Shifting Sands at Diego Garcia

The military base at Diego Garcia, the so-called ”Footprint of Freedom,” is  a seventeen-square mile atoll of the Chagos Island chain in the Indian Ocean. It is one of the most important and secretive overseas installations operated by the United States. The fact that the legal status of that island may now be in transition from the United Kingdom to Mauritius is a matter of deep concern.

Due to its location in the very center of the Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia functions as a critical logistics hub for both the United States as well as the United Kingdom which currently holds the island as an overseas territory. Its central location  allows for rapid deployment of military forces  to project power outward across the Middle East, East Africa, and South Asia, as well as providing a key refueling and supply station for naval and air operations. Bombers flown from Diego Garcia participated in the Gulf War, the invasion of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

The military installation at Diego Garcia is operated by the U.S. Navy – Camp Thunder Cove - as host, along with the U.S. Air Force. It is home to approximately 4,000  military and civilian personnel.  In an area where fresh water is scarce the base has then capability of producing up to 1.2 million gallons of potable water daily in support of the population. This workforce functions in a variety of roles, including operations, maintenance, logistics, security, and intelligence.

Diego Garcia is one of the two major bomber bases in the Indo-Pacific, the other being Guam. The Airfield Complex supports a wide range of aircraft, including fighters, surveillance planes, refueling tankers, cargo  planes in addition to the long-range bomber task forces made up  of B1Bs, B-2s and B-52s.

The naval operations at  Diego Garcia are centered around its deep-water port within the confines of the archipelago which is shaped like a horseshoe. This port has the capacity to accommodate aircraft carriers, other surface ships, and submarines. The naval base operation has facilities for servicing these vessels, including refueling and maintenance. Additionally, it serves as a hub for U.S. Navy and allied forces expeditionary operations in the Indo-Pacific region. Diego Garcia also serves as a critical base for intelligence monitoring of China’s increasing naval and air operations in the region. The base operates at the highest level of security. The United States, views China's growing military and economic activity in the region with concern.

China's presence in the Indian Ocean is centered currently  around its first overseas naval base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa to protect flows of petroleum products and gas from the Red Sea  through the  Bab El-Mandeb Strait. This base has a docking station sufficient to service very large vessels indicating the intention of bringing larger vessels, such as carriers, into the Indian Ocean. Another significant development is Gwadar Port in Pakistan which allows China to transit petroleum and natural gas  to  Gwadar and  then through pipelines to China, thus avoiding passage through the narrow Malacca Strait. In addition, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) ,China is also involved in infrastructure projects with a number of other  countries bordering the Indian Ocean e.g., Bangladesh, Kenya, Maldives, Myanmar, Somalia, and Sri Lanka.

The history of the Chagos Islands, in which Diego Garcia is located,  is one of colonialism. The Chagos Islands had been a possession of France which had attempted to establish coconut plantations. Slaves were brought from West Africa to the largely uninhabited atoll followed later by laborers from India. These agricultural ventures, however, were unsuccessful. French involvement came to an end in 1814 when French Mauritius, was handed over to the British by the Treaty of Paris following the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars. The Chagos chain has been a possession of the United Kingdon since that time. The link between the Chagos Islands with Mauritius was the result of French colonial administration. The native Chagossian people are a mixture between the West Africans and Indians who were brought to the islands as laborers.

In 1965, as Mauritius was in the process of gaining its independence in the anticolonial sweep taking place during that decade, the British severed the Chagos Islands from Mauritius and established the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). This was done because Diego Garcia had been selected as the site for a large military installation that was to play a significant role in the Cold War. The native Chagossians  were removed in a shameful manner to Mauritius and  the Seychelles to make room for the base. Britain would later claim that it had acquired the Chagos islands by the Lancaster House  Agreement and a payment of three million pounds to Mauritius, a claim that was held to have no legal force.

Over time, the separation of the island on the eve of independence and the refusal to grant Chagossians the right to return to their homeland became matters of international legal dispute. Mauritius, which became independent in 1968, has long argued that the separation of the Chagos Islands and the displacement of its inhabitants was illegal.

In 2019, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a landmark advisory opinion stating that the United Kingdom's continued administration of the Chagos Islands was unlawful, as it violated international law by detaching the islands from Mauritius in 1965 as a condition of attaining independence. The ruling was subsequently endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly, which adopted a resolution demanding that the UK withdraw from the islands. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) has issued similar findings.

Over time there   have been some attempts at dialogue, including talks on the possible compensation to Mauritius and the displaced Chagossian people and those who wished to return. In 2022 the UK first  entered into negotiations to arrive at a  resolution, but those discussions faltered. It should be noted that the Chagossian people have objected  to being excluded from  discussions and have attempted legal action accordingly. The new Labour government  in the United Kingdom , which only came to power on July 5, 2024,  took this  dispute up and  in just three months,  on October 23, 2024, Prime Minister Keir Starmer unexpectantly announced  that “a political agreement for the future”   with the government of Mauritius had been  concluded. This agreement must then be memorialized in a treaty that is yet to be drafted and ratified.

Under the terms of the agreement, Mauritius would gain sovereignty over the  entire Chagos Archipelago, while the UK and US would retain control over the military base on Diego Garcia under a 99-year lease. There was agreement in principle to a right of return for the Chagossian people. In spite of addressing all salient issues, the Prime  Minister has been under sharp attack for this decision such as by Boris Johnson who called the decision a “colossal mistake.”

The concern raised by the agreement  is that it places the sovereignty of one of America’s largest, and in the Indian Ocean the largest ,military installations under the sovereignty of a nation which has an increasingly closer relationship with China, the primary county which Diego Garcia is intended to monitor and check. There are concerns about the potential long-term economic implications of Mauritius becoming too reliant on Chinese trade, loans and investments and thus subject to pressure by the Chinese. China is Mauritius’ largest trading partner.

The new Secretary of State in the  Trump administration, Marco Rubio,  has said that the agreement to return sovereignty to Mauritius raises a “serious threat.” On one hand, as the authors of the international order and the international bodies that have issued the various advisory opinions mentioned above, the United States and United Kingdom acknowledge the   positions and interests of all involved, including the Chagossians. On the other hand, significant national security issues hang in the balance as does the stability of the region and the protection of free passage in the sea lanes.

The decisions handed down by the ICJ, and other bodies, are advisory and do not set a deadline, but create international opinion that serious and sincere dialogue be in process. Mauritian sovereignty is a concern to the United States as it could result  in  development of   and tourism  in some of the outlier islands as well as to allow passage of ships, including  the Chinese, through waterways that are currently within the  security zone around Diego Garcia.

Each of the three parties of interest have some objectives that cannot be squared simultaneously with the other two. The security interest regarding the military installation is obviously one set of objectives. On the other  hand, from the standpoint of Mauritius ,sovereignty is important to the of the delimitation of the maritime border between  Mauritius  and Maldives (which is located eight hundred miles closer to Diego Garcia), and thus the respective  Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) under the Law of  the Sea treaty Finally, the  heartfelt desire of the Chagossians to the right of return to their native homeland, is  complicated by the fact that the military installation occupies the entirety of Diego Garcia, the principal habitable island in the chain. All parties must also mutually address the risk posed by rising sea levels due to climate change which would have a deleterious effect on all concerned.

The United States needs to be brought into the dialogue due to the existence of the base and given the magnitude of its geopolitical and national security concerns. The United States is also the largest strategic partner of the United Kingdom. The actions of the Starmer government have added some complications to such a multiparty dialog. First, it announced the agreement just one month prior to when the new US administration was to be elected, possibly by design, Second, the Labour party took the wholly extraordinary step in sending one hundred of its staff members to the United States to campaign against the incoming president. Finally, the current British Foreign Minister, David Lammy, has made a series of public statements about the incoming president that were defamatory. Such non-diplomatic language is not helpful to the diplomatic process that must now ensue.

David W. Wise is a retired businessman who publishes frequently about public policy. He is a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University