Chris

Yep, the key difference this time being it's a democratic, civilian government running the country rather than a crazed military junta. Civilian democracies, even slightly unhinged ones like Argentina, find it much, much harder to equip a large army and then to deploy it. Galtieri had the hardware at his disposal and a reason to believe the UK would not deploy its own hardware in response. Kirchner has basically the same standard of kit as Galtieri, but rather less of it. And this time there is rather a lot of British hardware sitting off the coast, armed and reasy to cause what's left of the Argentine military a lot of pain if necessary.