Trump Considers Direct Purchase of Chagos Islands to Secure Indian Ocean Base

The Trump administration is exploring an audacious plan to purchase the Chagos Islands directly from Mauritius, a move that would upend Britain’s own delicate negotiations to transfer sovereignty over the Indian Ocean archipelago and ensure the future of the strategically vital Diego Garcia military base. According to a report in The Telegraph, White House officials have drafted options to circumvent the United Kingdom entirely, opening a direct channel to Port Louis in a bid that has resonated as far as the Treasury Department, where Secretary Scott Bessent has been briefed on the dossier. The proposal underscores Washington’s deepening anxiety over the fate of a base that military planners have long regarded as an irreplaceable launchpad for operations stretching from the Middle East to East Asia.

Viewed from Washington, the gambit reflects a determination to lock in long-term security arrangements that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s fragile deal with Mauritius cannot guarantee. President Trump has been consistent in his position that the United Kingdom should not give away the British Indian Ocean Territory, which includes the joint US-UK facility at Diego Garcia. The base, on the largest atoll of the Chagos chain, was established after London detached the islands from its then-colony of Mauritius in 1965 – three years before independence – and leased them to the US for military use. For American strategists, Diego Garcia is a “unsinkable aircraft carrier” that provides irreplaceable basing rights for long-range bombers and surveillance flights, and its loss to Mauritian sovereignty, even with a leaseback agreement, is seen as an unacceptable vulnerability.

In London, the Starmer government has spent months stitching together an accord that would cede sovereignty while securing a 99-year lease to maintain base operations, a compromise intended to bring the UK into compliance with international law. The International Court of Justice and the United Nations General Assembly have both ruled that the UK unlawfully detached the Chagos Archipelago and that the islands belong to Mauritius, whose government has waged a decades-long campaign for their return. Yet the agreement has faced fierce domestic criticism and is now threatened by Trump’s emerging preference for a bilateral solution that sidelines the UK entirely, raising uncomfortable questions about the durability of the special relationship.

From New Delhi to Beijing, the manoeuvre is being watched with keen interest. India, which has long viewed the US presence at Diego Garcia as a stabilising counterweight to Chinese naval expansion in the Indian Ocean, is likely to welcome any arrangement that keeps the base fully operational. But the precedent of a great power purchasing sovereign territory from a smaller state – reminiscent of Trump’s past musings about acquiring Greenland – will fuel broader geopolitical unease, particularly if it emboldens similar transactional land grabs elsewhere.

The diplomacy now unfolding will test whether a hastily drafted White House paper can overturn years of painstaking multilateral negotiation. While Mauritius has not publicly responded to the reported plan, its leverage has rarely been stronger: the international legal consensus has shifted decisively in its favour, and Britain’s eagerness to offload a colonial legacy places it in a weak bargaining position. For Washington, a direct purchase would bypass endless haggling and enshrine control in perpetuity. But the gambit may also ignite fresh legal challenges and antagonise allies who see the Chagos issue as a touchstone for post-colonial justice. As the internal review proceeds, the fate of Diego Garcia hangs on a complex triangulation between three capitals, each with starkly different priorities and a shrinking window for compromise.