Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, “There are two tragedies in life.” “One is not to fulfill your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.”
It’s easy to see King Charles III, the longest-reigning heir in British history, as a tragic figure. The king waited for 73 years to sit on the royal throne. Now three and a half years into the job, Charles faces countless challenges that he has yearned for his entire life: unwellGrowing up, estrangement from his son living in California, and the Epstein scandal looming over his younger brother.
And now this. What should have been the crowning moment of his reign – a state visit to the US with all the pomp and ceremony Washington can muster – has turned into something much more serious: a high-level diplomatic mission to save Britain’s most important alliance.
It is difficult for Americans to appreciate the importance of trans-Atlantic relations to Britain. While Pete Hegseth once jokes about “big, bad royal navy“The British have long known that the state of the country’s armed forces is hopelessly weak. But given the endlessly publicized “special relationship” with the United States, it has never mattered much. Images of FDR and Winston Churchill sharing cocktails; Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher embracing; Bill Clinton and Tony Blair as bright young people of the West; are part of the post-war national mythology. This bond Inexhaustible, the British have told themselves for 80 years that no country comes close to America.
This special relationship – partly real, partly imagined – has allowed an entire generation in Britain to grow up feeling untouchable, safe under the impenetrable shield of the American military umbrella. When anti-Brexit campaigners tried to warn in 2016 that leaving the EU would be a national security threat, they were laughed out of town. Europe doesn’t keep us safeBrexiteers said convincingly. That job falls to NATO – the most successful defensive alliance in modern history. Of course, Britain voted to leave the EU in June 2016. Donald Trump was elected president four months later.
It took another decade of turmoil to get us to this point, but NATO now appears stuck below the waterline. It is a “paper tiger,” Trump has said repeatedly in recent weeks, signaling one after another that he can no longer abide by NATO’s central principle – that an attack on any one of its members is an attack on all. With a violent, aggressive Russia waging all-out war on a European neighbor, it is not the abstract threat it once was.
Trump is angry with every NATO country because no one came to his aid after he launched a war of aggression on Iran. But he has been particularly angry at Britain, whose Prime Minister Keir Starmer balked when Trump asked to use British airports to fly his bombing missions. “We will remember,” an angry Trump responded in one of several Truth Social outbursts. “We don’t need people who join the war after we win!” The President has given several interviews to British news outlets to clearly express his point of view.
Relations with Starmer – once warm and friendly – appear to be damaged beyond repair. Trump lost respect for the Prime Minister when he responded to the President’s request by saying he would need to consult his Cabinet. (In Britain’s parliamentary system of government, wardrobe It is the senior decision-making body, and the Prime Minister is the chairperson. But Trump has little time for constitutional norms.) “You don’t have to worry about a team,” Trump says he told Starmer. “You are the Prime Minister. You can decide.”
Even as he attacks the hapless prime minister — “This is not Winston Churchill we’re dealing with,” Trump has repeatedly said — the president’s respect for Britain’s royal family remains intact. Trump praised Charles’s late mother, Elizabeth II, with whom he spent time during his first term in office. Trump has displayed royal pomp on two state visits to Britain and since returning to power 15 months ago, the president has forged a surprisingly strong relationship with Charles. “I look forward to spending time with King, whom I have great respect for,” Trump said. Written on Truth Social Last month. “That would be awesome!”
Opposition voices in Britain, particularly on the populist left, have called for the visit to be cancelled, suggesting that Trump no longer deserves the honor of a royal visit. But that was never going to happen; The British state needs this visit, and wants it to go well.
And so it is with Charles that the nation’s hope for a détente lies – the 77-year-old unelected, unelected leader of the British upper classes, whose only qualification is to be a member of the most famously dysfunctional family on the planet. Yet somehow, it is up to them to make peace with President Trump.
At first glance, the pair have little in common — In fact, the comparison of the brash, motor-mouthed New York real estate developer and the painfully awkward English aristocrat makes for a good sitcom. Even politically they are miles apart. Charles has spent decades campaigning for greater environmental regulations; Trump has spent his career living through them. Charles has opposed Britain’s proposed immigration restrictions; Trump has shown little interest in limiting mass deportations.
And yet these two heads of state are more alike than they appear. Boomers in the original sense, they were both born into enormous wealth in the late 1940s, growing up in strange, privileged, far-flung households that rarely produced well-rounded adults. Both of them waited a long time to come to political power.
And while their political viewpoints are extremely different, they share a sense of nostalgia, an innate longing for a specific, distant past. We see this in Charles’s mournful songs about the English countryside; And – in a very different way – Trump’s forever war on progressive cultural shifts, and his efforts to rehabilitate cultural icons of the ’80s. We see this in both men’s shared love of classical architecture. Maybe they can join Trump’s new White House column.
Or maybe not. Any diplomatic mission to the Trump White House is fraught with risk, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky can testify. And hosting the British royals comes with an added layer of puzzling protocol. Kings and queens are easily embarrassed – embarrassment is a fate worse than death in British society. Trump inadvertently caused a minor scandal by breaking protocol by walking in front of the queen during his state visit to Britain in 2018. She was later criticized for placing her hand on his shoulder, as Michelle Obama had done previously. In other words, the margin for error is very low.
And this is a president who regularly cleans up that low with glee. Just last month he was joking on camera with the Japanese Prime Minister about Pearl Harbor. Earlier he was making fun of French President Emmanuel Macron’s relationship with his wife. Trump’s filter, if there ever was one, is rapidly becoming non-existent. Will he be able to avoid telling jokes about Prince Harry – or indeed Prince Andrew – in front of the King?
Charles is also capable of making diplomatic mistakes. He can be famously short-tempered, and has shown flashes of anger in public in a way that his mother never did. Everyone in Britain remembers this legend hot mic moment When he abused the royal correspondent of BBC. He went viral in 2022 due to his frequent teasing bad pen. There is no question of any conflict between these two seventy year old people.
Yet Britons have many reasons to be optimistic. Trump naturally loves history, power and monarchy in all its forms. He likes to be seen with gorgeous, global celebrities; He loves respect; He Wants This tour will go well. He is also capable of making sudden U-turns in foreign policy – in January he was threatening Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro with death and destruction; One positive phone call later and they became best friends in the White House.
Sir Peter Westmacott, who served as Britain’s ambassador to Washington from 2012 to 2016, says that fortunately for Charles, the dynamics of state visits work in Britain’s favor. Heads of state around the world – including Trump – are generally pleased and pleased to see him treated as a grand dignitary akin to the British royal family. “They like the idea that the king – or previously Queen Elizabeth – is their real opposite number,” he said. “Trump has been on the best behavior. He seems to love wearing white tie and all the pomp and ceremony.”
Westmacott agreed that the so-called special relationship is “not in good shape” and described the timing of the visit as “problematic” for Charles, with Trump still maligning the UK on social media. But he hopes the trip goes well, no matter what.
He said, “Trump seems to have divided his views on the king and the country, on the one hand, and on Starmer and the government, on the other.” “It provides an opportunity to remind them of the importance of the relationship, and also how much the US and Britain can and already do together.”
The interesting question is whether Charles, personally, can move forward. Whether the king might want to negotiate seriously with Trump on issues close to his country’s heart, like NATO and Ukraine; Or really close to your own, such as the natural environment? Queen Elizabeth II was famously secretive about anything resembling government business, and her political views remained a mystery. But his son’s views on many topics are already well known, and he maintains a keen interest in world affairs, meeting regularly with Zelensky, for example.
Westmacott said, “I don’t think (Charles) will feel that he is carrying briefs for the British government; that is not the monarch’s job.” “And yet. This is a monarch who is so well-informed about and interested in global issues that I’m sure he would be willing to discuss in private.”
Given Trump’s flammable nature, such a conversation would bring an added element of risk to the trip, but potentially offer far greater reward. And who is better placed than Charles to deliver a tough message to the president from Britain? The royal family remains Britain’s ultimate soft power game, intriguing and confusing to America even after all these years.
Charles himself has decades of diplomatic experience, having served as Britain’s envoy to more than 100 different countries in his 56 years as prince and king. He may have rarely faced someone like Trump, and the stakes for a royal visit to Washington have never been higher. But nothing has been easy about Charles’s royal career. And yet he endures. The whole world will be watching when he tries to accomplish this.
