Martin the Martian wrote ''gambling that Argentina would not have built up a big force on the Falklands, extended Stanley's runway to operate Mirages etc, or to go with what was available at the time?''
'gambling'?
i cannot imagine what the odds that Argentina would not be extending the runway while we were running around the world buying up carriers would be, but i doubt they'd be very good.
in such a situation i can only imagine that we'd have had to go cap in hand to washington and litterally beg for help - possibly with the observation/threat that a British government that failed to re-take the FI would be out of office 15 minutes after a 'no confidence' vote was tabled, and that any incoming government would have a hard time explaining to the UK population why we were in NATO if NATO did nothing for us in our hour of need.
quite what the response would be i'm not sure.