A bid by Mauritius to claim the Chagos Archipelago puts the future of the base in question. Does the US have an answer?

By Michael McDevitt

Diego Garcia is the United States’ major geostrategic and logistics support base in the Indian Ocean. Sovereignty over the island is increasingly being challenged by Mauritius, but it seems unlikely that Washington would be interested in a deal that would facilitate its transfer.

The National Security College, with the support of the Department of Defence, is leading a two-year research project on Australia’s Indo-Pacific strategy in the Indian Ocean. As a part of this project, this paper provides a US perspective on the Chagos Archipelago sovereignty dispute. This paper first appeared on the Lowy Institute’s ‘The Interpreter’ on 19 May 2020.

This article originally appeared in The Interpreter.