Senior Writer
https://twitter.com/matt__kendrick
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-kendrick-532b1b131/
Matthew Kendrick
Senior Writer
Matthew Kendrick is an Emmy-nominated journalist covering global affairs for GZERO Media. He speaks fluent Spanish with a mild Chilean accent thanks to growing up in the Atacama, advanced Mandarin thanks to his time in Harbin, and basic Korean thanks to his Fulbright award. Prior to GZERO, Matt was a producer for CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS. When he's not reporting and writing, you can catch him doing yoga, struggling to teach himself Turkish, or (most likely) napping with his two cats.
Oct 03, 2024
The British government on Thursday announced it would return the Chagos Islands, a group of tiny atolls in the middle of the Indian Ocean, back to Mauritius — while retaining its joint military base with the US on Diego Garcia. The International Court of Justice said the UK should return the islands in 2019, and a 2021 nonbinding UN General Assembly resolution did the same. Keir Starmer’s new Labour government is keen to fulfill promises to advance respect for international law and sees the return of the Chagos Islands as necessary.
British Conservatives lambasted the agreement, with the man likely to become the new Tory leader, Robert Jenrick, describing it as “a dangerous capitulation that will hand our territory to an ally of Beijing.” Jenrick has his facts slightly wrong — Mauritius is not a formal ally of China — but the two countries do have growing economic ties, and the security concerns are real. American military air operations in the Middle East and South Asia depend on the base.
The UK will retain sovereignty of the base, pay Mauritius rent, and subsidize the resettlement of the Indigenous people on the islands. We’re watching how the change affects US and allied military posture, and whether the British public backs Starmer on the choice.
