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The Politics of National Interests and the English Language: Deconstructing the Falklands War

ABSTRACT This year, 2017 marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Falklands crisis. This article addresses the question of why Britain fought the Falklands war. Britain’s official representation of the war began with a false premise, which proclaimed that “the Falkland Islands were a British sovereign territory.” Metaphorically speaking, Britain’s representation was structured into “a chain of hypothetical propositions.” This metaphor not only enables one to apprehend a striking parallel between the deduction of one proposition from another and the construction of national interests but also offers a useful way to understand how Britain’s premise delineated the parameters within which the putative truths of British interests could be “discovered,” reproduced and transmitted through pure deduction. The validity of the conclusion that Britain must repossess the Falklands through military means did not flow from empirical evidence. Rather, it stemmed from the power held by the British ruling elite to define the first premise.