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Comment by tomohawk | Hacker News Reader

Diego Garcia is a very strategic place. If the US/UK were to leave, who would take it over? Most likely the Chinese would move in. There's no really good answer there.

The EU taking the stance that they are taking is really kind of counterproductive. They know nothing is going to come of it and they waste an opportunity for reproachment with the UK. They also just make the brexit case even stronger, confirming what many say about the euros not really having the best interests of the UK (or even themselves) in mind in many instances.

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Western Germany is a very strategic place. If the allies were to leave, who would take it over? Most likely the Soviets would move in. There's no really good answer there.

Your statement is similarly silly. The issue in question is whether the islanders can return & have the right to self-determination.

There's no reason the US & UK couldn't work out some deal with them to continue having a military presence on the islands, the US has bases in plenty of sovereign countries, e.g. Germany.

> The issue in question is whether the islanders can return & have the right to self-determination.

Your comment is either extremely naive or terribly disingenuous. Even in the XXI century we see nations invested in annexation campaigns motivated by their need to reach military and strategic objectives. There are even nations that are deeply invested in creating artificial islands much like Diego Garcia to achieve goals that are achieved by Diego Garcia. Why can anyone talk about self determination if nothing stops an occupier from simply dropping anchor and taking over the place?

Firstly nobody's seriously talking about independence of the BIOT yet, simply for the islanders having a right to return. The US also has an important military base in Guam, but somehow over 100k people manage to live there.

There's plenty of land left on the island where these people can live, they're not demanding independence or that the military base have to leave.

My comment was made in the context that even if the BIOT were to become independent, this doesn't sound like a big deal for the military base. It's very likely that if that were to happen the US could simply offer them the same deal that the independent Marshall Islands and two other island republics have:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_of_Free_Association#Mi...

Most likely Mauritius would lease Diego Garcia to the US, just like the UK did, hopefully while negotiating a much better deal for the Chagossians.

It is not at all clear to me what lies behind Britains reluctance to concede here. They know very well they did wrong – violating their own rules – lopping off the territory in the first place. What if there really isn't any conspiracy behind the EU stance here, what if they simply vote what they believe is right?

Brits just want to swagger about and feel honourable. Look at how they dealt with the return of Hong Kong to China. Pomp, ceremony, wonderful! This grubby little problem just goes against that pride. So we just ignore it.

To be fair, Hong Kong isn't very happy about no longer being British now. (Different example than current, as there are a huge number of native civilians living there)

> It is not at all clear to me what lies behind Britains reluctance to concede here.

Money and liability. If britain concedes, they might be held liable and be forced to pay for their misdeeds.

> They know very well they did wrong

What makes you think britain cares about their misdeeds? They've done so much worse than in diego garcia, but they still parade around like they did the world a favor.

> violating their own rules

Since when did britain care about rules? R

At the end of the day, it's about money and power.

> [...] confirming what many say about the euros not really having the best interests of the UK (or even themselves) in mind in many instances.

How can this be confirmation if it occurred after Britain triggered Brexit? It's a reaction. Of course "the euros", as you call them, don't have Britain's best interests in mind considering Britain is leaving.

> If the US/UK were to leave, who would take it over?

The rightful owners?

> Most likely the Chinese would move in.

Why would they? How would they?

> There's no really good answer there.

Other than giving it back to the people it was stolen from?

I don't understand the British.

Brexit has happened. May has triggered Article 50.

It doesn't matter whether the case is stronger or not. Britain has decided to take its toys and go home.

The worst part about the entire Brexit fiasco is that the British politicians simply don't seem to understand what the situation is. They seem to think they are the only actors in this entire process. So when the rubber actually hits the road, they are forced to capitulate like they had to on the 1st day on sequencing.

We accept this kind of behaviour in our own nation, but then act like the EU are somehow 'impure' for acting in kind. The UK are playing a diplomatic game and so are the EU. Sometimes people disagree on what is best for the EU, or UK. That is hardly a substantive argument in favour of Brexit.

Why would EU care? As UK is not part of Europe anymore, they really have no reason to care about .io islands...

> UK is not part of Europe anymore

This is news to the rest of the world.

Europe and the EU are getting conflated more and more. It's kind of like how if someone said he's American, you wouldn't assume he's from Brazil, even though technically Brazilians are American since they're from the American continent or continents.

In a political conversation the geographic meaning of Europe is usually significantly less useful than the political one. So this is not surprising at all.

Whilst he's wrong from a geographical perspective, I assumed in good faith that he was talking about 'Europe', the political institution - which he'd still be wrong about. The UK is still part of the EU until it isn't.

Because some EU countries also has a bunch of stolen islands/territory outside of europe.

France, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, etc all have stolen territory all over the world.

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