How the UK Is Undermining US Indo-Pacific Security

Alexander B. Gray, and Cleo Paskal

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While the world’s attention is on Venezuela and the Western Hemisphere, the British government is careening this week toward a colossal strategic blunder with significant implications for American interests in the Indo-Pacific. The British parliament is in the process of passing the “Agreement concerning the Chagos Archipelago including Diego Garcia,” which would transfer sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean from the UK to Mauritius. This archipelago contains Diego Garcia, one of the US military’s most critical facilities.

The Diego Garcia base, known colloquially as the “footprint of freedom,” is one of the few outside the United States that can reload nuclear submarines, port aircraft carriers, and base and launch strategic bombers, and is critical for Space Force operations.