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The Chagossians’ (Imperfect) Victory Is a Testament to the Power of Resistance
The Chagossians’ return to most of their homeland is a victory for resolving conflicts through diplomacy rather than force, as well as for decolonization and international law.
Jun 22, 2025
At a time when many may feel that good news has gone the way of the dodo, look no further than the homeland of that long-extinct bird—Mauritius—for a dose of encouragement. There, among the islands of the Indian Ocean, news can be found about the power of resistance and the ability of small groups of people to band together to overcome the powerful.
Amid ongoing slaughter from Gaza and Ukraine to Sudan and the Congo, the news also offers a victory for resolving conflicts through diplomacy rather than force. It’s a victory for decolonization and international law. And it’s a victory for Africa, the African diaspora, and Indigenous and other displaced peoples who simply want to go home. To the shock of many, President Donald Trump actually played a role in making such good news possible by bucking far-right allies in the United States and Britain.
While the victories the Chagossians, a group numbering less than 8,000, finally achieved last month are anything but perfect, they wouldn’t have happened without a more than half-century-long struggle for justice.
The news came in late May when the British government signed a historic treaty with Mauritius giving up Britain’s last African colony, the Chagos Islands, and allow the exiled Chagossian people to return home to all but one of them. The British also promised to pay an estimated £3.4 billion over 99 years in exchange for continuing control over one island, the largest, Diego Garcia. Though few in the U.S. even know that it exists, the Chagos Archipelago, located in the center of the Indian Ocean, is also home to a major U.S. military base on Diego Garcia that has played a key role in virtually every U.S. war and military operation in the Middle East since the 1970s.
Diego Garcia is one of the most powerful installations in a network of more than 750 U.S. military bases around the world that have helped control foreign lands in a largely unnoticed fashion since World War II. Far more secretive than the Guantánamo Bay naval base, Diego Garcia has been, with rare exceptions, off limits to anyone but U.S. and British military personnel since that base was created in 1971. Until recently, that ban also applied to the other Chagos Islands from which the Indigenous Chagossian people were exiled during the base’s creation in what Human Rights Watch has called a “crime against humanity.”
While the victories the Chagossians, a group numbering less than 8,000, finally achieved last month are anything but perfect, they wouldn’t have happened without a more than half-century-long struggle for justice. A real-life David and Goliath story, it demonstrates the ability of small but dedicated groups to overcome the most powerful governments on Earth.
A History of Resistance
The story begins around the time of the American Revolution when the ancestors of today’s Chagossians first began settling on Diego Garcia and the other uninhabited Chagos islands. Enslaved at the time, they were brought from Africa, along with indentured laborers from India, by French businessmen from Mauritius who used the workers to build coconut plantations there.
Over time, the population grew, gaining its emancipation, while a new society emerged. First known as the Ilois (the Islanders), they developed their own traditions, history, and Chagossian Kreol language. Although their islands were dominated by plantations, the Chagossians enjoyed a generally secure life, thanks in part to their often militant demands for better working conditions. Over time, they came to enjoy universal employment, free basic healthcare and education, regular vacations, housing, burial benefits, and a workday they could control, while living on gorgeous tropical islands.
“Life there paid little money, a very little,” one of the longtime leaders of the Chagossian struggle, Rita Bancoult, told me before her death in 2016, “but it was the sweet life.”
“The Footprint of Freedom”
Chagos remained a little-known part of the British Empire from the early 19th century when Great Britain seized the archipelago from France until the 1950s when Washington grew interested in the islands as possible military bases.
Amidst Cold War competition with the Soviet Union and accelerating decolonization globally, U.S. officials worried about being evicted from bases in former European colonies then gaining their independence. Securing rights to build new military installations on strategically located islands became one solution to that perceived problem. Which is what led Stuart Barber, a U.S. Navy planner, to find what he called “that beautiful atoll of Diego Garcia, right in the middle of the ocean.” He and other officials loved Diego Garcia because it was within striking distance of a vast region, from southern Africa and the Middle East to South and Southeast Asia, while also possessing a protected lagoon capable of handling the largest naval vessels and a major air base.
In 1960, U.S. officials began secret negotiations with their British counterparts. By 1965, they had convinced the British to violate international law by separating the Chagos Islands from the rest of its colony of Mauritius to create the “British Indian Ocean Territory.” No matter that United Nations decolonization rules then prohibited colonial powers from chopping up colonies when, like Mauritius, they were gaining their independence. Britain’s last--created colony would have one purpose: hosting military bases. U.S. negotiators insisted Chagos come under their “exclusive control (without local inhabitants)”—an expulsion order embedded in a parenthetical phrase.
British officials and American sailors rounded up people’s pet dogs, lured them into sealed sheds, and gassed them with the exhaust from Navy vehicles before burning their carcasses.
U.S. and British officials sealed their deal with a 1966 agreement in which Washington would secretly transfer $14 million to the British government in exchange for basing rights on Diego Garcia. The British agreed to do the dirty work of getting rid of the Chagossians.
First, they prevented any Chagossians who had left on vacation or for medical treatment from returning home. Next, they cut off food and medical supplies to the islands. Finally, they deported the remaining Chagossians 1,200 miles to Mauritius and the Seychelles in the western Indian Ocean.
Both governments acknowledged that the expulsions were illegal. Both agreed to “maintain the fiction” that the Chagossians were “migrant laborers,” not a people whose ancestors had lived and died there for generations. In a secret cable, a British official called them “Tarzans” and, in a no less racist reference to Robinson Crusoe, “Man Fridays.”
In 1971, as the U.S. Navy started base construction on Diego Garcia, British officials and American sailors rounded up people’s pet dogs, lured them into sealed sheds, and gassed them with the exhaust from Navy vehicles before burning their carcasses. Chagossians watched in horror. Most were then deported in the holds of overcrowded cargo ships carrying dried coconut, horses, and guano (bird shit). Chagossians have compared the conditions to those found on slave ships.
In exile, they effectively received no resettlement assistance. When The Washington Post finally broke the story in 1975, a journalist found Chagossians living in “abject poverty” in the slums of Mauritius. By the 1980s, the base on Diego Garcia would be a multibillion-dollar installation. The U.S. military dubbed it the “Footprint of Freedom.”
An Epic Struggle
The Chagossians have long demanded both the right to go home and compensation for the theft of their homeland. Led mostly by a group of fiercely committed women, they protested, petitioned, held hunger strikes, resisted riot police, went to jail, approached the U.N., filed lawsuits, and pursued nearly every strategy imaginable to convince the U.S. and British governments to let them return.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Chagossian protests in Mauritius won them small amounts of compensation from the British government (valued at around $6,000 per adult). Many used the money to pay off significant debts incurred since their arrival. Chagossians in the Seychelles, however, received nothing.
Still, their desire to return to the land of their ancestors remained, and hope was rekindled when the Chagos Refugees Group sued the British government in 1997, led by Rita Bancoult’s son, Olivier. To the surprise of many, they won. Over several tumultuous years, British judges ruled their expulsion illegal three times—only to have Britain’s highest court repeatedly rule in favor of the government by a single vote. Judges in the U.S. similarly rejected a suit, deferring to the president’s power to make foreign policy. The European Court of Human Rights also ruled against them.
A Strategic Alliance
Despite the painful defeats, Chagossian prospects brightened when the Chagos Refugees Group allied with the Mauritian government to take Britain to the International Court of Justice. Aided by Chagossian testimony about their expulsion, which an African Union representative called “the voice of Africa,” Mauritius won. In 2019, that court overwhelmingly ruled that Mauritius was the rightful sovereign in Chagos. It directed the U.K. to end its colonial rule “as rapidly as possible.” A subsequent U.N. General Assembly resolution ordered the British “to cooperate with Mauritius in facilitating the resettlement” of Chagossians.
Backed by the U.S., the British initially ignored the international consensus—until, in 2022, Prime Minister Liz Truss’ government suddenly began negotiations with the Mauritians. Two years later, a deal was reached with the support of the Biden administration. The deal recognized Mauritian sovereignty over Chagos but allowed Britain to retain control of Diego Garcia for at least 99 years, including the continued operation of the U.S. base. The Chagossians would be allowed to return to all their islands except, painfully, Diego Garcia and receive compensation.
The Chagos Refugees Group and other Chagossian organizations generally supported the deal, while continuing to demand the right to live on Diego Garcia. Some smaller Chagossian groups, especially in Britain (where many Chagossians have lived since winning full U.K. citizenship in 2002), opposed the agreement. Some still support British rule. Others seek Chagossian sovereignty.
Right-wing forces in Britain and the United States quickly tried to kill the deal. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Brexit protagonist Nigel Farage, and then-Senator Marco Rubio campaigned for continued British colonial rule, often spouting bogus theories suggesting the agreement would benefit China.
Donald Trump’s election and the appointment of Rubio as secretary of state left many fearing they would kill the treaty. Instead, when Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited Washington, Trump indicated his support. A finalized treaty was in sight.
An Imperfect Victory?
In the last hours, the deal was briefly blocked by a lawsuit that a judge later dismissed. “I’ve been betrayed by the British government,” Bernadette Dugasse, one of two Chagossians who brought the suit, said of the treaty. “I will have to keep on fighting the British government till they accept for me to settle” on Diego Garcia (where she was born).
Dugasse’s suit and plans for additional legal action are being funded by a shadowy “Great British PAC” that won’t disclose its donors. The group is led by right-wing political figures still trying, in their words, to “Save Chagos.” However, “saving Chagos” doesn’t mean saving Chagos for the Chagossians, but “saving” it from the end of British colonial control. In other words, right-wing figures are cynically using Chagossians to try to uphold the colonial status quo. (Even Dugasse fears she’s being used.)
On the other hand, the Chagos Refugees Group and many other Chagossians are celebrating, at least partially. For the first time in more than half a century of struggle they can go home to most of their islands, even if they, too, criticize the ban on returning to Diego Garcia and the shamefully small amount of compensation being offered: just £40 million earmarked for a Chagossian “trust fund” operated by the Mauritian government (with British consultation). Divided among the entire population, this could be as little as £5,000 per person for the theft of their homeland and more than half a century in exile. (People in car accidents get far more.)
Chagossians, backed by allies in Mauritius and beyond, are continuing their struggle for the right to return to Diego Garcia, for the reconstruction of Chagossian society in Chagos, and for full, proper compensation.
“I’m very happy after such a long fight,” Sabrina Jean, leader of the Chagos Refugees Group U.K. Branch, told me. “But I’m also upset about how the U.K. government continues to treat us for all the suffering it gave Chagossians,” she added. “£40 million is not enough.”
The Mauritian government should benefit more unambiguously than the Chagossians: The treaty formally ends decolonization from Britain, reuniting Mauritius and the Chagos Islands. Mauritius will receive an average of £101 million in rent per year for 99 years for Diego Garcia plus £1.125 billion in “development” funds paid over 25 years.
“The development fund will be used to resettle” Chagossians on the islands outside Diego Garcia, said Olivier Bancoult, now the president of the Chagos Refugees Group, about a commitment he’s received from the Mauritian government. “They have promised to rebuild Chagos.”
Bancoult and other Chagossians insist they also should receive some of the annual rent for Diego Garcia. “Parts of it needs to be used for Chagossians,” he told me by phone from Mauritius.
The continuing ban on Chagossians living on Diego Garcia clearly violates Chagossians’ human rights as well as the International Court’s ruling and that U.N. resolution of 2019. Human Rights Watch criticized the treaty for appearing to “entrench the policy that prevents Chagossians from returning to Diego Garcia” and failing to acknowledge U.S. and British responsibility for compensating the Chagossians and reconstructing infrastructure to enable their return.
“We will not give up concerning Diego,” Olivier Bancoult told me. For those born on Diego Garcia and those with ancestors buried there, it’s not enough to return to the other Chagos islands, at least 150 miles away. “We will continue to argue for our right to return to Diego Garcia,” he added.
While U.S. and British officials have long used “security” as an excuse to keep Chagossians off the island, they could, in truth, still live on the other half of Diego Garcia, miles from the base, just as civilians live near U.S. bases worldwide. Civilian laborers who are neither U.S. nor British citizens have lived and worked there for decades. (Chagossians will be eligible for such jobs, although historically they’ve faced discrimination getting hired.)
That the U.S. military has ended up a winner in the treaty could explain Donald Trump’s surprising support. The treaty secures base access for at least 99 years and possibly 40 more.
Which means the treaty is a setback for those Mauritians, Americans, and others who have campaigned to close a base that has cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars and has been a launchpad for catastrophic wars in the Middle East, which a certain president claimed to oppose.
While many Chagossians are privately critical of the base that caused their expulsion and occupies their land, most have prioritized going home over demanding its closure. The campaign to return has been hard enough.
Ultimately, I’m in no position to decide if the Chagos treaty is a victory or not. That’s for Chagossians and Mauritians to decide, not a citizen of the country that, along with Great Britain, is the primary author of that ongoing, shameful crime.
Let me note that victories are rarely, if ever, complete, especially when the power imbalance between parties is so vast. Chagossians, backed by allies in Mauritius and beyond, are continuing their struggle for the right to return to Diego Garcia, for the reconstruction of Chagossian society in Chagos, and for full, proper compensation. The Mauritian and British governments can correct the treaty’s flaws through a diplomatic “exchange of letters.”
“We are closer to the goal” of full victory, Olivier assured me. “We are very near.”
Having won the right to return to most of their islands after 50 years of struggle, Olivier has been thinking a lot about his mother, longtime leader Rita Bancoult. “I would like that my mom would be here, but I know if she would be here, she would be crying,” he said, “because she always believed in what I do, and she always encouraged me to go until the destination, the goal.”
For now, inspired by the memory of his mother and too many Chagossians who will never see a return to their homeland, Olivier told me, “lalit kontin.” The struggle continues.
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Panic, Paranoia, and Hypocrisy During China-Focused Congressional Hearings
As the hearing drew on, the claims grew more and more unhinged.
Jul 14, 2024
On June 26th, the Committee on Oversight and Accountability sat down for a Congressional Hearing titled, “Defending America from the Chinese Communist Party’s Political Warfare.” This was one of many Congressional hearings aimed at tackling the “China threat.”
As a general premise, I didn’t have a lot of hope for the hearing. Language is crucial, and the title says it all: any action by the US is merely “defense” against acts of political warfare committed by China. And still, I was disappointed. Not only was it filled with racist, paranoid rhetoric, but it was supremely unjust, lacking any level of self-awareness, and almost certainly operated solely as an agenda-pushing cover for whatever act of warfare our government sought to commit next.
Three witnesses took to the stands. The first was Erik Bethel, a finance professional selected to represent the US at the World Bank. He was followed by Mary Kissel, Former Senior Advisor to the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Third was James E. Fanell, the Former Director of Intelligence and Information Operations for the US Pacific Fleet and current Government Fellow.
Big people with big titles. That is the usual order of things: a few “experts” are selected to “teach” members of Congress about complex subjects they may lack background in. The Committee of Oversight and Accountability certainly lacks China expertise. Representative Lisa McClain spent ten years working for American Express before she was elected to represent the state of Michigan. Chairman James Comer was a Kentucky farmer. Representative Paul Gosar was a dentist in Arizona. Marjorie Taylor Green was a part-time CrossFit gym coach. Many of them have never traveled to China, let alone held a productive conversation with a member of China’s government.
Tucked securely in their offices, our politicians will sign bill after bill funding proxy conflicts around the world, but they will never know the many hideous faces of war. They’ll point fingers and make accusations, but they will never turn the mirror around to acknowledge their own hypocrisies.
Their lack of expertise didn’t stop them from sounding their opinions. I listened carefully, hoping to give them the benefit of the doubt. It was a fruitless endeavor.
Representative McClain spoke about her district: “In Michigan, we have the Gotion plant… We have a Chinese-owned company and the only spot they can figure out that is feasible for them to build is next to a university and next to a military base. Anybody think that’s a coincidence?”
In the audience, the new summer Hillterns listened with rapt attention.
“I’m not much for coincidences,” McClain continued. “We talk about, well it's gonna create jobs. Jobs for who? I’m very concerned, and I’m not much for coincidences.”
She was talking about the plans to build a new plant in Michigan for electric vehicle components under the company Gotion, which has headquarters in Shanghai. The plan is speculated to bring thousands of jobs to the area, with wages about 150% of the current average. McClain, having no substance on which to defend her opposition to the plant, instead decided to speculate on its geographic location, implying the company is purposefully building near a university and military installation. Clearly, the plant is a spy base for the Chinese government, as surely as any 18 to 26-year-old Chinese immigrant is an undercover Chinese soldier sent to wreak havoc upon our country– all baseless, unfounded claims that promote Asian American hate and shift public perception to support anti-China policies.
The military base she’s talking about is Camp Grayling, which is actually over 100 miles away from Big Rapids, where the EV plant will be built. As for the proximity to Ferris State University, the relevance of that statement is questionable. There are around 77 colleges and universities in the entire state– 198 if you include community colleges and trade schools. It would be difficult not to build near one. But that’s beside the point. This is merely one example of the outlandish and absurd claims made in the hearing, backed by anecdotal and unreliable “evidence” based on feelings and a strange paranoia that anything with links to China has malicious intentions.
In response to McClain’s statements, Mary Kissel said, “Let’s not give them too much credit as long-term thinkers. Let’s remember they almost destroyed their country several times over.” The words were spoken derisively, reaffirming my suspicion that Ms. Kissel boasts severe negative prejudices towards China and Chinese people. She continued to cite the Cultural Revolution, the debt crisis, and “etcetera.” In truth, the US is a mere baby in comparison to China’s 5,000 years of history. As for Ms. Kissel’s claims, to say Chinese people nearly destroyed their country is misleading and tinged with a disturbing colonialistic self-superiority that the West does everything better.
Ms. Kissel also stated her opinion of how China operates: “China is a party state. The function of China is not to better the interests of the Chinese people– it is to promote, strengthen, and expand the power and influence, and reach of the Chinese Communist Party.”
I challenge this claim, not just for its wrongful absolutism, but because China has repeatedly shown immense interest in improving the everyday lives of its citizens. China is unparalleled in its developmental growth aimed at providing infrastructure and opportunities to the people. Housing, public transportation, health care, and education are all convenient and affordable. The average retirement age is 54 years old. Over the past few decades, the government has been working ceaselessly to eradicate extreme poverty with tremendous success. Over 800 million people have been taken out of poverty and afforded a better quality of life. Not only that, but China continues to emphasize the importance of green energy in building a sustainable future. Shenzhen, one of the country’s biggest high-tech cities, has even switched over all public transportation to electric vehicles. This isn’t pro-China propaganda, it’s simply fact.
Along with forged criticism of China’s internal dynamics and history, the hearing also challenged China’s position when it comes to the US.
The overall goal of China, Ms. Kissel proclaimed, is to “upend our way of life and to dominate and change our way of life.” They are “committed to destroy(ing) us.”
At first glance, it sounds absurd that an individual so ostensibly high up on the policy advisory hierarchy would make such a condemnatory and extreme claim. But considering that Ms. Kissel served under Mike Pompeo during Donald Trump’s presidential term, it is not so surprising. It was not an administration known for its truth-telling.
First and foremost, China has no plans to destroy the United States. We can easily cipher this through both statement and action. To claim otherwise is false and promotes a dangerous narrative that guides our policy-makers down a one-way path to war.
Erik Bethel’s claim that “China is encircling us” is also highly deceptive. Adversely, it is the US that has encircled China with over 300 military bases and countless troops. China has no military bases in the entire Western hemisphere. There is no “encircling” occurring.
Former US Representative Tom Malinowski criticized China for trying to make the US “look bad to the rest of the world.” This is, at best, overwhelmingly hypocritical. Just recently it was uncovered that the US launched a secret anti-vax operation in the Philippines during the deadliest months of the COVID-19 pandemic to undermine China’s influence in the region. According to a senior US military official, “We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective. We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.”
As the hearing drew on, the claims grew more and more unhinged.
“They’re teaming up with the Mexican drug cartels and they’re killing Americans,” Congressman Fallon told everyone, backing his claim that China is killing nearly as many Americans per day as died during WW2.
“They know how many paperclips you all are using in the Longworth building,” Representative Tim Burchett said, reminiscing on a Mike Pompeo quote.
“What if they were to develop some kind of biological entity that can, say, wipe out females of child-bearing ages or something?” Burchett queried.
“If you’re using this app (Tiktok), they can listen to you,” Another added.
“We should do the opposite of what China wants us to do,” Malinowski put forth as a general solution.
“We need to construct not just a defensive strategy, but an offensive strategy,” Ms. Kissel spoke decisively. Twice it was mentioned that her last name rhymes with missile– nominative determinism perhaps.
It was as if the hearing took lines straight out of an SNL skit. It’s unfathomable that these are the people sitting in our Congressional hearing rooms, talking about war. These are the people voting on legislation that could propel us into a conflict with China that would bring death and destruction to millions, and most likely end in nuclear catastrophe or total destruction of the planet.
Our politicians, although ignorant and lacking expertise, are willing cogs in the war machine. They bring the most anti-China and pro-military witnesses to the stands to reaffirm their own paranoid delusions about an all-knowing, all-hateful “other” across the sea that seeks to destroy everything bright and beautiful about the world. This is happening on a weekly basis.
The truth is that it is not China gearing up for war, but our very own government. Our politicians are pumping billions of dollars into hyper-militarizing the Asia Pacific and writing it off as “deterrence.” They’re spouting lies and fear-inducing narratives at Congressional hearings in a bid to garner support for anti-China legislation. These stories are trickling down through the media and infecting the minds of the general public, priming the US military for its next conquest. Why? Because the US is self-interested and directed solely by its desire to maintain global hegemony, even at the expense of all others. China is not a threat because it’s threatening our security–China is a threat because it’s successful.
Tucked securely in their offices, our politicians will sign bill after bill funding proxy conflicts around the world, but they will never know the many hideous faces of war. They’ll point fingers and make accusations, but they will never turn the mirror around to acknowledge their own hypocrisies. They’ll stand there saluting when bodies come home in boxes and claim it was for the greater good, but they will never face the consequences of their actions– they will never be forced to die for another’s deceptions.
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Okinawa Governor Meets AOC and Others in DC Over Burden of US Military Bases
Governor Denny Tamaki traveled to DC to lobby US officials to oppose construction of a new US base in Okinawa and urged diplomacy with China.
Mar 15, 2023
Denny Tamaki, the recently re-elected Governor of Okinawa, traveled to DC for a weeklong trip to lobby lawmakers and officials to reduce the disproportionate burden of US military bases in Okinawa, which hosts over 70% of US military presence in Japan. The Governor met with leading US officials including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other lawmakers and aides, as well as government officials, diplomats, and academics, to discuss the critical issues pertaining to the US bases and stress the need for diplomacy to ease tensions with China.
Tamaki told reporters he met with AOC for over 30 minutes to brief the Congresswoman on the local opposition against the construction of a new US base at Henoko. He explained the US and Japanese governments are ignoring the will of Okinawans through this construction, as well as noting that toxic PFAS chemical contamination of soil and water from the bases are worsening and require immediate studies by the US government. During the meeting, AOC indicated concern over these issues and expressed willingness to work together on a solution, including through potential legislation. She told the Okinawa Times that her office will review the contents of the meeting and consider what action is necessary.
During last week’s visit, Governor Tamaki also met with Senator Todd Young (R-IN) and Representative Jill Tokuda (D-HI), as well as aides of Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Ed Markey (D-MA), and the Senate Armed Services Committee. Other meetings including with State Department officials, the Japanese Ambassador, and DC think tank experts, sought to emphasize the need for constructive dialogue. A panel discussion co-hosted by the Quincy Institute, Okinawa Prefectural Government, and George Washington University, with Tamaki, professor Mike Mochizuki, and senior research fellow Michael Swaine, stressed the importance of addressing the issues with the bases and for the US to engage diplomatically in the Asia-Pacific, instead of escalating its already high military presence.
As US tensions with China continue to rise, Governor Tamaki asked lawmakers “to tell the US government to conduct diplomacy peacefully and relieve tensions to not bring war to Okinawa''. With increased Japanese military spending, expanded US-Japanese joint military drills, and plans from Tokyo to station surface-to-air missiles in Okinawa, Tamaki instead brought to the US a message of diplomacy, urging dialogue over military buildup on the issue with Taiwan.
The Governor’s visit follows growing opposition to the US bases in Okinawa, including from organizations such as the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), as well as DSA state and local elected officials in the US who signed a recent letter outlining the issues and opposition to the bases. While hardliners against China dominate US mainstream politics, people in the Asia-Pacific region who feel their voices are ignored by the US government are the ones paying the burden of this rising militarism.
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