Why Chagos, Not Taiwan, Is the Real Test of Global Sovereignty

This article by Amandeep Midha has been with us for the past few weeks, awaiting a suitable news peg. This morning, following a Washington Post report alleging that Iran attempted to target Diego Garcia — the controversial U.S. military base located on one of the 58 islands of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean — we felt it was timely to publish it. The piece offers our readers important context on the base and the ongoing dispute over its sovereignty, which international bodies have deemed unlawful under U.K. administration and where the U.S.–U.K. partnership remains deeply contested. 

Why Chagos (Diego Garcia), Not Taiwan, Is the Real Test of Global Sovereignty 

Amandeep Midha

When global leaders speak of sovereignty, they invoke Taiwan. They present it as the frontline of democracy against authoritarian revisionism. Yet when it comes to the Chagos Islands, a textbook case of colonial theft, forced expulsion, and repeated condemnation by international courts, those same leaders remain silent.

This silence is not a historical oversight. It is a live colonial injustice maintained for strategic convenience.

A Timeline of Erasure

1965: Britain illegally detaches the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius just before Mauritian independence, creating the "British Indian Ocean Territory" in direct violation of UN Resolution 1514, which forbade the breakup of colonies prior to independence.

1967–1973: Around 2,000 Chagossians are forcibly expelled. Pets are slaughtered, families are dumped in Mauritius and Seychelles without support. The aim was to clear Diego Garcia for a US military base.

1971: The US begins building its base on Diego Garcia, one of the islands of Chagos Archipelago, under a lease from Britain.

1991–2000s: The base becomes a hub for US-led wars including the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq, as well as drone strikes and CIA rendition flights linked to unlawful operations and covert programs.

2010: The UK declares a "Marine Protected Area" around Chagos, which the Permanent Court of Arbitration later rules is illegal on the grounds that it blocks the right of return for islanders. A blatant environment excuse to prevent the natives from returning, while continuing to use it for military purposes

2019: The International Court of Justice rules that the UK's continued occupation of Chagos is unlawful and must end as rapidly as possible.

2019: The UN General Assembly votes overwhelmingly to demand Britain withdraw within six months.

2024: After years of stalling, Britain agrees to return Chagos to Mauritius, but excludes Diego Garcia, which remains under a 99-year lease to Washington.

2025: War planes from Diego Garcia are deployed in the Twelve-Day War against Iran. Diego Garcia is largest base of B2 Bombers in Asia

2026: Active deployments continue, with the UK additionally granting use of its Cyprus bases for missions carried out against Iran.

This is not settled history. It is an ongoing colonial occupation dressed in the language of security.

Diego Garcia: A Base of Wars and Hypocrisy

Diego Garcia is not just a dot in the ocean. It is the site of one of America's most important overseas bases, built on the ruins of a displaced people. It has been the launchpad for the 1991 Gulf War bombing campaigns, the 2001 Afghanistan invasion, the 2003 Iraq War, CIA rendition flights in which detainees were illegally transported across borders, and now active military operations against Iran.

It is a base constructed through dispossession and used for wars that themselves shredded international law. This is the reality behind the so-called rules-based order.

India's Forgotten Warning

For India, Diego Garcia has never been just a footnote. When Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee defended India's nuclear tests in 1998, he made it clear that the tests were not only a deterrent against Pakistan and China but also against the strategic threat emanating from Diego Garcia. That statement was not made lightly. It reflected India's recognition that sovereignty in the subcontinent could not be divorced from the realities of foreign military bases in its oceanic backyard.

Yet in the decades since, that strategic clarity has been allowed to fade. India has voted consistently at the United Nations in favour of Mauritius' sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, and it has spoken in principle against colonial entrenchments. But it has fallen short of being equally vocal for the Chagossians themselves, who remain in exile. Successive governments have been content to support Mauritius on paper, while avoiding the harder, more moral demand for the displaced islanders' right of return.

That gap has left India's position weaker than it ought to be, particularly for a nation that calls itself the natural guardian of the Indian Ocean. If Vajpayee could name Diego Garcia as a threat at a time when India's economy was far smaller and its global voice still tentative, there is no excuse for today's India, which is more confident, more connected, and more central to the world order.

The Double Standard of Sovereignty

Western capitals loudly rally around Taiwan, calling it the frontline of sovereignty and democracy. Yet Taiwan itself is the legacy of a civil war within one civilisational state, a contested outcome of the twentieth century that continues to shape Asian geopolitics. The Chagos case, by contrast, is not born of internal conflict but of outright colonial dispossession. It is simpler, clearer, and already decided by international law. Britain's actions in detaching the islands from Mauritius were unlawful. The International Court of Justice has spoken. The United Nations has voted. The Chagossians themselves, for decades, have never stopped demanding their right to return.

Still, the issue is buried beneath the calculations of great power politics. The reason is obvious. Diego Garcia is too valuable to Washington and London. Sovereignty, in this view, is not a principle but a tool, sacred when it constrains rivals, disposable when it blocks one's own interests. This selective morality exposes the hypocrisy at the he art of the so-called rules-based order.

Colonial Erasures Can No Longer Be Tolerated

The Chagos dispute is not only about sovereignty or territory. It is a reminder that colonial erasures are not relics of the past but living wounds that continue into the present. When Britain expelled the Chagossians, it attempted to erase both the people and their history, replacing them with a military installation. That act of displacement was then hidden behind legal manoeuvres, marine reserves, and the jargon of security cooperation.

This is how the empire survives into the twenty-first century: not by flags and governors but by military leases, strategic carve-outs, and policies of dispossession dressed as partnership. Allowing Chagos to remain unresolved is to concede that the empire never really ended. It simply adapted to new forms of power. Every year that the Chagossians remain barred from their homeland is another year the world accepts colonialism as the normal business of states. That is a stain that can no longer be tolerated.

The Real Test Ahead

If sovereignty matters only when convenient, then sovereignty means nothing at all. The real test of the global order is not only in the Taiwan Strait. It is in the Indian Ocean, where Diego Garcia still stands as a monument to displacement, illegal wars, and colonial arrogance.

Chagos is not a small island dispute. It is the clearest case of modern colonialism in operation. And until it is resolved fully — with the Chagossians assured of their right to return and Diego Garcia no longer excused as a strategic exception — the world cannot claim that the age of empire is behind us.

India has rightly supported Mauritius in its sovereignty claim. Yet foreign policy must now go further. It must explicitly demand justice for the Chagossians themselves, ensuring their return is not sacrificed to great power bargaining. Silence on this front weakens India's moral authority in the very ocean it claims to secure.

As the natural guardian of the Indian Ocean, India has both the geography and the responsibility to lead. Our voice must be unambiguous: colonial erasures can no longer be tolerated, and the Chagossians must go home. A civilization that watched them erased once cannot afford to look away a second time.

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Amandeep Midha is a technologist, writer, and global speaker with over two decades of experience in digital platforms building, data streaming, and digital transformation. He has contributed thought leadership to Forbes, World Economic Forum, Horasis, and CSR Times, and actively engages in technology policy-making discussions. Based in Copenhagen, Amandeep blends deep technical expertise with a passion for social impact and storytelling.