Falklands War (1982)

[buritobr]

It was a very short war (10 weeks) between Argentina and the United Kingdom for the control of the Falklands Islands, in the South Atlantic.
But the most important fact is: it was the last war in the history where two western countries fought on opposite sides.

[politicus]

It was a very short war (10 weeks) between Argentina and the United Kingdom for the control of the Falklands Islands, in the South Atlantic.
But the most important fact is: it was the last war in the history where two western countries fought on opposite sides.

I doubt Thatcher considered Argentina Western..

[Clark Kent]

It was a very short war (10 weeks) between Argentina and the United Kingdom for the control of the Falklands Islands, in the South Atlantic.
But the most important fact is: it was the last war in the history where two western countries fought on opposite sides.

I doubt Thatcher considered Argentina Western..

Whether she considered it western or not is irrelevant. Argentina is in the Western hemisphere, speaks a European language, is overwhelmingly Christian, a highly developed nation, and, at the time, was firmly pro-US. Heck, if you want to bring "race" into it, Argentina is even pretty "white", and the vast majority of its population is of European descent. There is no way that it's not counted as Western.

But anyways, the war was a blatantly imperialist move by Argentina, ironically enough. The Falklands are British.

[politicus]

It was a very short war (10 weeks) between Argentina and the United Kingdom for the control of the Falklands Islands, in the South Atlantic.
But the most important fact is: it was the last war in the history where two western countries fought on opposite sides.

I doubt Thatcher considered Argentina Western..

Whether she considered it western or not is irrelevant. Argentina is in the Western hemisphere, speaks a European language, is overwhelmingly Christian, a highly developed nation, and, at the time, was firmly pro-US. Heck, if you want to bring "race" into it, Argentina is even pretty "white", and the vast majority of its population is of European descent. There is no way that it's not counted as Western.

But anyways, the war was a blatantly imperialist move by Argentina, ironically enough. The Falklands are British.

The Western world is a very vague concept with very different definitions applied in different parts of this "civilization". In Northern Europe we tend to view it as non-Orthodox Europe + the four Anglophone White majority countries outside Europe.

Europeans and Latin Americans have a very ambivalent relationship and non-Hispanic Euros and Latin Americans do not really consider each other as belonging to the same category. So a war between a European and a Latin American country is not more exotic than a war between a sub-Saharan African country (with European colonial heritage, European official language and (often) predominantly Christian) and a European country.

North Americans are of course somewhere in the middle of this and will tend to view the two groups as both related to you and therefore part of a common family of nations.

[politicus]

If you consider Latin America to be Western you got the Cenepa war in 1995 between Ecuador and Peru being more recent (small war, but still 150 casualties).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenepa_War#Casualties_and_material_losses

[Vosem]

"Western world" is usually used today in the sense of "developed nations that speak European languages". Thus, the Southern Cone of Latin America probably does count as part of the Western world, but the Quechua-speaking Andean villages I've visited in Peru likely don't. However, "Western world" is a very inexact terminology whose boundaries are very gray. The Falklands War might qualify as the last war between "Western" countries (though if you include all of Latin America as Western, the 1995 Cenepa War was fought between Western countries, and an insurgency in Colombia is ongoing in the present day -- and where "Western" ends and begins in the Balkans is another can of worms, though I think the Slovenian War of Independence in 1991, while maybe not a "purely" Western war, definitely had culturally Catholic Europeans that are hard to characterize as non-Western on both sides of the fighting), but if you don't emphasize countries so much you can include the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which lasted until 1998, or the ETA insurgency in the Basque Country, which lasted until 2011 -- which both involved guerrilla warfare fought inside of unmistakably Western nations long after the end of the Falklands War.

[politicus]

"Western world" is usually used today in the sense of "developed nations that speak European languages".

That would make Russia, Serbia and Ukraine Western, which they are clearly not. The Orthodox/Catholic boundary is important.

I think it is more interesting to look at how Brits and Argentinians viewed each other in 1983 than some abstract definition of Westernness - and then realize that the concept is viewed differently in different parts of the area settled by Europeans.

[Vosem]

"Western world" is usually used today in the sense of "developed nations that speak European languages".

That would make Russia, Serbia and Ukraine Western, which they are clearly not. The Orthodox/Catholic boundary is important.

Russia, Serbia, and Ukraine, are not necessarily "developed nations": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index#/media/File:2014_UN_Human_Development_Report_Quartiles.svg

The Catholic/Orthodox boundary is important, but it doesn't tell the whole story: I think most would definitely consider Greece to be a "Western" country, even though it is overwhelmingly Orthodox.

I think it is more interesting to look at how Brits and Argentinians viewed each other in 1983 than some abstract definition of Westernness - and then realize that the concept is viewed differently in different parts of the area settled by Europeans.

Fair enough

[buritobr]

I though the Western World included the American Continent and Western Europe.
That's why I didn't consider the Yugoslavia Wars in the 1990s a West vs. West conflict. Servia fought against Croatia, Bosnia, albanians in Kosovo and NATO. Only NATO had western powers.
But I forgot the Peru vs. Equator short war of 1995.

[Mehmentum]

Wikipedia gives a pretty good overview of what it means to be 'Western'

[buritobr]

Wikipedia gives a pretty good overview of what it means to be 'Western'

Almost what I though concerning the definition of "Western"

I only didn't know that Poland was western. But I think Poland was considered western because it is Roman Catholic. Serbia is not Western because it is Ortodox Catholic.

[Blair]

But anyways, the war was a blatantly imperialist move by Argentina, ironically enough. The Falklands are British.

As someone who A) Supports Thatchers Actions B) Is British, I find your comment a bit too ironic. We only defended the Island to uphold our honour as awful as that is. I mean in an ideal world we wouldn't have it-if the Falklands is british then so is like 60% of the world

[Clark Kent]

Wikipedia gives a pretty good overview of what it means to be 'Western'

As an American, I don't really see the Orthodox-Catholic split as being too big of a deal when considering what is "Western", since I consider the far more culturally divergent South America, Australia, and Western Europe to all be Western. Plus, Israel, which isn't even Christian, is considered Western. I would add the rest of Europe (except Russia) and the Philippines to that map, and take away South Africa.

[Simfan34]

I've always considered Japan to be Western, for whatever reason.

[politicus]

I've always considered Japan to be Western, for whatever reason.

If you include Japan Western basically just means developed country with market economy and some form of democracy. It loses the cultural (and historical) aspect.

East Asia is the quintessential East and therefore something Western was defined against at least from the mid/late 19th centurt to post-WW.

[TNF]

¡Las Malvinas son Argentinas!

[Cassius]

¡Las Malvinas son Argentinas!

Muh lines on a map (Given that this is one of the few cases where one state's claim to another state's territory boils down, pretty much, to that aphorism).

[buritobr]

Japan is not West because West doesn't mean developed


I think a good definition of Western is having ancestry in the Western Roman Empire. In this case, all the American continent is Western because Britain, France, Spain and Portugal belonged to the Western Roman Empire.

Latin America has a large non-European population. There are many africans in the Atlantic Latin America and many natives in the Pacific Latin America (only Argentina and Uruguay have more than 90% of European population).
However, most of the Latin American institutions were shaped by the Spanish and by the Portuguese, and not by the Africans and the Natives.

[Famous Mortimer]

When people say the "Western world" I generally think democratic countries. Argentina was not a democracy at the time so war between them and the UK wasn't that weird. If there were suddenly a bunch of European dictatorships again, I wouldn't think war between those countries and democratic countries was particularly weird (in fact, it's happening now in Ukraine). I would think it's more weird that dictatorships were coming to power in Western nations.

[YaBoyNY]

But anyways, the war was a blatantly imperialist move by Argentina, ironically enough. The Falklands are British.

As someone who A) Supports Thatchers Actions B) Is British, I find your comment a bit too ironic. We only defended the Island to uphold our honour as awful as that is. I mean in an ideal world we wouldn't have it-if the Falklands is british then so is like 60% of the world

60% of the world isn't inhabited by British citizens who want to remain part of Britain.

[ag]

¡Las Malvinas son Argentinas!

The Falklands are British!

[they don't love you like i love you]

¡Las Malvinas son Argentinas!

Why on Earth would a communist support a right wing fascist military dictatorship?

[ag]

However, most of the Latin American institutions were shaped by the Spanish and by the Portuguese, and not by the Africans and the Natives.

It is also true of Africa - and, for that matter, of South Asia.

[ag]

Wikipedia gives a pretty good overview of what it means to be 'Western'

I would definitely drop South Africa and Israel. And, frankly, upon rethinking this, I would have to acknowledge that Westernness of Latin America and Caribbean is highly suspect.  Most definitely, Turkey, Western Balkans and even Ukraine are more of the "West" than us.

[Simfan34]

¡Las Malvinas son Argentinas!

¿Cómo?