We can blame Trump all we like for bullying us over the Falklands. But it's our own fault that today we couldn't repel an Argentine invasion: ANDREW ROBERTS

With his ineffable ability to punch a bruise, Donald Trump has effectively threatened to look the other way if Argentina attempts to invade the Falkland Islands again.Pulling a face like a wide-mouthed frog, the President made it clear at an Oval Office press conference that the United States’ present position – that the island belongs de facto to the United Kingdom – is under ‘review’.This was only four months after a leaked Pentagon memo suggested that America should resile from that stance as punishment for Britain not helping it sufficiently against Iran.Trump’s record of threatening America’s friends and allies, such as Canada over its sovereignty and Denmark over Greenland, is well-attested, but this represents a new low for him, on several levels.The first and most obvious one is that in 1982 Britain fought a war over the Falklands, in which 255 British military personnel and three local civilians lost their lives.In the 2013 referendum, 99.8 per cent of Falklanders registered their wish to remain British, on a 92 per cent turnout. Trump’s ‘review’ of the situation is thus a bullying tactic, unrelated to justice.Trump knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. The value of a Special Relationship which has for 80 years worked to the advantage of both countries, as well as to that of Nato and the wider West, means precisely nothing to this most transactional of politicians.His threat lands at a time when Argentinian revanchism is at its height over the islands they call the Malvinas, despite never having owned them and their having been British since 1765, before the United States even came into existence. Donald Trump greets Argentina's president Javier Milei at the White House last yearOnly days ago, Fifa had to fine Argentina £235,000 for displaying a banner at the World Cup that stated ‘Los Malvinas Son Argentinas’ – a statement seen on posters all around Argentina.Trump’s remarks can only inflame his friend, the already-mercurial president Javier Milei, in his expressed desire to see the Falklands become Argentinian. Milei has seen the Labour Government try to extinguish British sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, even offering Mauritius £35billion to take it on from us, so his appetite will only have been further whetted by Trump’s remarks.Currently, we protect the Islands from Argentinian adventurism with the Sky Sabre medium-range ground-based mobile air defence system, four Typhoon FGR4 jets, a tactical transport aircraft and up to 1,700 military personnel. These are enough to prevent an incursion, but not to defeat a full-scale invasion.Furthermore, in 1982, the Reagan Administration, despite having several members who were highly doubtful about helping Britain, nevertheless provided logistical and intelligence help to the Task Force that liberated the islands. That would clearly now be lacking from President Trump.More seriously, although in 1982 Britain was unable to prevent the initial invasion, Margaret Thatcher had a navy, army and air force large enough to retake the islands after they fell to Argentina. We also had in Thatcher a leader with the iron determination and willpower to undertake such a risky mission over 8,000 miles away.Since the fall of Mrs Thatcher in 1990, however, we have seen such a massive hollowing out of our armed forces that it would be impossible to field anything like the necessary force to recapture the islands, even in the unlikely event that Andy Burnham had the same kind of intestinal fortitude she had.In the fiscal year 1982/83, Britain spent 5.3 per cent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on Defence, over twice the rate of 2.4 per cent that we currently spend.Our new Chancellor, John Healey, resigned and helped bring down Sir Keir Starmer over the failure to raise it to 3 per cent by 2030.Even 3 per cent is a scandalously low figure at a time when China is building the largest navy in the world, Russia is battering Ukrainian civilians nightly, Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, and North Korea is testing nuclear missiles in the seas off Japan. Yet as soon as he got to the Treasury, Healey started talking about finding ‘clear pathways’ to spending 3 per cent, rather than finding the actual money to do it.With President Trump acting against America’s closest allies, it is criminally negligent of any government to wait until 2035 – nine years away, in an ever-more dangerous world – before getting defence spending to a mere 3.5 per cent of GDP, which anyhow is nothing like enough to contend with the perils the West is facing.Britain is now in 12th place among Nato countries in terms of defence spending as a percentage of GDP, while former Nato chief and defence secretary Lord Robertson’s call to arms in the latest Strategic Defence Review has been all but binned.Furthermore, Burnham and Healey are kicking defence spending yet further into the long grass with their promises for 2035, when both know there is next to no likelihood that either will be in office to redeem the pledges. Meanwhile, the Russians are threatening our undersea cables, blowing up munitions factories in Finland, Italy, Bulgaria and Germany, sending drones into Poland and fighter jets into Estonian air space. Only days ago, FIFA had to fine Argentina £235,000 for displaying a banner at the World Cup that stated ‘Los Malvinas Son Argentinas’ – a statement seen on posters all around Argentina Royal Marine Peter Robinson seen with a flag flying from his bag on the day that the Argentines surrendered in 1982Consider some of the recent evidence of the way the Treasury has been underfunding the armed forces. Last month we learned Army reservists were told days before Christmas that they no longer had a job, forcing at least one of them to approach a military charity for food. The Army was so cash-strapped that it had to stop paying reservists for further training three-quarters of the way through the last financial year. As a result, soldiers who had completed 150 days of training, having been expected to do more than 200, were told not to come back to work in January. They were left without income for three months.In March, Germany had to lend a frigate, the Sachsen, for a Nato mission in the North Atlantic because Britain’s only two operational destroyers had been committed elsewhere. To make the embarrassment more complete, it was a UK-led mission.One high-ranking commander from a European ally despaired recently at the state of our once-great naval power. ‘If you show up in a rowing boat,’ he said, ‘no one is going to listen to you.’ A military official from another ally in Europe was astounded, when touring Royal Naval facilities in Plymouth, that they ‘were even selling off the pictures from the walls’.In June, our £3.5 billion aircraft carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, was forced into a Norwegian port for repairs, delaying its departure for the celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.‘The Royal Navy is miserably small and the reason for that is very obvious,’ Nicholas A. M. Rodger, the pre-eminent historian of British sea power, said. ‘Successive governments have paid very little attention to it for upwards of 20 years.’ Our navy fleet is almost 40 per cent smaller than at the turn of the century.None of the fault for this lies with our still superbly trained and professional soldiers, sailors and air force; all of it lies with our politicians and civil servants, who have let us reach this position.We can of course blame President Trump for his oafishness and bullying tactics over the Falklands, but frankly it was ever thus with him, and it is only our own fault if we have got to a military position where he can humiliate us at will.Lord Roberts of Belgravia is a Conservative peer.