I hope you'll excuse me if I go with my own perceptions, and not with yours. I haven't been very impressed with either your worldliness or your understanding of foreign cultures. For that matter, you don't even seem to understand American culture outside of whatever left-leaning circle you run in.

No, because we would be treating our friends more cruelly than we treat our enemies. A nation that manipulates people that way winds up with few friends, many enemies and lost empires.

Britain and Argentina are both friendly nations, both are allies. You would bankrupt both in an effort to avoid war, ignoring the fact that the resulting social disruption would probably cause just as much violence and death.

Craig - The Brits have a far more realistic perception of themselves than the fantastically powerful role you assume they have. The U.S. did flip the bird to them many times (whether good or bad) at Suez, the Falklands War, the invasion of Grenada, and the attitude towards German reunification (Thatcher opposed it).

Your argument seems to be that the U.K. gets "pretending to be important" out of its relationship with the U.S. Quite. That is pretty close "basking in reflected glory," if less poetic.

That's not what I said at all

I think the UK views the US as an unruly child that needs a lot of guidance. And as i said, i think the British view themselves as the leader of Anglophile nations, as they probably should seeing as how England is over there and not over here...

That all changes, when the "special relationship" is gone. It'd be kinda hard for the Brits to pretend they have a leash on the US if we flip em the bird and go our own way, right? That's already happened to an extent (I don't think most Americans feel there is a "special relationship" with the UK anymore) but the UK is still our closest ally.

So to prevent war this time we should pull the plug on the Argentinian economy and leave the British out to dry?

Mary Madigan - I don't blame people for their impotence. I would want peacemakers to be strong and warmongers to be weak. America played a successful anti-imperialist and peacemaking role in 1956 by pulling the plug on the British pound and leaving the French out to dry. America did not in 1982, for example, put comparable pressure on the Argentinians to back down. The responsibility for the war obviously remains primarily with the British and Argentinian governments of the time.

Yeah, it kinda would've been.

Apparently, you want the United States to be an omnipotent, omnipresent force that simultaneously serves as your own personal poodle, anticipating and immediately responding to your political and historical needs.

Why would Americans have a problem with that?