You've probably never heard of the Chagos Islands and I'm sorry to be the one putting them on your to-worry-about list.
I'm doing so because this remote archipelago in the Indian Ocean includes Diego Garcia which hosts a British-American military base that is strategically vital for gathering intelligence and projecting air and naval power into both the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific.
Last week, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer agreed to give the Chagos Islands to the tiny Republic of Mauritius.
The agreement, to be formalized in a treaty, says that the UK will continue to have access to Diego Garcia for 99 years. But Mauritius' leaders have become close with China's rulers and the latter "will be delighted" by this transfer of sovereignty, as former British Defense Secretary Penny Mordaunt told me in an email on Sunday.
Because once "sovereignty has been ceded," notes Jonathan Campbell-James, a former British intelligence officer, in the current issue of The Spectator World, "as was the case in Hong Kong, the ability to maintain what was agreed in the small print of the Treaty will no doubt have been compromised."
Why does the UK's Labour government want to surrender the Chagos? According to an official statement, the handover is intended to "address wrongs of the past."
A teaspoon of imperial history: Both Mauritius and the Chagos Islands were French colonies from 1715 to 1814 when the UK – following the fall of Napoleon's empire – took them over as part of the Treaty of Paris.
No Chagossians live on the islands today. Chagossians in the diaspora were not included in the negotiations.
Peter Lamb, the Member of Parliament from Crawley, a town 28 miles south of London that is home to a significant Chagossian community, told the BBC that he has never heard "a single voice" expressing support for giving the islands to the small island nation of Mauritius more than 1,300 miles distant, near Madagascar which is near the African continent.
The Chagos Islands had been administered from Mauritius when both were British colonies. But the British detached the archipelago from Mauritius in 1965, three years before Mauritius was granted independence. Nevertheless, that's the basis for Mauritius' claim to rightful ownership.
"This isn't just about a remote island chain," Tom Tugendhat, a Conservative Member of Parliament and the Shadow Minister for Security wrote in The Telegraph. "It is a demonstration of Britain's waning resolve on the world stage and a clear indication of the deeper malaise within the British state."
More to the point – or at least more to the point I want to make: While the UK is a shrunken empire, the People's Republic of China is an expanding empire.
East Turkistan (which China renamed Xinjiang, meaning "New Frontier") and Tibet are among the nations Beijing has colonized. Laos has become a vassal state and Beijing is pressuring the Philippines and Vietnam to kowtow.
Beijing's exploits African countries. Take the Democratic Republic of the Congo where more than 70% of the world's cobalt is mined for batteries used in electric vehicles. Over 80% of Congo's cobalt exports go to China. Congo's people are dirt poor, and the mining is devastating their environment.
Beijing established an elaborate naval base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa in 2017. Just across the Bab-el-Mandeb strait sit the Houthi rebels, terrorist proxies of Tehran. They have been attacking commercial shipping but – you won't be surprised – sparing Chinese vessels.
The most effective way to shut down the Houthis would be for President Biden to tell Iran's rulers "Don't!" – meaning don't send any more missiles to the Houthis – and then back that up by imposing painful consequences if they ignore the threat.
Unless that happens, the Houthis will continue effectively repealing a bedrock foundation of international law: freedom of navigation. Do you suppose that what starts in the Bab-el-Mandeb stays in the Bab-el-Mandeb?
Imagine Iran's rulers – especially if they succeed in becoming nuclear-armed – attacking ships from countries they dislike in the Strait of Hormuz, through which more than 20% of the world's oil now passes.
Beijing claims sovereignty over the South China Sea, another strategic international waterway. If the U.S. lacks the will to deter or defeat the Houthis, why would anyone believe the U.S. will prevent the Chinese navy – already the largest in the world and growing fast – from pressing its advantages?
China's rulers may be in the process of developing additional naval military bases in Sri Lanka, Equatorial Guinea, Cambodia, and Pakistan.
Doing so would bolster its Belt and Road Initiative, an effort to build land and maritime networks connecting China with – and enhancing China's power over – Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America.
Beijing is the senior partner in BRICS, an economic bloc originally comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. New members admitted this year: Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the UAE.
And then there's the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, established by China and Russia in 2001, which now has 9 member states, and aspires to be a counter to NATO.
All these initiatives are components of a grand strategy to displace the U.S. as the preeminent global power and replace the American-led world order with global governance dominated by the Communists in Beijing.
I'm not saying this strategy will succeed. I'm not saying it all depends on the maintenance of a military base on Diego Garcia which, Conservative Members of Parliament now say, they will make an attempt to block.
I am saying that Sir Keir Starmer, like too many other Western leaders, is more eager to atone for Britain's colonialist past than to defend the Free World from China's colonialist present.