipitated his fall from power.
Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri was born in Caseros, Buenos Aires, on 15 July 1926, the grandson of impoverished Italian immigrants.
At seventeen he started a course in civil engineering at Argentina’s National Military Academy. He became an officer in the Argentinian army while continuing his engineering studies. Graduating from the Panama-based US Army School of the Americas in 1949, he became a professor in engineering eleven years later at the Senior War College.
Galtieri rose up the army ranks. In 1976 there was a military-inspired coup against Isabel Perón. Galtieri was not a senior member of the junta, but was head of the Second Army Corps in Rosario. At the end of the decade he had become one of the most important generals in the regime. It was later revealed that he had participated in the disappearance of 30,000 young people in Operation Murcielago. Official documents later released in the USA demonstrated that the chain of command in the Dirty War led to him personally. The Clarin newspaper later reported that Galtieri would visit clandestine detention centres during the military dictatorship and personally guarantee some of the tortured and ‘disappeared’ their right to life, with the words: ‘I decide because I’m Galtieri.’
By the time the junta was marking its fifth anniversary Argentina’s economy was in the doldrums. Having calmed inflation and restored stability to the peso, it was all starting to go wrong. Several banks collapsed and the currency was devalued. But the population was not just becoming angry at the failing economy and increased impoverishment. There were weekly demonstrations underneath the balcony of the presidential palace by the mothers of the ‘disappeared’. Having succeeded General Juan Videla in early 1981, General Roberto Viola was to enjoy a grip on power for a mere nine months. In May, Galtieri, the army’s Commander-in-Chief, made a speech that was interpreted as disloyal to Viola and a challenge to his leadership. Six months later, in December 1981, Galtieri ousted Viola in what was effectively a coup. Like all new leaders he tried to present himself as a new broom. However, he could not escape the fact that he had been an integral part of all the failures that went before him.
Initially Galtieri made various efforts to hint he wanted to return the country to some sort of quasi-democratic rule. He went behind his military colleagues’ backs to hold talks with leaders of the Peronist movement. His colleagues were both confused and angry. What was Galtieri up to? Was he seriously suggesting some sort of powersharing concordat?
Meanwhile the economy went from bad to worse, with the new
government implementing the kind of neoliberal policies Margaret
Thatcher hadn’t yet dared to implement in the United Kingdom.
In common with many dictators before him, Galtieri decided
the best way to deflect from economic difficulty and unite the
nation was to start a war, and what better way to do it than take
back the famed Islas Malvinas. Of course the Falkland Islands had
never actually belonged to Argentina, but that was a mere detail
when it came to the propaganda war, which was launched to win
the hearts and minds of the Argentinian people.
Galtieri instructed the three arms of the military to prepare plans
for an invasion. At the persistent urging of the navy leader Admiral
Anaya, a decision to invade was taken on 6 January. By the end of
January the detailed plans for a June invasion were ready, albeit
flawed in so many ways.
In the end Galtieri couldn’t wait. Opposition was growing by
the week. When Argentinian scrap-metal merchants landed on
South Georgia and planted the Argentinian flag, he decided to
bring forward the plans to invade the main Falkland Islands. This
proved to be a decisive error.
Not only that but Galtieri made two further misjudgements.
First, he assumed that Britain was not capable or even willing to
intervene, and second he assumed that the United States would
come down on Argentina’s side. To be fair, his military colleagues
all thought the same. On both counts, they were wholly wrong.
Not only this, but Galtieri had failed to anticipate the widespread
international condemnation that followed the invasion, and had
mistakenly assumed the United Nations would row in behind its
challenge to ancient colonial power. Instead, the UN immediately
criticised Argentina. Security Council Resolution 502 passed on 3
April had nine countries siding with Britain and only one, Panama,
supporting Argentina. Four countries – China, the USSR, Spain
and Poland – abstained.
On the night before the invasion, US president Ronald Reagan
phoned Galtieri. The general initially refused to take the call, only
doing so four hours later. Reagan made a vain effort to persuade Galtieri to halt the invasion, but didn’t directly say the US would, in the end, come down on the side of Britain. Reagan later recounted that he thought Galtieri was drunk, which might account for the four-hour wait for the call to be accepted.
Right from the day of the invasion the amateurish nature of the Argentinian forces was apparent. Reconnaissance was almost non-existent. Invasion maps were inaccurate. Supply lines broke almost immediately. Intelligence was deficient. Equipment was old fashioned and outdated and too many soldiers had undergone little relevant training.
Even worse than that, the three legs of the armed forces – the army, navy and air force – not only failed to coordinate their efforts, but in many ways actively worked against each other, with Galtieri doing nothing to intervene. He can’t have been ignorant of the tensions. The army was a shambles. The navy ordered all its ships to return to port after the first engagement with the British. It fell to the air force to be the only one of the three armed services to show any degree of professionalism and threat to the British, and it was they who sank ship after ship. They were the only ones to threaten the British task force.
Initially, Galtieri basked in the adulation of the Argentinian people, who saw the invasion of the Falklands as a means to restoring national pride. However, they soon tired of a leader who proved unable to react to events, let along shape them. The Mussolini-style swagger was soon replaced by an inability to demonstrate any kind of leadership. His public appearances diminished in frequency, not least because it was alleged that he was often blind drunk.
The US Secretary of State, General Alexander Haig, undertook two rounds of doomed shuttle diplomacy between Washington, Buenos Aires and London. His frustration with Galtieri grew after every meeting. According to Reagan, Galtieri would agree concessions with Haig, but would then be overruled by the other members of the Junta, presumably led by Admiral Anaya.
After Haig’s initiatives had failed, the Peruvians had another go and presented a peace plan to the UN. Even Margaret Thatcher knew she was in a hole if the Argentinians accepted it. But in another show of reckless diplomacy, Galtieri rejected it.
Only a matter of weeks later, on 14 June, Major General Jeremy Moore took the unconditional surrender from the Argentinian
commander on the Falklands. It was a national humiliation and
Galtieri was, deservedly, the fall guy. Four days later he was ousted
as president.
When democracy was restored in 1983, Galtieri faced charges of
human rights abuses during the Dirty War period.
In 1986 Galtieri was arrested, along with others, for their conduct
of the Falklands War. He was found guilty of negligence and sentenced
to twelve years in prison, but he and others were pardoned in
1989 by the then-president Carlos Menem.
He lived for the next decade in relative obscurity in Devoto, a
down-at-heel Buenos Aires suburb. He attended several military
parades but was shunned and ignored on several occasions. He spent
the rest of his life consumed by bitterness at the way the country
had treated him. He even took the government to court for failing
to provide him with a presidential pension. He lost, on the basis
that to be president you have to be elected.
Clarin columnist Jorge Göttling described Galtieri as ‘a sad caricature
of another caricature’. Eduardo van der Kooy observed
Galtieri as ‘a man with severe intellectual limitations although
overflowing with arrogance and ambition . . . he was a symbol of
the decadence of the military dictatorship, the true expression of
a generation of military men lacking political and professional
ability . . . a state of ruin. He saw himself as “a new military
caudillo” dreaming about leading the masses to new triumphs.’
Göttling also says of Galtieri that he had been described as ‘a military
man without talent, a strategist of operetta, a hedonist with
lunches of six martinis and afternoons of 20 whiskies. Megalomania
and arrogance, to boot.’
In July 2002 Galtieri was finally rearrested to face charges of
human rights abuses in the 1970s and early 1980s, after a court
ruling that his pardon had been unconstitutional. It had taken twenty
years for the investigators to gather enough evidence to justify an
arrest. He was charged with involvement in the disappearance of
children belonging to political opponents. In addition he was charged
with the torture and kidnapping of twenty members of a guerrilla
group called the Montoneros.
It is perhaps fitting to give the last word to Rex Hunt, the governor of the Falklands at the time of the invasion. He credits Galtieri with ensuring that the islands stayed under British control.
‘Had it not been for Galtieri’s folly, in making that absolutely blatantly unprovoked military invasion of the Falklands, I think the Falkland Islands might well by now have been part of Argentina,’ he told Sky News. I suspect he was right. And that is Galtieri’s legacy.
Order the book now HERE and you'll receive it before publication,
