The Diego Garcia Military Base Is Too Important for Cheap Shots

Amid all the Sturm und Drang over his bid to annex Greenland, President Donald Trump reached for brickbats to hurl at those European leaders who backed Denmark’s resistance. In the case of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, that meant targeting Britain’s decision to cede sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. These are home to the critical Diego Garcia military base; and the move is, the US president said in a social media post, “an act of GREAT STUPIDITY.”

On the contrary, the broadside, together with the issue’s weaponization by Starmer’s political opponents at home, shows the profound stupidity, to borrow Trump’s term, of subjecting issues of strategic national interest to performative politics.