America First faces an immediate challenge. If President-elect Donald Trump plays his cards adroitly, he can prevent the most strategically important U.S. base in the Indo-Pacific region from falling under the shadow of China.
The base is on the atoll of Diego Garcia, part of the British Indian Ocean territory. Halfway between Africa and Indonesia, it lies within reach of four of the seven global choke points that funnel maritime traffic: the Bab-el-Mandeb, the Straits of Hormuz, the Malacca Straits, and the Cape of Good Hope. Not for nothing is it known as the Malta of the Indian Ocean.
The Anglo-American base built in 1968 has proved its military value again and again. In 1991, waves of B52s took off from its runway to bomb Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. A goodly part of the campaign against the Taliban was waged from there 10 years later.
Yet, incredibly, Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s feeble prime minister, has just agreed to cede sovereignty over the archipelago to Mauritius, a country that has never administered it and has close ties to China, in exchange for a 99-year lease on the base. No less incredibly, President Joe Biden has gone along with the deal.
There is still time to turn things around. No treaty has yet been signed. There has been a change of government in Mauritius since the deal was announced, and the new administration says it wants to look at the terms.
The incoming U.S. administration, by contrast, needs no such look. It can see that imperiling such an asset when Iran is hurling missiles at Israel and China is turning every coral reef it can into an airstrip, is a blunder. But Trump must act fast.
Some history: The Chagos Islands were uninhabited until 1783, when the French established a plantation there and imported African slaves to work it. In 1810, as part of its war against Napoleon, the United Kingdom seized France’s Indian Ocean territories, which were formally ceded in 1814. Britain went on to free the Chagossians, who remained on the islands, working on sugar and coconut plantations and as fishermen.
Fast forward to 1965: Mauritius was in no hurry to leave the British Empire. Several of its politicians were pressing to be allowed to join the U.K. with representation at Westminster. But the U.K. was intent on pulling out of Africa. It did, however, want an Indian Ocean base, and so it hived off the Chagos Islands, which lay 1,337 miles from Mauritius, and removed the local population, then numbering around 1,800. Mauritius was paid the then enormous sum of £3 million to renounce its claim, and a further £650,000 to resettle the Chagossians — though it held on to a chunk of the money.
The Mauritians were delighted. The Chagos Archipelago was, as its first postindependence leader, Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, later put it, “a portion of our territory of which very few people knew, which is very far from here, and which we had never visited”. All sides declared the matter closed.
Only recently was the matter raised again. Perhaps Mauritius was encouraged by the self-hating wokery it found among British leaders. Perhaps it was pushed by China, which has lavished state visits and money on its ally. Either way, it whipped up support in the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. The Conservatives regarded Mauritius’s claim as nonsensical — it demanded another huge sum, this time to take back the islands that it had already been paid to cede — and halted talks. Then came the U.K. general election.
Labour saw only a “decolonize” issue. The party is programmed to favor poor countries against rich ones, nonwhite against white populations, and pretty much anyone against the U.K. and the U.S. But, even in woke terms, it has failed. For the truly wronged party, the Chagossians removed from their homes to make room for the base, doesn’t want to be Mauritians. A few days ago, I attended what was surely the largest-ever gathering of Chagossians, united in their hostility to the islands being handed to Mauritius.
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Mauritius says it plans to settle the outer islands, building hotels and fishing in the rich seas — the U.K. had established a marine conservation zone. But if we are now going to repopulate the atolls around Diego Garcia, surely the people with the best claim are the Chagossians themselves — the vast majority of whom want to do it under the British flag.
Here, in short, is an opportunity to right a historic wrong while at the same time preserving the most important Western base in the region. Over to you, President-elect.