It is a strategically insane deal by a British government that is run by absolute fucking idiots. That's all there is to it -- another loss by progressives and people who hate themselves and their own culture.
Across the Western world we really need to figure out how to improve the attractiveness of politics to normal medium to high-IQ people who have some courage. This is probably impossible, so maybe there is a way to change the culture slowly to stamp out the self-loathing of progressives and the desire to destroy their own cultures in an orgy of narcissistic victimization.
Rather absurd that Mauritius supposedly has the right to colonize Diego Garcia because they were previously part of the same British colony administratively
It’s a shame how often decolonization has been used to turn over colonies to foreign dictatorships and strongmen. Let the chagisdians return then let them vote on what to do,
MY's article appears to be very heavily influenced by our hawkish friends at the Hudson Institute. Perhaps this is a brave revisionist national-security counterpoint to the groupthink of the mainstream media, but the core of the deal, which was largely negotiated by the prior Conservative government (and which is not mentioned until the 19th paragraph of the story, which unhelpfully leads with a vague criticism of the deal rather than a description of the deal) is a 99-year lease to continue to operate the base on Diego Garcia on essentially status-quo Anglo-American terms. All a very strong whiff of the brouhaha over the Panama Canal treaty 50 years ago, for those of us old enough to remember, and perhaps times for a gentle reminder that none of the parade of horribles marched out by the treaty opponents ever really happened.
There must be an illuminating backstory of why Mauritius that did NOT go for the typical statist economic policies and authoritarian politics of most decolonized places:
"Mauritius highly ranked for economic and political freedom. The Economist Democracy Index ranks Mauritius as the only country in Africa with full democracy while the V-Dem Democracy Indices classified it as an electoral democracy.[30][31] Mauritius ranks 73rd (very high) in the Human Development Index and the World Bank classifies it as a high-income economy. It is amongst the most competitive and most developed economies in the African region."[from Wikipedia]
nevetheless wound up supporting China over the West.
“Democrats don’t want to give China a major advantage in wartime any more than Republicans do” - I mean, this is plainly not true? Republicans view this as non-negotiable, whereas if the destroy America caucus fights hard enough, Democrats will accept it.
It's perhaps worth noting that "the Conservative Party's foreign policy critic" is an actual job over here - Priti Patel's title is "Shadow Foreign Secretary". The Loyal Opposition (which is an official part of the system) is expected to field a full Shadow Cabinet, mirroring the roles of the actual Cabinet and providing detailed critique on each aspect of Government policy. Smaller parties typically also field a "frontbench team" doing the same roles.
My son married a Mauritian and we have been there for family events, so I’ve some on the ground knowledge.
It is a Hindu majority country with deep Indian roots. India has built a naval base there due to concerns about the Chinese, so Europe and America having bases in the region is both understandable and a well established fact. The French still control nearby Réunion as a an overseas Department of France and has a large military presence.
All of the inhabitants were brought there by either the French or the British. As such, ‘Indigenous’ peoples claims are a moot point. Given the distance from Mauritius and the fact that the so called locals were brought there by the British to begin with it seems to be odd that there is a fuss about ownership. Britain ran away from places such as Mauritius due to its post WW11 economic plight. It is really the Americans that have an interest in the islands and it probably would have been better if they had taken it over from the British. Mauritian claims are tenuous as it was Britain’s that created a link by administering the islands from Mauritius.
I vaguely knew about Diego Garcia, but just now I learned about the (~10k) Chagossians. It sounds like terrible humanitarian tragedy. But as something from the 60's, I don't know where it goes on that board when placed against the force projection of the militaries of balancer states. Before we get to guilt we can talk about what the US Air Force wrought against Germany and Japan, but those bases should exist for the far future. 'Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum' and 'Peace is our Profession' are not jokes, they are real statements about the nature of the world. This story isn't about the French colonies in Indochina, it is about balancer allies against an increasingly bellicose power and it's opportunistic (jackal, if you're familiar with the international relations zoo typology) co-revisionists. I really do vacillate between thinking of international relations though a realist or liberal lens (I wish I could cite more sources that called 'republicanism' one of the main theories) but I know that the next 10 years will be less peaceful than the last 25. And peace is the ultimate goal of international relations.
This attitude of treating people's like they were individuals has always puzzled me. If the idea is that the island somehow belongs to the descendants of the people who lived there in the 1770s then that almost certainly means it should belong to the UK since there are only about 10k Chagosians in the islands, a 3000 person ethnic community in Crawley in the UK and a quick estimate strongly suggests that if you count up all the descendants of people from Chagos living in the UK it's going to be way more than 10k.
I don't mean to suggest that the forced removal in the 1970s was ok (sounds bad but I don't know much about it) and I dunno what is a good solution here. But just in general, it seems really objectionable to have this default favoritism toward the parts of a group who retain their traditional practices.
For instance, I found it particularly upsetting that during the controversy about the use of Mauna Kea for the next giant telescope we treated traditional Hawaiian cultural organizations as if they had some special status when the only poll I could find that tried to just look at support amoung people of Hawaiian descent in Hawaii it was quite positive.
More generally, it seems to be a troubling concept no matter how you slice it. Either you effectively ignore the interests of everyone who decides to give up traditions -- a weird position for a modern secular society to take -- or you end up with a weird kind of ethnic essentialism. Both options seem bad.
Maybe we should just admit that fairness is a notion that applies to people not groups and just deal with it at that level -- eg compensation payments to the people actually removed. This seems particularly desirable since it doesn't have the perverse effect of treating wrongs as less important when they are done to mixed ethnic groups.
Trump is great at sabotaging plans that are well-underway, usually for attention or to extract a little more for himself...or maybe just out of stupidity. Once he's satisfied, he backs off. Just his usual pattern.
I understand why the Chagossians in opposition are fighting what seems to be a lost cause. Their relationship with the Mauritian government seems bad so this is their last bit of external leverage to force some guarantees. The leaders of the movement HAVE to know that blowing the whole deal up is unrealistic.
It is a strategically insane deal by a British government that is run by absolute fucking idiots. That's all there is to it -- another loss by progressives and people who hate themselves and their own culture.
Across the Western world we really need to figure out how to improve the attractiveness of politics to normal medium to high-IQ people who have some courage. This is probably impossible, so maybe there is a way to change the culture slowly to stamp out the self-loathing of progressives and the desire to destroy their own cultures in an orgy of narcissistic victimization.
Rather absurd that Mauritius supposedly has the right to colonize Diego Garcia because they were previously part of the same British colony administratively
Obviously, we must first consult the indigenous people of the islands (the French). Get Macron on the phone
It’s a shame how often decolonization has been used to turn over colonies to foreign dictatorships and strongmen. Let the chagisdians return then let them vote on what to do,
There are ~10,000 Chagossians, they can't just be paid off?
MY's article appears to be very heavily influenced by our hawkish friends at the Hudson Institute. Perhaps this is a brave revisionist national-security counterpoint to the groupthink of the mainstream media, but the core of the deal, which was largely negotiated by the prior Conservative government (and which is not mentioned until the 19th paragraph of the story, which unhelpfully leads with a vague criticism of the deal rather than a description of the deal) is a 99-year lease to continue to operate the base on Diego Garcia on essentially status-quo Anglo-American terms. All a very strong whiff of the brouhaha over the Panama Canal treaty 50 years ago, for those of us old enough to remember, and perhaps times for a gentle reminder that none of the parade of horribles marched out by the treaty opponents ever really happened.
There must be an illuminating backstory of why Mauritius that did NOT go for the typical statist economic policies and authoritarian politics of most decolonized places:
"Mauritius highly ranked for economic and political freedom. The Economist Democracy Index ranks Mauritius as the only country in Africa with full democracy while the V-Dem Democracy Indices classified it as an electoral democracy.[30][31] Mauritius ranks 73rd (very high) in the Human Development Index and the World Bank classifies it as a high-income economy. It is amongst the most competitive and most developed economies in the African region."[from Wikipedia]
nevetheless wound up supporting China over the West.
This is easily solvable. Name it Trump Island.
“Democrats don’t want to give China a major advantage in wartime any more than Republicans do” - I mean, this is plainly not true? Republicans view this as non-negotiable, whereas if the destroy America caucus fights hard enough, Democrats will accept it.
It's perhaps worth noting that "the Conservative Party's foreign policy critic" is an actual job over here - Priti Patel's title is "Shadow Foreign Secretary". The Loyal Opposition (which is an official part of the system) is expected to field a full Shadow Cabinet, mirroring the roles of the actual Cabinet and providing detailed critique on each aspect of Government policy. Smaller parties typically also field a "frontbench team" doing the same roles.
My son married a Mauritian and we have been there for family events, so I’ve some on the ground knowledge.
It is a Hindu majority country with deep Indian roots. India has built a naval base there due to concerns about the Chinese, so Europe and America having bases in the region is both understandable and a well established fact. The French still control nearby Réunion as a an overseas Department of France and has a large military presence.
All of the inhabitants were brought there by either the French or the British. As such, ‘Indigenous’ peoples claims are a moot point. Given the distance from Mauritius and the fact that the so called locals were brought there by the British to begin with it seems to be odd that there is a fuss about ownership. Britain ran away from places such as Mauritius due to its post WW11 economic plight. It is really the Americans that have an interest in the islands and it probably would have been better if they had taken it over from the British. Mauritian claims are tenuous as it was Britain’s that created a link by administering the islands from Mauritius.
I vaguely knew about Diego Garcia, but just now I learned about the (~10k) Chagossians. It sounds like terrible humanitarian tragedy. But as something from the 60's, I don't know where it goes on that board when placed against the force projection of the militaries of balancer states. Before we get to guilt we can talk about what the US Air Force wrought against Germany and Japan, but those bases should exist for the far future. 'Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum' and 'Peace is our Profession' are not jokes, they are real statements about the nature of the world. This story isn't about the French colonies in Indochina, it is about balancer allies against an increasingly bellicose power and it's opportunistic (jackal, if you're familiar with the international relations zoo typology) co-revisionists. I really do vacillate between thinking of international relations though a realist or liberal lens (I wish I could cite more sources that called 'republicanism' one of the main theories) but I know that the next 10 years will be less peaceful than the last 25. And peace is the ultimate goal of international relations.
This attitude of treating people's like they were individuals has always puzzled me. If the idea is that the island somehow belongs to the descendants of the people who lived there in the 1770s then that almost certainly means it should belong to the UK since there are only about 10k Chagosians in the islands, a 3000 person ethnic community in Crawley in the UK and a quick estimate strongly suggests that if you count up all the descendants of people from Chagos living in the UK it's going to be way more than 10k.
I don't mean to suggest that the forced removal in the 1970s was ok (sounds bad but I don't know much about it) and I dunno what is a good solution here. But just in general, it seems really objectionable to have this default favoritism toward the parts of a group who retain their traditional practices.
For instance, I found it particularly upsetting that during the controversy about the use of Mauna Kea for the next giant telescope we treated traditional Hawaiian cultural organizations as if they had some special status when the only poll I could find that tried to just look at support amoung people of Hawaiian descent in Hawaii it was quite positive.
More generally, it seems to be a troubling concept no matter how you slice it. Either you effectively ignore the interests of everyone who decides to give up traditions -- a weird position for a modern secular society to take -- or you end up with a weird kind of ethnic essentialism. Both options seem bad.
Maybe we should just admit that fairness is a notion that applies to people not groups and just deal with it at that level -- eg compensation payments to the people actually removed. This seems particularly desirable since it doesn't have the perverse effect of treating wrongs as less important when they are done to mixed ethnic groups.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave
The Chagosians case have a flavor of "Does This Remind You of Anything? "...
Trump is great at sabotaging plans that are well-underway, usually for attention or to extract a little more for himself...or maybe just out of stupidity. Once he's satisfied, he backs off. Just his usual pattern.
I understand why the Chagossians in opposition are fighting what seems to be a lost cause. Their relationship with the Mauritian government seems bad so this is their last bit of external leverage to force some guarantees. The leaders of the movement HAVE to know that blowing the whole deal up is unrealistic.