At first blush, the dispute might seem like an obscure debate over islands that most Americans couldn’t find on a map, but stick with me for a minute because this is going somewhere.
Last spring, the United Kingdom and Mauritius reached a diplomatic agreement over the Chagos Islands, which had been under British control for two centuries. Under the deal, Mauritius, an island country in the Indian Ocean, would gain sovereignty over the islands, and the British government would make annual payments to Mauritius to lease one of the islands, Diego Garcia.
This was of interest to the United States because there’s a U.S. military base on Diego Garcia.
When the agreement was announced, the Trump administration was pleased. In fact, it issued a statement touting the deal, saying it “secures the long-term, stable, and effective operation of the joint U.S.-U.K. military facility at Diego Garcia.”
At that point, the diplomatic process moved forward, without controversy — right up until a month ago, when Donald Trump published an odd, middle-of-the-night statement to his social media platform, condemning the U.K.’s decision as “an act of GREAT STUPIDITY.”
Trump went on to describe the agreement as an “act of total weakness” and an example of why he wanted to seize control over Greenland. (He didn’t fully explain what the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean had to do with Greenland, which is roughly 7,000 miles away.)
British officials were surprised and confused by Trump’s rejection of an agreement that had already been endorsed by his own administration.
In fact, British officials largely ignored the president’s weird harangue and proceeded to implement their policy of transferring ownership of the islands to Mauritius. That didn’t pose much of a problem for the administration, which quietly reversed course: Just four weeks after Trump’s online condemnation, the State Department issued a formal statement, announcing U.S. support for the deal.
That was on Tuesday. One day later, Trump issued a new statement, condemning the agreement anew. The rant, published to his social media platform, rambled on for a while before concluding:
This land should not be taken away from the U.K. and, if it is allowed to be, it will be a blight on our Great Ally. We will always be ready, willing, and able to fight for the U.K., but they have to remain strong in the face of Wokeism, and other problems put before them. DO NOT GIVE AWAY DIEGO GARCIA!
So to recap, the administration endorsed the agreement, only to have Trump reject it, only to have the administration re-endorse the agreement, only to have Trump reject it again.
Time will tell what becomes of the issue, and by all accounts, there’s nothing to suggest the U.K. is prepared to back out of the agreement it’s already reached. But the conflict between Trump and his own team doesn’t just reinforce concerns about the administration’s competence; it also signals to the world that no country, including our closest allies, can count on foreign policy consistency from the planet’s preeminent superpower.
