Donald Trump wants to stop Britain returning some islands in the Indian Ocean to its former colony of Mauritius. Does this mean he’s about to bomb Iran?
Starmer’s Indian Ocean headache
Trump gave Keir Starmer a fresh headache yesterday when he warned that Britain was “making a big mistake” by returning the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Britain and the US have a joint military base on Diego Garcia, the biggest of the islands that lie in the middle of the Indian Ocean, which Trump said Washington might have to use in an attack on Iran.
“Prime minister Starmer should not lose control, for any reason, of Diego Garcia, by entering a tenuous, at best, 100-year lease,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“This land should not be taken away from the UK and, if it is allowed to be, it will be a blight on our great ally.”
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Trump’s intervention came a day after his state department said it supported Britain’s decision to return the islands to Mauritius and lease Diego Garcia for 99 years. Asked yesterday about the contradiction, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president’s Truth Social post should be taken as the administration’s policy.
Mauritius was colonised by the Netherlands in the 17th century and later by France, which ceded the island and its dependencies to Britain under the Treaty of Paris in 1814. The dependencies included the Chagos Islands, which were mostly populated by the descendants of enslaved people who had been brought there from East Africa to work on coconut plantations.
Britain governed the islands as dependencies of Mauritius throughout its colonial rule there but demanded during independence negotiations in the 1960s that they should be detached to form a new colony called the British Indian Ocean Territory. Britain wanted to keep the islands because it planned with the United States to establish a military facility on Diego Garcia as part of the US Navy’s “strategic island concept” for acquiring new bases in strategically important places.
A note from the US joint chiefs of staff to defence secretary Robert McNamara on April 10th, 1968, said Diego Garcia’s location in the middle of the Indian Ocean made it suitable to support important functions in Washington’s contest with its Cold War rivals in Moscow and Beijing. These included scientific research, intelligence collection, strategic communications and strategic intercontinental ballistic missile detection and warning.
“The Indian Ocean is a critical, strategic area from which large portions of both the USSR and PRC can be targeted from a submarine. Indian Ocean-based ballistic missile systems could expose targets within a 2100-nautical mile window along the Soviet southern border to an additional threat,” it said.
As for the people who lived on Diego Garcia, the British government suggested “removal of population altogether to some locale outside territory, or onto other islands in Chagos group”. The US wanted all the islands cleared and Britain got rid of the population over the next few years, encouraging them to move by, among other things, gassing their dogs.
Most exiled Chagossians moved to Mauritius or the Seychelles where many lived in extreme poverty and experienced discrimination and other forms of hardship. After Britain granted them citizenship in 2002, some took up the offer, many of them settling in Crawley near Gatwick Airport.
In 2019, the International Court of Justice gave an advisory opinion that the separation of the Chagos Islands meant that Britain’s process of decolonising Mauritius was not lawfully completed. It said Britain should end its administration of the islands as soon as possible and that all United Nations member-states were obliged to co-operate with completing the decolonisation of Mauritius.
The opinion was not legally binding but it was endorsed by an overwhelming margin by the UN general assembly and it influenced the decisions of other international bodies. Britain concluded that Mauritius was moving closer to a legally binding ruling in its favour and in November 2022, the Conservative government started negotiations with Mauritius.
In May last year, the Labour government concluded an agreement that recognised the sovereignty of Mauritius over the Chagos Islands, including Diego Garcia. Britain would lease Diego Garcia for 99 years at a cost of around £3.4 billion (€3.8 billion) and would be able to continue operating the military base jointly with the US.
Critics of the deal warn that Mauritius, which has a close relationship with China, could allow Beijing to gain a foothold on the Chagos Islands. But Trump’s opposition may have more to do with the build-up of a huge US military force in the Middle East in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.
When the US and Israel attacked Iran last June, Washington sent B-2 bombers to Diego Garcia as a decoy but did not use the base during the operation. If Trump wishes to use Diego Garcia for his next attack on Iran, he will need Starmer’s approval and this could prove difficult.
International law only permits the use of force in limited circumstances, usually for self-defence or with UN security council authorisation, neither of which would apply in this case. Britain was reported to have suspended some intelligence sharing with the US during boat strikes in the Caribbean last year because it did not want to be complicit in a breach of international law.
History suggests that if the Pentagon decides to use Diego Garcia, Britain’s scruples about international law will not be allowed to stand in the way. In a memo to McNamara on July 25th, 1967, the joint chiefs of staff stressed how important it was to have a naval facility on the island.
“Though it would be desirable to obtain UK participation, the US requirement for Diego Garcia is such that the project should be undertaken unilaterally, if necessary,” it said.
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