It has been widely reported that, during his meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer last week, President Trump gave his consent to the UK’s proposed deal to transfer sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. However, this is not quite what happened. What he actually said was that he thinks the US ‘will be inclined’ to go along with the deal – but that ‘it is a little bit early, we have to be given the details’.
As the saying goes, the devil is indeed in the detail. Once the President and his team are fully briefed on the situation surrounding the Chagos Islands – and the joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia – it should become clear that the deal poses a national strategic risk to the US. That is because relinquishing sovereign control of the territory will degrade our ability to protect this vital strategic asset from Chinese attempts to surveil, encircle, and undermine it.
The government’s rationale for handing over the Chagos Islands is built on quicksand
Since the mid-Cold War era, the Diego Garcia military base has been integral to allied security.
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