The British government’s negotiation with the Republic of Mauritius to cede the Chagos Islands has been a mess. At time of writing, expectations of an imminent agreement (or rather re-agreement, as the United Kingdom already received the last Mauritian government’s blessing — before the new one rejected the terms and re-opened talks) have morphed overnight into reports that London might now wait to give the incoming Trump administration the final say.
As our recent Policy Exchange report argues, the three and a half months since the initial announcement of the proposed deal have exposed the British government’s poor handling of the matter. By seeking to rush through a deal before both Mauritius and the United States held elections, Britain exposed itself and the deal to the volition of two unknown governments — and the prospect that their views may differ from those of their predecessors. This gamble has backfired.
More rests on the conclusion of this saga than the pride of the British government. On one of the 60-odd islands that constitute the Chagos archipelago resides the Diego Garcia military base: a joint U.K.-U.S. nuclear-enabled naval and air facility, which also serves as a vital intelligence outpost in the Indian Ocean. Any change in circumstances that casts a shadow of doubt on the base’s long-term viability — or erodes even fractionally Anglo-American capacity to preserve adequate surrounding security measures — is a grave strategic risk. It is for this reason that the best outcome for London and Washington is for the deal to collapse. The British government has at least done well to leave the door ajar for this eventuality.
Flawed Legal Rationale
Reaching a deal to cede the Chagos Islands was never legally necessary, nor strategically prudent. On the contrary, it is an act of strategic self-harm, inflicted under phantasmal duress, and in a crucial gateway region with a rapidly expanding Chinese presence.
Beginning with the legal dimension, according to British officials, it was the “legal uncertainty” over the future of the base — arising from Mauritius’ claim that British sovereignty over the islands is an illegitimate vestige of colonialism — that compelled an agreement. This argument picked up pace in 2019 when the International Court of Justice issued a non-binding advisory opinion that the United Kingdom “has an obligation to bring to an end its administration … as rapidly as possible.” Shortly after, the U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to endorse the court’s ruling, with 116 in favor, six against, and 56 abstentions.
However, the truth remains that the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion is non-binding, putting Britain under no obligation to conform. As our report demonstrates, the United Kingdom excludes disputes between members of the Commonwealth (of which Mauritius is one) from the purview of the court’s jurisdiction, and so Mauritius’ original case in effect hijacked the advisory opinion procedure. International Court of Justice judges Joan E. Donoghue and Peter Tomka shared this concern about the court’s overreach in their written opinion on the verdict — the latter saying, “I am concerned that advisory proceedings have now become a way of bringing before the Court contentious matters, with which the General Assembly had not been dealing prior to requesting an opinion upon an initiative taken by one of the parties to the dispute.” At the time, Germany, Australia, France, and the United States all raised similar concerns over the court’s divergence from established practice.
Indeed, there are innumerable historical precedents for states not accepting advisory opinions — without suffering profound diplomatic or strategic consequences. Malaysia and Romania have both elected to disregard International Court of Justice advisory rulings on the immunity of U.N. officials, while Marrakesh annexed Western Sahara in 1975 despite a court opinion that the territory does not belong to either Morocco or Mauritania. London has even been on the receiving end of such action, when Iceland pressed ahead with extending its fisheries jurisdiction amidst a dispute with the United Kingdom, thereby defying the court’s opinion. It suffices to say that none of these states have become global pariahs.
Bowing to so-called pressure is not, therefore, an act of necessary legal compliance, but a political decision — one based on a calculation of strategic risk. A question therefore arises: Is the future of the strategic asset more jeopardized by diplomatic pressure, or a new arrangement that transfers sovereignty over the territory to another state?
The Chinese Threat in the Indian Ocean
The British government’s fears that legal challenges would become insurmountable in the future are overblown. It is equally apparent that the government has underpriced the long-term strategic risks arising from cession. At the heart of this lies China’s expanding presence and activity in the Indian Ocean, and its warming relations with Mauritius itself.
The security of the Diego Garcia base is currently ensured by a robust set of mechanisms that preclude other states from establishing military facilities, or conducting surveillance, in its proximity. The United Kingdom enforces a stringent Marine Protected Area in Chagossian waters, which denies access to commercial vessels. Furthermore, as a British Overseas Territory, other states cannot develop infrastructure on any of the islands.
Special measures are also in place that permit the nuclear function of the base. The region is encompassed by the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone, under the aegis of the Treaty of Pelindaba, from which the United Kingdom secured an exemption for the military base and in-transit nuclear vehicles. As Mauritius is a signatory of the treaty, it is not yet known whether this carve-out will be preserved.
At present, there is no publicly available information to suggest that these essential security measures will endure in their current form. The United Kingdom has announced that, as part of the proposed deal, it would cooperate with Mauritius in “the creation of a Mauritian Marine Protected Area” — but has provided no details of what this will constitute. Concerns that the new Marine Protected Area might be laxer have also been stoked by the fact that Mauritius’ own Marine Protected Area permits its government to issue licenses to foreign fishing vessels.
It is one thing for Sri Lankan or Seychellois fishing trawlers to sail close to the U.K.-U.S. military base. It is quite another for China — with its track record of utilizing ostensibly commercial and oceanographic research ships to conduct espionage, and 100 attempts to spy on U.S. military facilities over the last year — to be granted the same opportunity. This would pose an obvious and highly significant risk to British and American military and intelligence activities.
Such fears are compounded further by the steady improvements in Mauritian-Chinese relations. Contrary to the assertion of British officials that Mauritius is an “ally” of India (see Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doughty), it became the first African state to sign a Free Trade Agreement with Beijing in 2019. Huawei has built a presence in Mauritian telecommunications and energy infrastructure in recent years — winning another major contract as recently as last November. Can the United Kingdom really be confident that, over the course of the 99-year-long lease agreement for Diego Garcia, China will not be able to build sufficient leverage over Mauritius to force it to water down, or violate altogether, terms agreed today? No legal or security provisions have yet been disclosed.
The macro picture of the Indian Ocean adds to this impression of significant geostrategic volatility. The region’s smaller states are increasingly being buffeted by the headwinds of Sino-Indian competition: Sri Lanka is now caught in the middle of New Delhi and Beijing’s tussle for maritime access and mineral exploration. Last year the Maldives experienced a pro-China “India Out” domestic campaign on the back of growing Indian investment — itself an attempt to hedge against the $1 billion of debt owed to China. In this context it is impossible, as the British government has done, to place bets on the long-term allegiances, or capacity to retain policy autonomy, of small countries like Mauritius.
Strategic Interests and International Norms
The Chagos Islands episode provides a vignette of the conundrum that increasingly faces policymakers in liberal democracies today: how to act at the pinch point of strategic interests and the norms and values that liberal democracies promote and seek to uphold.
For the British government, the attempted deal with Mauritius is not simply about securing the future of a strategic asset but, in the words of Foreign Secretary David Lammy, “showing that what we mean is what we say on international law and desire for partnerships with the Global South.” Putting the dispute to rest, he believes, “strengthens our arguments when it comes to issues like Ukraine or the South China Sea.”
The problem, and indeed the source of the subsequent strategic misstep, is that this false equivalence neither serves British interests nor upholds desirable norms. Drawing an analogy between the United Kingdom’s legal ownership of the Chagos Islands (bought from Mauritius in the 1960s) and Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and Xi Jinping’s regional aggression engenders moral equivocation and presents non-aligned states with a pretext to seek concessions. It is of course inconceivable that any of Britain’s adversaries would relent to a non-binding legal opinion on a matter of national security — nor that their behavior will change as a consequence of Britain’s undertaking of such actions.
On the contrary, the United Kingdom’s mismanagement of the Chagos Islands deal projects insecurity and weakness. It projects the image of a state that cannot judiciously manage strategic risk and can be co-opted by dubious moral appeals. And by conceding to misapplications of global rules, it does not strengthen them but rather weaken their legal and moral scaffolding.
The British government has done well to engineer a last-minute off-ramp. The strategic interests of the United Kingdom, the United States, and their partners are best served if it is taken.
Marcus Solarz Hendriks is head of the National Security Unit at the U.K. think tank Policy Exchange. He is the co-author of the new Policy Exchange report, “Averting a Strategic Misstep: Why the Government should walk away from its draft agreement to cede the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.” He holds both a Master’s and a B.A. from the University of Cambridge.
Image: Seaman Kamaren Hill via DVIDS
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