King's visit to US shows UK plays long game in fixing strained ties

Britain routinely deployed the royal family to charm the U.S. president, hosting him for a lavish state visit last September and dispatching King Charles and Queen Camilla to Washington this week for the ‌250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence from British rule.

Trump mocked and criticized British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in recent 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 American public and their politicians of the depth and longevity of the relationship.

Nigel Sheinwald, who served as Britain's ambassador to Washington between 2007 and 2012, said the king used a rare and well-received address to Congress to highlight 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.

Worst relations since Suez

The 77-year-old monarch's four-day visit came amid the worst relations between the two countries since the Suez Crisis in 1956 and broader strains between the Trump administration and its European allies.

Trump this year threatened to seize Greenland, which is part of the kingdom of Denmark, and harshly criticized NATO allies for not sending their navies to help open the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran effectively closed.

In Tuesday's address to Congress, the highlight of his visit, Charles praised the U.S.-UK alliance and delivered subtle rebukes to Trump, warning against the perils of becoming ever more inward-looking. He also promoted 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.

Mark Lyall Grant, Britain's former national security adviser and a career diplomat, 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 included 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 long vaunted its close ties with the U.S. but the increasingly visible strains during Trump's second presidency — almost a decade after the U.K. voted to leave the European Union — sparked introspection about how it should navigate a much more volatile world.

Not special anymore

Britain's current ambassador to Washington, Christian Turner, told a recent private event that he did not like the term "special relationship," 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 also argued that while Trump's tone may sometimes be offensive, he is not wrong to say that Britain, like other European nations, must spend more on defense if it wants global partners to take it seriously.

Diplomats and commentators said the deployment of royal "soft power" would not provide cover for Starmer's center-left Labour government for long, but it would help keep channels open while the prime minister works to get back onto a better footing with the right-wing U.S. president.

"It's a perfect opportunity to keep the diplomatic channels open and to keep those conversations flowing," royal commentator Afua Hagan said.

There are hopes Charles' visit will work the same magic for bilateral ties as the late Queen Elizabeth II's visit to the U.S. 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," he joked, "it is hard to imagine anything like that happening today."