The Chagos Islands: many dangers ahead
On 3rd October 2024 the Labour government in the United Kingdom (UK) agreed to cede the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius under a treaty now being drafted. Labour should draw back from this damaging decision.
The Chagos Islands include the Diego Garcia atoll on which the United States (US) has constructed a vital naval, air and logistics base. This US/UK base has major strategic importance for all Western democracies at a time of escalating danger from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – “the quartet of chaos”, as a recent Economist article has dubbed them.
Labour has based its agreement with Mauritius on a flawed interpretation of international law. Its error sets a dangerous precedent and will further weaken the current international order.
The issue also has major ramifications for South Africa, which has important military facilities – the Waterkloof airbase near Pretoria and the Simon’s Town naval base near Cape Town – that Russia and China would like to use for their own purposes. If the UK, one of the most important members of the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO), fails to stand up to these autocracies on a vital naval base, South Africa’s appetite to resist their use of its facilities is likely to shrink further.
Background on the Chagos Islands
The Chagos Islands lie roughly in the middle of the Indian Ocean, about 1,600 km to the south of the southern tip of India. They are even further – some 2,150 km – away from Mauritius, which showed little interest in them for more than 160 years.
In 1814 Britain acquired sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, which it then administered as “a dependency” of its Mauritian colony. The “dependency” relationship is often seen as indicating a close link between the Chagos and Mauritius, but this is not correct. As the 2023 report ‘Sovereignty and Security in the Indian Ocean: Why the UK should not cede the Chagos Islands to Mauritius’ by the Policy Exchange think tank in London explains: “In British imperial usage, a dependency was a separate colonial territory which, for ease of administration, was attached to a larger colony.”
Britain’s sovereignty over the Chagos was not affected by this arrangement, while Mauritian oversight was minimal. In practice, the Policy Exchange report says, far distant islands were “almost exclusively run by plantation managers” appointed as peace officers. “Visits by Mauritian officials were rare”, while a Mauritian magistrate stationed in Port Louis would generally come by once a year.
Mauritius had other dependencies too, including the Seychelles, which Britain also acquired in 1814. Britain detached the Seychelles from Mauritius in 1903 and granted them independence in 1976. Many other British dependencies were similarly detached from larger colonies and either granted independence or attached to other colonies instead.
Established practice regarding dependencies, along with the loose ties between Mauritius and the Chagos, explain why the Mauritius government readily agreed in 1965 to the detachment of the islands from Mauritius in return for £3m, a defence pact, and other economic benefits. The Policy Exchange report points out that the UK also promised to cede the islands to Mauritius when they were no longer required for defence purposes.
A joint UK/US military base on Diego Garcia
After the Islands were detached from Mauritius, a crucial US/UK naval and air base was established on Diego Garcia, the biggest atoll in the archipelago. This base includes a large airfield and port, along with logistics and communications hubs. It has enormous strategic significance.
Writes Admiral the Lord West of Spithead, in a foreword to the Policy Exchange report: “Diego Garcia is a strategic jewel… It provides unimpeded access by sea and air to the countries [bordering] the Indian Ocean, from South Africa past Somalia [to] Yemen, Iran, the Arabian Gulf, the Indian sub-continent, Indonesia and Australasia… [It also] allows coverage of the choke points south of the Cape of Good Hope, the Bab-el-Mandeb, Straits of Hormuz and Malacca Straits, through which a huge quantity of global trade passes.”
Diego Garcia has confirmed its worth to the West in recent conflicts. According to the Policy Exchange report: “Diego Garcia has served as an indispensable logistical hub for the US for over half a century. It facilitated crucial American operations…to counter Iraqi aggression against Kuwait in 1990-1991, and [in] the US-UK missions against the Taliban in 2001, while also supporting the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban afterwards. Diego Garcia’s facilities have been used to pre-position equipment, including enough materiel and ammunition for large marine units to fight for a month on short notice.”
Mauritius has agreed with the UK that, once it has taken sovereignty over the Chagos, it will “authorise” the UK to exercise the “sovereign rights and authorities” required to “ensure the continued operation” of the Diego Garcia base for an initial period of 99 years. Such a pledge has little value. Mauritius could find ways to negate or renege on it, as the Policy Exchange report indicates, especially as China has been pressurising it to claim sovereignty over Diego Garcia for some time. Adds Lord West of Spithead: “China wants access to and control of the port and airfield facilities. The depth of the Sino-Mauritius relationship is evident in the 47 official Chinese development finance projects on the island.” It also underpins China’s decisions to “provide Mauritius with nine-figure loans and, more recently, [to] sign a currency swap agreement with [it]”, as two of the authors of the Policy Exchange report point out.
China’s “string of pearls” strategy
China’s long-term objective in the Indian Ocean is to gain control over a large number of “pearls” – naval bases, civilian ports, islands and other strongholds – and then “string” them together via the maritime routes developed and held open by its expanding blue-water navy, already the largest in the world. (China rejects the “string of pearls” concept, calling it “malicious defamation”.)
China has nevertheless made major progress in creating many “pearls”. It has established a major naval base – the People’s Liberation Army Support Base – in Djibouti, next to the Bab-Al-Mandeb Strait that controls access to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. It has built a Chinese-controlled deep-water port near the mouth of the Persian Gulf at Gwadar in Pakistan, which could in time be used for military purposes. It may have deployed “debt-trap diplomacy” – lending a target country large sums for Belt-and-Road infrastructure that the country then struggles to repay – to take control of the deep-water Hambantota International Port on the south-eastern coast of Sri Lanka. It has forged close ties with the Maldives, which abut one of the busiest maritime trade passages in the Indian Ocean, via large infrastructure projects and $1.2 billion in loans from Chinese banks. It has also been wooing the Solomon Islands, which in 2022 agreed to deploy Chinese police on the islands under a security pact that could lead in time to a permanent Chinese naval presence.
Once these “pearls” (and many others besides) have been strung together with the help of its navy, China will be able to project its military power over most of the Indian Ocean. If Diego Garcia also comes in time under Chinese control, it will be the finest pearl of all in the region. It will give the Chinese Communist Party the equivalent of an unsinkable aircraft carrier right in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
This danger comes at a time of mounting conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East, coupled with rising tensions over Taiwan and China’s attempts to dominate the South China Sea. China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are actively building up their military capacity vis-à-vis the West by collaborating with one another in the transfer and production of weapons and the exchange of military know-how (how best to jam drone-control and GPS signals, for instance). “We’re almost back to the axis of evil,” says Admiral John Aquilino, the recently departed head of America’s Indo-Pacific Command, referring to the term applied by George W. Bush, a former US president, to Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
Undermining core principles of international law
The UK’s decision to cede the Chagos to Mauritius weakens core principles of international law. One of the most important – which has underpinned the United Nations (UN) from the start – is that states must consent to the adjudication of their disputes by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The Chagos Islands issue puts this principle at risk.
Evolution of the Chagos dispute
In September 1965, Mauritius agreed that the Chagos would be detached from it and remain under UK sovereignty as it proceeded to independence in 1968. Mauritius was well rewarded for this decision, while its main emphasis at the time was on the economic benefits the agreement would yield, as the Policy Exchange report points out.
In addition, as the then prime minister Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam later pointed out, Mauritius had little interest in retaining the islands. The Chagos archipelago, he said, was “a portion of our territory of which very few people knew, … which is very far from here, and which we had never visited”. He also said that Mauritius had consented to the 1965 detachment because, “from the legal point of view, Great Britain was entitled to make arrangements as she thought fit and proper”, without Mauritian agreement.
However, the government’s stance changed fundamentally after the Mauritian Militant Movement–Mauritian Socialist Party alliance won power in a general election in 1982. The new government soon established a select committee to investigate the detachment of the Chagos. In 1983 this committee claimed that the UK had obtained Mauritian consent through “blackmail”. In 1992 the Mauritian constitution was amended to include the Chagos Islands within the country for the first time.
Mauritius tried to refer its dispute with the UK over the sovereignty of the islands to the ICJ for adjudication. However, the UK refused to give its consent, which meant the case could not proceed, according to the dissenting opinion of Judge Joan Donoghue in Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965. In response, Mauritius vowed to “use all avenues open to us in order to exercise our full sovereign rights over the Chagos Archipelago”. Mauritius then tried to declare a dispute with the UK under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and also under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Both these initiatives failed, Donoghue points out.
The ICJ’s advisory opinion
In 2017 the UN General Assembly requested the ICJ to provide an advisory opinion on the matter. The question it posed was carefully phrased to avoid any reference to a dispute over sovereignty. Instead, the Court was asked to advise whether “the process of decolonization of Mauritius [was] lawfully completed when Mauritius was granted independence in 1968, following the separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius and having regard to international law”.
Commented Judge Joan Donoghue in a dissenting opinion: “To be sure, there is no reference to ‘sovereignty’ in the request. However, Mauritius’ own statements make clear that the dispute over sovereignty is at the heart of the request.” The centrality of the sovereignty issue was further confirmed by the supporting statements of other countries and the African Union.
The ICJ, wrote Judge Donoghue, was being asked to provide an opinion on the same issues that Mauritius had tried without success to have it adjudicate. Since the UK had not provided its consent, the Court should have protected “the integrity of its judicial function” by declining to provide an opinion or providing a more limited response.
The majority brushed aside this key weakness. Instead, it declared that the decolonisation process in Mauritius had “not been lawfully completed”, following the separation of the Chagos. It went on to say that “the United Kingdom’s continued administration of the Chagos Archipelago constituted a wrongful act” of a “continuing character”. The United Kingdom was thus “under an obligation to bring to an end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible”.
Commented Judge Donoghue: “The Advisory Opinion, like the [General Assembly] request, avoids references to sovereignty. Yet the Court’s pronouncements can only mean that it concludes that the United Kingdom has an obligation to relinquish sovereignty to Mauritius. The Court has decided the very issues that Mauritius has sought to adjudicate, as to which the United Kingdom has refused to give its consent.”
In May 2019 the General Assembly adopted a resolution endorsing the ICJ’s advisory opinion. The resolution not only demanded the UK’s unconditional withdrawal from the Chagos, but set a six-month deadline for Britain to withdraw and for the islands to be reunified with Mauritius. This resolution was adopted by 116 votes to six, with those in favour including Austria, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Other European states – France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Poland and Romania – were among the 56 countries that abstained.
The General Assembly’s demand implied that both the ICJ opinion and its own resolution had binding force, when this is not the case under the UN Charter. The UK thus declined to comply with it, while warning against the risks to all states in this circumvention of international law.
A dangerous precedent
Judge Donoghue spelt out the ramifications of the Court’s approach. Instead of upholding the need for consent, the ICJ had “signalled that the advisory opinion procedure was available as a fall-back mechanism to be used to overcome the absence of consent to jurisdiction in contentious cases”.
This is damaging in itself: both to the credibility of the Court and to the survival of the consent principle. If the UK now takes the view that the ICJ’s opinion obliges it to cede the islands to Mauritius, the damage will be even greater. As the Policy Exchange report points out, the consent principle will be further eroded, as will the legitimacy of the ICJ and its capacity to achieve the peaceful settlement of disputes.
In addition, once ICJ advisory opinions on General Assembly questions are treated as binding, the General Assembly need only endorse those opinions – as it did in the Chagos case – to gain decision-making powers it was never intended to have. This will encourage Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and other autocracies – most of which have alarming ambitions for regional or global dominance – to use flawed General Assembly decisions to coerce Western democracies and incrementally dismantle the current international order.
The key principle of equality before the law will also be undermined still further. Yet this principle is vital to the international rule of law and in preventing a return to the notion that “might makes right”.
How might South Africa respond to China’s control over Diego Garcia?
The US and the UK, along with other European countries, are South Africa’s most important economic partners. They contribute the lion’s share of investment inflows and help to bring in vital skills and technology. However, these economic ties are less important to the ruling African National Congress (ANC) than its strong ideological ties to Russia, in particular, and to China and Iran as well.
If the Labour government in the UK cedes sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius – thereby allowing China to take control of Diego Garcia in due course – this shift in the global balance of power might well encourage the ANC to grant China, Russia or both access to major South African bases important to their long-term goals.
China would no doubt like to integrate the Simon Town’s naval base near Cape Town into its “string of pearls”, so as to help it project power into the Atlantic Ocean and towards Antarctica. Since Russia has similar desires, a tripartite agreement might in time be concluded. (A precedent for trilateral collaboration was set in February 2023, for instance, when South Africa participated in naval exercises in the Indian Ocean with both Russia and China.)
At the same time, the Waterkloof Air Base near Pretoria is probably the only air base in Africa with runways and support facilities able to accommodate Russian nuclear-capable strategic bombers, such as the Tupolev Tu-160. In October 2019, two Tu-160s made their first ever visit to Africa, landing at Waterkloof after a 13-hour flight. In late October 2024, a similar proposed landing at Waterkloof by two TU-160s was postponed, perhaps in response to US concerns. Russia would clearly relish a permanent arrangement to use Waterkloof for its own purposes, while a friendly Chinese base at Diego Garcia would help bring the airfield within easy reach.
Could South Africa’s government of national unity (GNU) deflect the ANC from such a course of action? The ANC’s most important partner in the GNU – the Democratic Alliance (DA) – is likely to oppose any such use of these bases. So far, however, DA objections to damaging ANC policy decisions have succeeded only in delaying some of them, rather than halting them. In addition, a GNU might not be created after the 2029 election, while the current one might not last until then.
How best then to avert the Chagos risk?
The Labour government’s decision to cede the Chagos Islands to Mauritius – along with its mistaken claim that this is what international law demands of it – has been sharply criticised by the Conservative Party and several commentators in the UK. The decision is deeply flawed and needs to be withdrawn.
In addition, as the Policy Exchange report argues, any treaty of cession should at minimum be brought before the Westminster Parliament for approval under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act of 2010. All MPs should be allowed a free vote on an issue so vital to Western democracy and the international rule of law. The propaganda and misperceptions that have long clouded the Chagos issue must also be countered, so that decisions can be taken on the basis of accurate information.
US concerns must also be taken into account. In 2022 the chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness, Michael Waltz, warned that, if the UK ceded sovereignty of the Chagos to Mauritius, this could allow China to “take advantage of the resulting vacuum”. This, he said, would be “catastrophic to deterring our adversaries in the Middle East and Indo-Pacific”.
Last month the Biden administration nevertheless “welcomed” the UK’s 3rd October agreement with Mauritius. It implied that this pact would yield “mutually beneficial outcomes” and was the product of “diplomacy and partnership”. Yet the US is surely well aware of the dubious legal stratagem that has been used in obtaining the ICJ’s opinion and seeking to give it legal force via the General Assembly’s resolution.
The incoming Trump administration needs to reconsider the US stance. It should underscore the illegitimacy of the lawfare strategy deployed. It should point out that the recent election of a new Mauritian government facilitates a rethink of the 3rd October agreement. And it should remind the Labour government of the importance of the “special relationship” the UK and US have maintained since World War II.
The US should also caution Labour against undermining global security on a vital issue when there is no legal imperative to do so. The Chagos Islands have been under unbroken British sovereignty since 1814. That the UK detached the Chagos Islands from Mauritius in 1965 and began administering the islands directly as the British Indian Ocean Territory does not alter this. At a time of growing international peril, it is not in the best interests of the free world to help China strengthen its string of pearls around and across the Indian Ocean. Rather, the emphasis must be on maintaining a sound balance of global power and upholding the current rules-based order. There is little good to be gained by helping China, Russia and other autocracies tear up the established rule book in their determined pursuit of global hegemony.
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