Yesterday, following a last-minute flurry of lawfare, the government published the text of its Chagos agreement with Mauritius. Future history books may well cite it as the perfect example of Britain ceasing to be a country that can be taken seriously.
This lousy deal essentially amounts to a massive gift from British taxpayers to the Mauritian government, in exchange for being allowed to give up territory
The agreement transfers to Mauritius the entire Chagos archipelago, including the Diego Garcia airbase, subject to a 99-year leaseback of the latter. The small print is worth noting. Mauritians and Mauritian companies are to have preference in employment on the base; it is to be operated in accordance with Mauritian environmental law; and the UK is to inform Mauritius of any warlike activity conducted from it. And a very large annual sum is to be paid to Mauritius for this privilege. This probably amounts in total to some £30 billion (the figure of £3.4 billion suggested by Keir Starmer is something of an accountant’s sleight-of-hand known as ‘net present value’).
While the retention of Diego Garcia is clearly a relief, as it is strategically vital, a number of features of the deal are worrying. The transfer of base sovereignty to Mauritius, a country moving uncomfortably close to Xi Jinping’s China, is concerning in itself. The duty to tell the Mauritian government of any attack on another state conducted from Diego Garcia is a big intelligence gift to Beijing. So too the duty to use Mauritian personnel as far as possible on the base: this can only make its security porous, again to the advantage of those who do not wish us well. And the obligation to observe Mauritian environmental laws could well provide opportunities for devilment.
This lousy deal essentially amounts to a massive gift from British taxpayers to the Mauritian government, in exchange for being allowed to give up territory. Why sign it? The answer is legalism. Before Mauritian independence, the islands, which had to be controlled from somewhere, were administered from Port Louis. Six years ago the International Court of Justice, fuelled by an anti-western resolution from the UN General Assembly, gave an advisory opinion that Britain had acted unlawfully in excluding Chagos when giving Mauritius independence because this amounted to the heinous sin of dismembering an entity before decolonising it.
The government took this at face value, fearful that although the advisory opinion itself was not binding it might face a legal claim from Mauritius. It then admitted that it had no choice but to concede Mauritius’s right and then negotiate over Diego Garcia. From then on Mauritius held all the cards: no doubt quietly egged on by countries such as China, it played them all. Desperate for a deal, and with the US breathing down his neck, Starmer had no choice but to cave.
Yet this called for a much more nuanced approach. Domestically you might well reason that you simply do as the High Court says. But in international relations things are different. The International Court itself does not always appear entirely impartial. In practice countries have a good deal more wiggle-room with its judgments, especially if the other side’s moral position is itself a bit dodgy. And looked at other than legalistically, Mauritius’s claim to a bunch of islands 1,300 miles away across an empty ocean (Chagos is actually a bit closer to the Seychelles) is unimpressive. There’s no natural connection and little cultural commonality; and the Chagossians have little affinity with Mauritius.
Had the UK not handed the Mauritian government the whip hand, who’s to say there couldn’t have been a better solution? There might have been all sorts of possibilities: an offer, for example, of most of Chagos to Mauritius, with Diego Garcia being retained as a sovereign base area, as in Akrotiri and Dhekelia in Cyprus. Or some other deal that would have left Port Louis with little reason not to accept.
Unfortunately this does not fit the mindset of this government. Starmer is a lawyer. His Attorney-General is a legalist who seems to take a sea-green incorruptible view that even if other countries can be flexible in their view of international law (which at bottom is only a matter of state practice), our administration must follow the jurisprudence of international courts to the letter, even if it is entirely contrary to the interests of the country and what its electors want.
Why? The government fondly thinks that if it does this, other countries will admire it for setting a shining example. But I have news for the government. Of course other countries will ostensibly commend us for our principled stance. But they will then regard us with contempt for being a pushover and an easy target. That’s exactly what happened with Chagos; and it’ll no doubt happen again. This is something the Foreign Office is going to learn over the next few years, one fears the hard way.
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