By Matthew Lee & Jim Fein, The Daily Signal | October 24, 2024
China benefits over America in a recent agreement between the United Kingdom and Mauritius over the sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago, seven atolls comprising about 60 islands in the Indian Ocean.
The agreement’s end result is a strategic loss for the U.S. that releases the U.K.’s sovereign control over the archipelago to Mauritius, including the island of Diego Garcia—home to a key military base.
The agreement includes U.K. support to Mauritius for economic welfare and maritime security in the archipelago. By maintaining an economic relationship with Mauritius, some British soft power is preserved.
However, the deal leaves the Chagos Archipelago vulnerable to Chinese influence after over half a century of the U.K.’s stabilizing control over the islands in the Indian Ocean.
Of most concern is the increased vulnerability of the strategically important U.S.-U.K. military base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the islands in the Chagos Archipelago. Known formally as the Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, it is a joint base used by the U.K. Royal Navy as well as the U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Space Force.
The base’s location makes it valuable for U.S. operations in the Indo-Pacific theater. Diego Garcia is about 1,000 miles south of the nearest land mass (Sri Lanka) and about halfway between East Africa and Indonesia, making the base a military asset for both the Middle Eastern and Asian areas of operation.
Diego Garcia allows access so that ships and aircraft may be serviced as well as for intelligence-gathering on nearby adversaries. The military base there served as a logistical hub for U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, housing bomber aircraft that directly supported American operations.
The island’s relatively small population also has allowed a veil of secrecy in military strategy, which now is threatened.
The new sovereignty agreement between the United Kingdom and Mauritius doesn’t mean the end of U.K. and U.S. access to the military base on Diego Garcia. The deal allows the U.K. to exercise control of the base for the next 99 years, with Mauritius having sovereignty over the island.
The U.K. officially says the agreement means that “the status of the base will be undisputed and legally secure” for the first time in 50 years and argues that “without today’s agreement, the long-term, secure operation of the military base would be under threat.”
However, the claim that access to the base was under threat before the agreement is dubious at best, and false at worst. Relinquishing access requires the U.K.’s consent, and Mauritius is incapable of denying access by force.
Although the agreement may secure U.S. and U.K. military interests, it doesn’t deny the fact that Mauritius receives hefty subsidies from China that inevitably will creep into the Chagos Archipelago.
In the past decade, Chinese investments in Mauritius have exceeded $1 billion. In 2019, Mauritius and China struck a Free Trade Agreement giving China economic access to accounting, architectural services, education, medical services, research and development, energy, real estate, port development, and artificial intelligence.
Now that the Chagos Archipelago is under the sovereign control of Mauritius, Chinese influence inevitably will infiltrate the island chain, making it an important concern for the U.S.
Should China control the islands’ infrastructure, energy, and ports, among other things, the communist regime would have improved access to gather intelligence on U.S. military assets.
The U.S. should take keen notice of this likely possibility.
In fact, the U.S.-U.K. military presence on Diego Garcia is the reason for lessened Chinese involvement on the island. A withdrawal of forces and a turnover of the base to Mauritius could create a vacuum that China likely would fill.
Besides being a concern for U.S. national security, Chinese influence on the islands certainly will harm the Mauritian economy. Past examples of heavy dependence on China leading to economic and social disaster are seen throughout Latin America, including in Costa Rica, Argentina, and Ecuador.
China uses economic coercion in the form of trade agreements to advance its own national interests, including military espionage, and abandons such deals as soon as its interests no longer align. The U.S. and U.K. must be wary of this fact.
For the sake of national security, the United States must take appropriate measures to ensure that Mauritius reduces its dependence on China. The goal is to mitigate the risks posed by the boost to Chinese soft power in the U.K.-Mauritius agreement and to prevent future agreements that threaten U.S. interests, including U.K. control of Gibraltar.
Matthew Lee is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. Jim Fein is a research assistant for national security and European affairs at The Heritage Foundation.
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