Biden heads to UK, seeks to bolster ‘close relationship’

THE WHITE HOUSE – President Joe Biden will seek to grow his “close relationship” with the United Kingdom, the White House says, when he pays his first visit to the newly crowned King Charles III and meets with the British political leader to strengthen the bond between the two nations ahead of a critical NATO summit that could determine the course of the conflict in Ukraine.

London is the first stop on Biden’s tri-nation tour, which begins Monday. He will then go to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, for a summit of NATO leaders, and then to Helsinki, the capital of NATO’s newest member, Finland.

“The president is looking forward to this,” John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, told VOA. “As you know, the UK is our strongest ally, in many ways, on many levels.”

Kirby said Biden will discuss issues such as the war in Ukraine with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and will discuss environmental challenges with the monarch, who was an early advocate of climate action.

“Not downplaying the UK trip, but this is not a full visit to the country, but more of a stop on the way to Lithuania,” Dalibor Rohac, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA via email. .

And, he said, London noted when Biden showered praise on his ancestral home of Ireland, which he has described as “part of his soul.” The southern two-thirds of the Irish island are not part of the United Kingdom and have historically been opposed to the monarchy.

“For a number of reasons, British conservative commentators and politicians constantly feel slighted by Biden, from his expressions of Irishness, to his absence from the king’s coronation, to Ben Wallace’s failed bid to lead NATO.” Rohac said. “That sense of neglect and contempt is not going to go away, even if Rishi Sunak’s personal relationship with Biden looks good and even if the UK and US work closely together on a range of issues from Ukraine to the US. security in the Indo-Pacific. “

Still, there is some symbolism in the American leader’s friendly meeting with the British king. Carlos III is a direct descendant of King George III, the distant sovereign against whom a group of American colonists leveled a litany of grievances on the Declaration of Independence.

“So it’s like acknowledging the pomp and circumstance of the unique head of state in the UK and of course the unique history between these two great nations,” said Sean Monaghan, visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“But also on a more substantive political front, President Biden has met with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak several times in recent months, and they will seek to advance the agenda they recently agreed to, during Sunak’s last visit here, the then-called Atlantic Declaration, which promises closer cooperation on a variety of issues, from trade to defense and elsewhere.”

Commonwealth Change

King Charles III remains head of state, mainly in a ceremonial sense, for more than 2.6 billion people, spread across the globe as citizens of the 56 Commonwealth nations. The Voluntary Political Association it consists mainly of former territories of the British Empire. Their collective goals include supporting democracy, government and the rule of law and promoting liberal values ​​such as gender equality. The United States is not a member, but 13 nations in the Americas are.

In recent years, members have questioned Britain’s right to rule them and questioned their painful colonial past. Constitutional scholar Richard Albert is a member of Jamaica’s constitutional reform committee, which will help the nation establish a post-Commonwealth framework.

Albert, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said he recently returned from a trip to New Zealand, another Commonwealth member state, where “they corrected me when I called it Commonwealth,” he said.

“They called it the Common Theft, the idea is that the Commonwealth has gained and accumulated all its power and money in theft, of towns, of land, of possessions, of culture,” he told VOA. “So I thought it was a very powerful statement from the people of New Zealand.”

The king, in his first Commonwealth Day Message earlier this year, he described the alliance as “a partnership not just of shared values, but of common purpose and joint action.”

“Its near limitless potential as a force for good in the world demands our greatest ambition; its sheer scale challenges us to come together and be bold,” he said.

Albert, who is Canadian and supports Ottawa’s withdrawal from the group, said “it is possible to imagine the Commonwealth now and in the future, as a force for good for democracy, constitutionalism and the rule of law.” .

But first, he says, something big has to happen.

“I would like the president to ask the king if he plans to make amends for the monarchy’s wrongdoing in the past centuries,” he said. “But of course, if the President were to ask King Charles that, he would have to ask himself the same question, wouldn’t he?”