Five years after leaving the European Union, Great Britain may have finally found a new role on the world scene-a concert that curiously resembles its former.
During the scary few weeks since President Trump upset the Transatlantic Alliance with his openings in Russia and struggling with Ukraine, the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, tried to act as a bridge between Europe and the United States.
Mr. Starmer and his best collaborators advised President Volodymyr Zelensky, from Ukraine, during telephone calls and face -to -face meetings on how to repair the fences with Mr. Trump after their white house. The Prime Minister vigorously put pressure on the American president for security guarantees to dissuade President Vladimir V. Putin from Russia from future assault.
In his high thread diplomacy, Mr. Starmer returns to a role that Great Britain has regularly played before Brexit. He is compared to Tony Blair, a previous Labor Prime Minister, who tried to mediate between President George W. Bush and European leaders in the mass of war in Iraq in 2003.
Mr. Blair’s bridges building did not end well, of course: France and Germany refused to join the “Coalition of the Willing” of Mr. Bush against Iraq, and the alignment of British locking with the United States has tapered its relations with its European neighbors.
Now, while Mr. Starmer sets up a new “coalition of wishes” to protect Ukraine, he faces an equally delicate balancing act. It is held near the United States while trying to bring together a great European military deterrence to persuade Trump to provide American air coverage and intelligence support for peacekeeping troops.
On Saturday, Mr. Starmer summoned a video conference with 30 leaders, Europe, NATO, Canada, Ukraine, Australia and New Zealand, to bring its support for its coalition, that Great Britain is spearhead with France. He said military officials would meet again on Thursday to start “operational planning”, although he has not given details on the mission of force, and he has not announced that other countries had committed troops.
“I have indicated a desire for the United Kingdom to play a leading role on this subject,” said Starmer at a press conference after the meeting. “If necessary, it would be troops on the ground and planes in the sky.”
Starmer said he would continue to put Trump for US security guarantees – a lobbying effort that he shares with President Emmanuel Macron from France. “I have been clear that it must be done in collaboration with the United States,” he said. “We are talking about the United States daily in the United States.”
That Mr. Starmer will succeed in overthrowing Mr. Trump is the assumption of anyone, since the president turned between the bitter denunciations of Ukraine and the threats of imposing sanctions on a recalcitrant Russia. Mr. Putin reacted with distrust to the offer of a 30-day truce made by Ukraine and the United States this week, while rejecting all discussions on a European force for peacekeeping.
“Of course, there is a risk,” said Peter Ricketts, a British diplomat who was a national security advisor to Prime Minister David Cameron. “But I think Starmer sees a greater risk of avoidable disaster.”
Mr. Blair, he said, failed as a bridge because the divisions between European nations on Iraq were insurmountable. The challenge of Mr. Starmer is an erratic American president, who seems determined to reset relations with Russia and is openly hostile to the European Union.
“Starmer will do his best so as not to have to choose between Europe and the United States,” said Ricketts. Treating with Mr. Trump, he added: “Makes him vulnerable to sudden diapers, but so far, he has managed to stay on the tidy rope.”
Mr. Starmer, he said, was helped by his experienced and widely respected national security advisor Jonathan Powell, who went to kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, to help launch the basics of Mr. Zelensky’s merger with the White House and Washington this week to consult the National Security Councilor of Mr. Trump, Michael Waltz.
Chief of staff on the time of Mr. Blair, Mr. Powell was a British chief negotiator for the Good Friday agreement, which ended decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. He was also on site for the unsuccessful effort of Mr. Blair to bring France and Germany to the military campaign against Iraq.
Even before Ukraine’s crisis has fun, Mr. Starmer’s government was looking for closer ties with the continent, not only on defense and security, but also on trade and economic policy.
But thanks to Brexit, Trump seems to place Great Britain in a different category from the European Union, which could help make Mr. Starmer a more efficient broker. The president suggested, for example, not to target Great Britain with radical prices, although he has not exempt from a global price on steel and aluminum.
“Having a foot in, a foot is a good thing for the United Kingdom in the current context,” said Mujtaba Rahman, analyst at the political risk consulting group, “but only if we remain in the current state of the bogus war.”
“If it becomes a real transatlantic fault,” continued Mr. Rahman, “then it is better to have the power of protection that the EU offers, at least in certain regions. And in such a context, the United Kingdom would better direct things if it had two feet. »»
At the beginning, Mr. Starmer’s re-engagement with the block was clearly half-past. After coming to power last July, he began to repair post-Brexit relations in various European capitals, but excluded two remarkable measures which could considerably increase trade: join the giant block market and its customs union.
His cautious approach, according to analysts, is rooted in the fear of angry the voters supported by Brexit and giving ammunition to Nigel Farage, the Brexit champion and leader of the anti-immigration party, Reform UK, which jumped in opinion polls.
But shock waves caused by Mr. Trump’s recent statements on Ukraine and Russia have swept some of the dams to reset more. They gave Mr. Starmer a political coverage, even those on the right in Great Britain recognizing the need for greater coordination on the defense of Europe.
“This changes the whole context and puts everything else in perspective,” said Ricketts, who was ambassador to France.
Ivan Rogers, former British ambassador of the European Union, said that Mr. Starmer’s diplomatic work had impressed other European leaders, who had used a Great Britain who was absent or vaguely antagonistic.
“All of this reminded people that the British reached themselves, and they could be more serious,” said Rogers. “You are now faced with such an existential crisis in the EU that mood has changed a little.”
This could open a way to a deeper British re -engagement, especially if Europeans decide to increase cooperation on military spending by creating a new initiative outside the existing structures of the European Union. Such an initiative could involve countries, including Great Britain, accepting common standards on issues such as military subsidies and arms supply.
This “would essentially create a single defense market, which has never been there before,” said Rogers.
Despite all the upward potential, Mr. Rogers, who worked in Downing Street during the war in Iraq, said that he feared that the role of Britain of a transatlantic bridge will be hampered by his efforts to use his post-Brexit status to avoid the prices imposed by Mr. Trump.
“My concern is that it might seem to others that the United Kingdom wants to have them in both directions,” said Rogers. “We want to be a bridge, have the transatlantic alliance, be at the heart of it, while simultaneously the argument that we are very different from the EU, and the United States can exempt us from its tariff action.”
“It’s a bit difficult,” he said, “to manage these two arguments at the same time.”
