The U.S. Should Nudge Britain from Cyprus
On August 16, 1960, the United Kingdom granted Cyprus independence. Well, most of it.
Article I of the Treaty Concerning the Establishment of Cyprus defined the territory of the new country as “the Island of Cyprus, together with the islands lying off its coast, with the exception of the two areas… [to be] referred to as the Akrotiri Sovereign Base Area and the Dhekelia Sovereign Base Area.” Great Britain classifies the Sovereign Base Areas, together less than 3 percent of the island’s territory, as a British Overseas Territory, the same category as Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, or the Falkland Islands.
Until recently, there were fourteen British Overseas Territories. However, in September 2024, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer agreed to return sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, the heart of the British Indian Ocean Territory, to the island nation of Mauritius. The only exception was the military base on Diego Garcia. The exclusion of the Diego Garcia base from the Chagos deal might suggest a precedent by which the United Kingdom should keep its Cypriot enclave. Think again.
When the United Kingdom granted Cyprus independence, it was the dominant power in both the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. The Royal Navy had a base in Malta until 1979. The Royal Air Force built Akrotiri in the mid-1950s to alleviate traffic at its nearby Nicosia Royal Air Force Base. At the time, the United States had just constructed the Adana Air Base (today Incirlik) in Turkey but viewed it more as an emergency trip for bombers. In addition to its Cypriot bases, the Royal Navy also operated bases in Aden, South Yemen, and at Mina Salman, Bahrain, to coordinate its Persian Gulf activities, and maintained the Royal Air Force base on Masirah Island, Oman as a waystation between Aden and India.
British power collapsed in the Middle East in 1970. After years of pressure on the British pound sterling, the British government decided in November 1967 to devalue their currency by close to 15 percent. To trim the budget, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced that Great Britain would withdraw its troops from bases “East of the Suez,” including the bulk of its Middle East presence.
Rather than close the bases, the British military turned most facilities over to their American counterparts in 1971. The former British facility in Bahrain, for example, is today the U.S. Naval Support Activity Bahrain, headquarters for the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Queen Elizabeth II inaugurated Dubai’s Jebel Ali Port in 1979, which today is a major docking site for U.S. aircraft carriers.
Cyprus, of course, is West of Suez; the British never abandoned it. Mauritius is not Cyprus. Its main island remained unpopulated until the early eighteenth century. Mauritius based its claim on the indivisibility of colonial territory before independence—the Seychelles split off from Mauritius in 1903. Nor did Mauritius have sole claim to the Chagos; the Maldives also does. The Maldivian leadership’s last-minute endorsement of Mauritius’ case had more to do with specific individuals carrying water for China than any new consensus among Maldivians. Any look at the map shows how tenuous Mauritius’ claim was. The distance between Mauritius and the Chagos is equivalent to the distance between New York and Dallas, with nothing but ocean between.
Still, Starmer’s willingness to bend before Mauritius raises a number of questions. If he is unable to stand up to Mauritius in defense of the United Kingdom’s interests, how will the United Kingdom stand up to more robust challenges, like that posed by Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean? While the Royal Navy launched the HMS Queen Elizabeth II, a £3.5 billion aircraft carrier, a decade ago, and a sister ship, the HMS Prince of Wales, almost seven years ago, the Royal Navy is hard-pressed financially today to operate both ships and may even sell the latter.
The Royal Navy not only has difficulty projecting power globally, but it is a shell of what it was just a couple of decades ago. After the independence of Malta and Cyprus and even with continued possession of Gibraltar, the British Navy no longer guarantees security in the region the way it once did with both permanent presence and frequent port calls.
Whereas the United Kingdom could long use the European Union to amplify its power diplomatically, if not always militarily, Brexit shattered that dynamic. Today, British possession of the Sovereign Base Areas is more a memorial to past influence than an effective mechanism to project power or protect the Eastern Mediterranean.
As Starmer has already established the precedent of Britain’s retreat, perhaps the time has come for him to channel Wilson and acknowledge that the British military will no longer seek to project power “East of Gibraltar.”
This should not mean a security vacuum. The threats from not only an irredentist Turkey but also Hamas, Hezbollah, and a resurgent Russia utilizing its Syrian port returns the region to Cold War-era peril. Put another way, the Sixth Fleet area of operation is no longer merely something the U.S. Navy sails through on its way to Fifth Fleet hotspots in the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf, but rather a contested region in its own right.
To accompany their withdrawal, the United Kingdom might hand over control of their Cypriot bases to the United States just as it did with Bahrain. The U.S. presence in Bahrain operates under Bahraini sovereignty. The United States might lease the bases from Cyprus but return full sovereignty to the island. Likewise, the United States might return the areas not under active military use fully to Cyprus. The U.S. facility in Bahrain functions on only 152 acres; the Sovereign Base Areas claim nearly 100 square miles.
The U.S. lease of Akrotiri and Dhekelia could further cement U.S.-Cypriot ties that the October 30, 2024, visit by President Nikos Christodoulides to the White House highlighted. Just as in Bahrain and Souda Bay, Greece, American forces stationed in Cyprus might live in and on the market, creating a symbiotic financial relationship between American soldiers, sailors, and aviators and the country hosting them. It would be money well spent as the partnership between Cyprus and the United States appears destined to develop and expand.
Ultimately, decolonizing Cyprus by having the United States lease a rump British base area could also serve as a model to rid Cyprus entirely of its colonial legacy. Today, Turkey’s occupation of half of the northern part of the island has persisted for fifty years. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions notwithstanding, the international community will never formalize Turkey’s land grab in Cyprus. Ultimately, the assumption of U.S. leases over the bases Turkey now has in occupied northern Cyprus could break the diplomatic logjam, if not under Erdogan than under his successor.
When Starmer cut his deal with Mauritius, his motivation might have displayed his capacity for virtue-signaling rather than an understanding of diplomacy. However, the precedents of the 1971 handover of the Bahrain base followed this year by the Chagos agreement could have real ramifications for the Eastern Mediterranean. It is time for Great Britain to end fully its colonial presence in Cyprus.
Michael Rubin is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Follow him on X: @mrubin1971.
Image: NASA / Wikimedia Commons.