The White House is reportedly weighing a U.S. purchase of the Chagos Islands, a move that would put the territory directly under American control and hand Washington a say over one of its most sensitive military outposts in the Indian Ocean. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly raised the idea directly with President Donald Trump.
The timing matters because the islands, east of Africa, are already at the center of an unfinished transfer from Britain to Mauritius. The territory includes Diego Garcia, a base that has long sat at the heart of the U.S.-U.K. security relationship, and any change in ownership would reshape control of that site even if the military footprint stayed in place.
Britain has controlled the Chagos Islands since 1814, but legislation meant to complete the country’s cession of the territory to Mauritius has been delayed after U.S. support was withdrawn in January. The reported purchase idea is now being presented as one of the options before Trump, according to a newspaper report, after his earlier push to have the U.S. take control of Greenland ran into resistance from other Nato countries.
That earlier fight still hangs over the new proposal. Trump and Keir Starmer have already clashed over what Trump sees as Europe’s and Nato’s inadequate support for his war with Iran, and Starmer’s plan would leave Diego Garcia under joint U.S.-U.K. control rather than shifting it fully into American hands. Trump has also dismissed the treaty organizing the cession as “an act of GREAT STUPIDITY,” a signal that he is unlikely to treat the current transfer as settled.
The unresolved question is whether Trump will choose the purchase route and, if he does, what terms he would accept for a territory tied to a major military base and a delayed handoff already underway. For now, the Chagos Islands have become less a remote patch of the Indian Ocean than a test of whether Trump wants compromise with allies or outright ownership.
