King Charles III’s courting of US President Donald Trump on his state visit would not repair the recent fraying of US-British relations, but underscores how London is playing a longer game in trying to preserve the historic alliance.
Britain has routinely deployed the royal family to charm the mercurial US president, hosting him for a lavish state visit in September last year and dispatching King Charles and Queen Camilla to Washington this week for the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence from British rule. Trump has repeatedly mocked and criticized British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the past few weeks over his refusal to back the Iran war, but diplomats and commentators said Charles’ task was not so much to smooth political ties as to remind the US public and their politicians of the depth and longevity of the relationship.
Britain’s ambassador to Washington between 2007 and 2012, Nigel Sheinwald, said the king had used a rare and well-received address to Congress to highlight the web of bilateral ties across culture, security, defense and technology.
“[He will] hope that some of it will have an enduring impact on his audiences, which are much wider than the administration and will go on much longer than the administration,” Sheinwald said.
The 77-year-old monarch’s four-day visit comes against the backdrop of the worst relations between the two countries since the Suez Crisis in 1956, and amid broader strains between the Trump administration and its European allies.
Trump earlier this year threatened to seize Greenland — which is part of the kingdom of Denmark — and more recently has harshly criticized NATO allies for not sending their navies to help open the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively shut.
In Tuesday’s address to Congress, the highlight of his visit which ends on Thursday, Charles praised the US-UK alliance while delivering several subtle rebukes to Trump, warning against the perils of becoming ever more inward-looking and promoting the need for peace and compassion in public life.
“The king is a masterful diplomat,” one senior government official said.
In Australia, where Charles is also head of state, a column in the Sydney Morning Herald praised the “persuasive and incredibly sly” address for telling Trump what his many critics think he needed to hear.
However, Britain’s former national security adviser and a career diplomat Mark Lyall Grant said that while the events involving Trump were important, the broader mission of the king and queen was to address the American people on a trip that also includes stops in New York and Virginia.
“Just as there have been difficult relations at the political level in the past, the king symbolizes the British state, and this visit therefore reminds the people of America, in particular, of what that relationship is and what it means to both countries,” he said.
Britain has long vaunted its close ties with the US, but the increasingly visible strains during Trump’s second presidency — almost a decade after the UK voted to leave the EU — have sparked a bout of introspection about how it should navigate a much more volatile world.
Britain’s current ambassador to Washington Christian Turner told a private event he did not like the term “special relationship” that was coined by wartime leader Winston Churchill because it harked back to the past.
The Foreign Office said the comments, reported by the Financial Times, were not government policy.
Critics of the government have also argued that while Trump’s tone might sometimes be offensive, he is not wrong to say that Britain, like other European nations, must spend more on defense if it wants to be taken seriously by global partners.
Diplomats and commentators said the deployment of royal “soft power” would not provide cover for Starmer’s center-left Labour government for long, but that it would help keep channels open while the prime minister works to get back onto a better footing with the right-wing US president.
“It’s a perfect opportunity to keep the diplomatic channels open and to keep those conversations flowing,” royal commentator Afua Hagan said.
Starmer would be hoping that Charles’ visit would have worked the same magic for bilateral ties as the late Queen Elizabeth did in the immediate aftermath of the Suez crisis.
“When my mother visited in 1957, not the least of her tasks was to help put the ‘special’ back into our relationship after a crisis in the Middle East,” Charles said at Tuesday’s state dinner at the White House.
“Nearly seventy years on, it is hard to imagine anything like that happening today,” he said.
When I visited Taiwan last summer, I called on the nation to use its status as a technology superpower to build superweapons. It is obvious to me as I return a year later that Taiwan is now answering that call. By 2030, Taiwan envisions a domestic drone hub, capable of producing large quantities of drones per year. The nation continues to tighten cooperation across the private sector, scientific researchers and the elected government, on creating new and innovative production avenues for defense, while efforts to become central to the “democratic supply chain” are only increasing. Anduril is seeing all of these positive
Singaporean former Prime Minister and current senior minister Lee Hsien- Loong(李顯龍) last month stood on Chinese soil and told Beijing that Singapore cooperates because of “shared interests”, not because of common “ethnic descent,” a significant statement that has upended China’s cognitive warfare tactics of “ethnic nationalism.” Along with using its military buildup and economic growth to expand its international dominance, China has long deployed ethnic politics to promote the idea that all ethnic Chinese around the world, regardless of citizenship, share a tight bond with the Chinese motherland, by which it means the regime of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
A recent report concerning a student who is suing his teacher posed the question in its headline: Does failing a student in two subjects constitute bullying? The college student in Chiayi County apparently sought NT$2 million (US$63,603) in state compensation, but a court dismissed the case. The first reaction of many might have been to ask: What has happened to students nowadays? Some say that teachers have lost their authority, while others say students are overindulged. Some even start reminiscing over the days when “whatever the teacher says goes.” However, the real issue might be overlooked if emotional reactions like that are the
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in San Francisco on Tuesday last week said if she had not met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), she would have been “just a plain” and “even negligible” KMT chairperson, bluntly signaling the role she is playing in her visit to the US — Beijing’s messenger from Taiwan. Cheng and her delegation arrived in the US on Monday last week for a two-week visit across five major cities. Her party said the group is scheduled to meet with US lawmakers, officials, policy experts and businesspeople. Before departing, Cheng said her trip
RSS