If the UK Tries to Give Away the Chagos Islands, the US Can Take Them

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Diego Garcia is an island military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean, built and long-occupied by both U.S. and UK military forces. The base is used for long-range nuclear bombers, submarines, and aerial refuelers, making it critical to U.S. national security and necessary for the global projection of U.S. power into Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

As most recently demonstrated by the recent removal of two dictators in Iran and Venezuela, that power is a power for good. If nothing else, taking them out deters other dictators from acting against the United States.

The United Kingdom has controlled Diego Garcia—and the broader Chagos Islands of which it is a part—since 1814. While complicated from an international law perspective, it essentially bought the Chagos from Mauritius for 3 million pounds in 1965 to solidify its legal status. Shortly after, Mauritius started trying to renege on the 1965 deal based on a reassessment of related international law. In 2019, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the United Nations backed Mauritius and advised the UK to return Chagos to Mauritius.

However, the ICJ and United Nations are overly influenced by authoritarian regimes like Russia and China, making their advisories questionable from a human rights and democracy perspective. Unfortunately, the democracies’ compliance with international advisories and attempts to gain trade and diplomatic concessions from these regimes often benefits regimes that themselves feel free to ignore international law, human rights, and free-market principles.

The British caved starting in 2022 by agreeing to negotiate with Mauritius on the Chagos issue, knowing that it could undermine the country’s power projection and so its ability to support democratic principles globally. Around that time, Mauritius significantly increased its engagement with China. Over the past few years, Mauritius has sent approximately 6,000 of its officials to China for training. Plans for the giveaway accelerated in the context of London attempting to improve UK–China relations in 2024. That year, Britain first agreed in principle to transfer sovereignty of the islands.

After the handover, Mauritius would lease the island back to the United Kingdom for 99 years at an annual rent of $135 million. The accompanying treaty would require the UK to share classified information with Mauritius, including potentially information about U.S. operations on Diego Garcia. This would needlessly reward Mauritius in the context of its turn toward China and burden the British taxpayer.

The United Kingdom can barely afford to maintain its own military forces, including its nuclear deterrent, and the Chagos giveaway entails an unwise expenditure. It demonstrates negligence in the UK’s stewardship of the United States in its provision of the global public good of international peace and security. It undermines the allies’ support for democracy and human rights globally.

The United Kingdom denied permission to the United States to use Diego Garcia for its Feb. 28 strikes on Iran, which finally ended the life of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Those strikes are ongoing, and as with any war, there are civilian casualties.

But many Iranians danced in the streets after the Ayatollah’s death was announced, and some toppled one of his statues. This is arguably the biggest chance ever for the people of Iran to finally democratize and choose their own leaders. That the United Kingdom failed to assist is rightly ringing alarm bells in Washington, including in the White House.

The UK–Mauritius deal on the Chagos is to the long-term advantage of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which could pressure Mauritius to evict the United States and United Kingdom early to make way for Chinese troops. So the proposed deal should raise questions about whether London is making it to appease Beijing and thereby increase its economic opportunities in China.

Britain’s prime minister visited China in late January, in the first such visit since 2018. He was there to promote trade and investment. There is no ethical reason that the United States should comply with an agreement that the United Kingdom and Mauritius made under potential economic coercion of the CCP, for example, a threat to deny access to China’s market. The CCP has no right to do so, as the CCP was never elected by the Chinese people.

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A phone shows the position of the Island of Diego Garcia on Google maps after a post on Truth Social by U.S. President Donald Trump, which criticizes the UK's handover of the Chagos Islands, in Knutsford, United Kingdom, on Jan. 20, 2026. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

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On Feb. 18, President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Prime Minister Starmer should not lose control, for any reason, of Diego Garcia, by entering a tenuous, at best, 100 Year Lease. This land should not be taken away from the U.K. and, if it is allowed to be, it will be a blight on our Great Ally. We will always be ready, willing, and able to fight for the UK, but they have to remain strong in the face of Wokeism, and other problems put before them. DO NOT GIVE AWAY DIEGO GARCIA!”

Last year, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said that “It is bone-deep, down-to-the-marrow stupid for us, because of guilt over colonialism, to bow to the wishes of the United Nations and give a military base—that we built—to Mauritius, which eventually will end up in the hands of the Communist Party of China.”

Kennedy and three other U.S. congressmen agreed, and issued a letter to that effect on Feb. 27. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), another signatory of the letter, said that “Mauritius has a close relationship with China, and a transfer of sovereignty would do significant damage to the U.S.–UK relationship, as well as to the safety and security of Americans.”

We saw what happened to Hong Kong after the city was “returned” to CCP control through another British giveaway agreed in 1984. The goal of that deal was to avoid a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) invasion of the city and to smooth over British commerce with China. The CCP then violated the agreement, and Hongkongers lost their freedoms.

Unlike Hong Kong, which was difficult to defend against the PLA, Diego Garcia is easy for the United States and the United Kingdom to defend against all other countries, including China and Mauritius. So there is no good reason to give it up to a weak authoritarian-aligned government.

The international law strategy was followed for decades in the hopes that rogue regimes like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea would become more peaceful and democratic, but they failed to do so. Instead, they just took advantage of what they perceived as Western weakness and foolishness in following a law without the teeth of enforcement. With the recent U.S. military operations in Iran and Venezuela, it should now be clear that those days of hope for the regimes are gone. There’s a new sheriff in town.

However, if Britain’s parliament does go ahead with the Chagos giveaway, then Trump should veto it, whether or not London agrees. The United States should declare its occupation of Chagos permanent and the sovereign territory of the United States, given Britain’s relinquishment of its territory through negligence, faulty judgment, and the attempt to give it away. This would then be America’s due, given the long U.S. use of the islands for the costly provision of the global public good of international peace and security.

To sweeten the deal for Britain, the United States could waive the $135 million annual rent for its closest ally. That would save Britain as much as $47 billion over the course of the 99-year treaty, and put tea in Britain’s pot.