Imagine, if you will, King Charles in the Deep South. The aesthetics are easy enough: it doesn’t take much to picture His Majesty in crumpled linen, Her Majesty the right side of a large mint julep. But imagine if, in Richmond, Virginia, Charleston or New Orleans, His Majesty makes an off-the-cuff comment about how good it would be if the territories he was speaking in seceded from the United States and that it would be ‘a very great thing’ if claims of the Confederacy were honoured. His Majesty, in a show of tact, acknowledges that Washington D.C. might be a little miffed, but does so with a chuckle. After all, everyone knows that the aspirations of the US are old hat anyway.
Except of course the King didn’t do that. He went to Washington and was the epitome of grace and charm. He sought to honour America’s traditions and history and steered clear of any controversies. He certainly at no point questioned its territorial integrity, even as it threatened the position of one of his realms to its immediate north.
Contrast the King’s behaviour with that of Donald Trump this week in Dublin, where he claimed that the annexation of British territory in Northern Ireland by the Republic would be ‘a great thing’. His comment comes off the back of months of joint sabre-rattling with Israel about the Falkland Islands.
The long, zombified existence of the Monroe Doctrine means that many of the claims to territory now held by the US, at least as valid as republican claims to Northern Ireland, have been brushed under the carpet. If America thinks it’s open season on pulling apart the territorial integrity of its supposed allies, why shouldn’t the Foreign Office or the Quai d’Orsay start endorsing Russian claims to Alaska? Surely now is the time to restore the Hawaiian monarchy, which, after all, the US snuffed out illegally and unfairly, in part because they feared that Queen Liliʻuokalani was too keen on us? I jest, but this is no less deranged than the President’s outburst.
True, Trump’s dyspraxic bull-in-the-china-shop attitude to foreign policy can easily be blamed on his demonstrably flawed personality. It is also true that he says many things which don’t always come to pass. Such is his unpopularity over here that his Northern Ireland intervention may actually help the cause of Unionism. Leftists are already dancing an elaborate polka around this issue as they unexpectedly find themselves on the same side as ‘bad orange man’. Yet the grim reality is that Trump’s comments aren’t so far removed from what might be expressed behind closed doors by the most sensible old-school Republican or the most progressive Democrat. Contempt for allies – especially Britain – is a feature, not a bug, of American foreign policy.
That asymmetry works on a micro and a macro level. Indeed, America’s micro-aggressions are if anything more egregious. This week it was reported that a diplomat based in London had been secretly flown to America with the help of US Marines while under investigation for child sex offences. British police were reportedly informed only after he was already airborne and beyond the reach of extradition requests.
There are echoes here with the case of Anne Sacoolas, the CIA officer’s wife who in 2019 mowed down 19-year-old Harry Dunn while driving on the wrong side of the road. Sacoolas invoked diplomatic immunity and scuttled off to America before Dunn’s family had even learnt the name of their son’s killer. In the event, Sacoolas received a suspended sentence in absentia for taking the life of the British teenager, having been advised by US authorities not to return to face justice. That’ll learn her, as our friends across the pond might say.
The President’s outbursts make conservatives still willing to go out to bat for him look ludicrous
Both cases lay bare a striking truth: America doesn’t care about Britain. Ignoring the rule of law in other countries, airlifting alleged paedos at great cost, making mad promises about other people’s territory and being unable to remember any historical event that happened more than about five minutes ago are characteristics not of a global hegemon deserving of respect, but of a third-world dictator. Indeed, the tit-for-tat punishment mode of America’s foreign policy is even more third-world than it first seems. The current undermining of Britain seems a kneejerk reaction to our immediate refusal to join a foreign conflict which came at the instigation of Benjamin Netanyahu. The arguments of the US and Israel for publicly undermining British territorial integrity rely on the acceptance of a deranged and false equivalence. Are we meant to believe that Falkland Islanders are habitually going around beating up the people who used to live there or crushing the homes of long-established penguins beneath bulldozers?
Of course, the specifics of what sparked America’s ire can seem almost irrelevant. Here, revenge for settlement sanctions involves supporting the territorial claims of Ireland, one of the most anti-Semitic countries in Europe. Trump recently made clear his view that the Falklands conflict was a long time ago. (He was, he says, ‘a very young boy’ at the time. He was 35.) Since then, in his eyes, we’ve been less pliant, so essentially deserve our comeuppance, ignoring the immense solidarity shown after 9/11, the sacrifices Britain made in Iraq and Afghanistan. This looks more like an expectation of vassalage than alliance; a demand that your ‘ally’ obeys at all times or their basic sovereignty will no longer be respected. The punishment of erstwhile friends runs in tandem with the indulgence of enemies: as Britain is threatened, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is offered concessions while Iran may soon be given a freer hand in the Strait of Hormuz.
All this should serve as a wake-up call. Right-wing parties around the world have been punished at the ballot box for their pro-Americanism. Given US threats to Northern Ireland, the integrity of which first built the Conservative and Unionist party, and the Falklands, which shored up its power in the 1980s, this is an opportunity for the British right to rediscover a more sceptical realism. The President’s outbursts make conservatives still willing to go out to bat for him look ludicrous. They make Andy Burnham’s vow not to prioritise defence at the expense of welfare appear even more spineless, and the Chagos giveaway even more pathologically stupid. As that essential guide to US statecraft Henry Kissinger once quipped: ‘To be an enemy of America is dangerous but to be her friend is fatal.’ It’s time we listened.
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