Britain Reappraises Its Global Retreat

Great Britain seems to be reappraising its headlong retreat from a global security role — with an assist from President Trump. That’s the upshot of the talk of scrapping the planned cession to Mauritius of the Chagos Islands, home of the Diego Garcia military base. That would have meant the first sunset on the British Empire in three centuries. Now, though, Prime Minister Andy Burnham vows to rethink the Chagos deal — and to defend the Falklands, too.“I think the prime minister is going to be looking at” the Chagos deal, Mr. Trump told reporters at New York during a parley with the premier. “Yep,” was Mr. Burnham’s reply. The prime minister later told the press that he had “inherited the situation and we need a resolution.” The Prime Minister asserted that it is “critical to safeguard the future of the base, and that matters to us for security reasons, but also clearly to the United States as well.”Mr. Burnham’s remarks are not the full-throated defense one would like to hear of a staunch British security posture across the globe. Yet, at Mr. Trump’s prodding, it seems that Britain is reconsidering the implications of abandoning ownership of the Chagos Islands — and the strategic Diego Garcia base. These security concerns include the rising Communist Chinese influence over Mauritius, which would stand to gain control of the islands.Mr. Burnham also assured Mr. Trump that Britain intends to hold firm on its possession of the Falklands. Never mind that President Javier Milei has recently renewed talk of Argentine claims to the Atlantic islands. “The clear position is: We will stand firm in the face of any threats,” Mr. Burnham insisted. “I just wanted the president to know directly from me, that’s the clear British position, and he very much understood what I was saying.”It would be striking were Mr. Burnham, who acceded to office with a de facto repudiation of the economic and political legacy of Prime Minister Thatcher, to echo the Iron Lady’s defense in 1982 of the Falklands from Argentina’s predations. The Falklands War helped to cement the success of Thatcher’s premiership, and Britain’s victory, per the Manchester Guardian, “gave her the confidence and political strength to press ahead” with her policy agenda.The defense of the Falklands also affirmed that Britain could still play a military role on the global stage. Under Thatcher, per defense analyst Ben Barry, a “rising defense budget funded new weapons,” preserved “military salaries,” and “increased the size of the reserves in the Territorial Army.” In 1991, some 155,000 served in Britain’s military. In the intervening 44 years, though, Britain’s stature is more in doubt, and its ranks have shrunk to some 75,000. Britain’s need to do better on defense is illuminated by Russia and Iran, among other threats. It’s disappointing, then, to see Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, John Healy, fail as yet to commit to boosting defense spending to 3 percent of gross output. This despite Mr. Healy’s earlier resignation under Sir Keir Starmer’s ministry as defense secretary because the government would not “commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country.”Britain’s inability to allocate sufficient resources to its military would undermine its pretensions to be able to defend the Falklands, and to play a security role across the globe. Which brings us back to the Chagos Islands. When Sir Keir announced that the islands were to be surrendered, these columns lamented that the move signaled “Britain’s eclipse as a world power.” Nice to see that Mr. Burnham, with some help from America, could yet reverse course.

Britain Reappraises Its Global Retreat

Britain Reappraises Its Global Retreat

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