King Charles’ state visit to America would be in bad taste

What special relationship! David Dimbleby the veteran British broadcaster exclaimed rhetorically on being asked about the illusion of the special relationship between Britain and the USA.

There never was a special relationship, he said while discussing whether the King’s state visit to the US at the end of April should go ahead or not. This is no time for the King to visit the US he said, adding that it would not be rude to postpone it owing to the US war with Iran.

It seems it is the UK government that insists the visit should go ahead, which is surprising given all the insults US President Trump has hurled at Britain lately. Dimbleby thinks it is kowtowing to President Trump for the King to go on a state visit to the US at a time it is engaged in a war the UK government believesto be illegal.

Trump had previously also insulted the British army’s sacrifices in the war in Afghanistan when he sought to belittle Nato’s and Britain’s contribution claiming falsely “they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines,” which was a bit rich coming from a man who did not join the conscription line never mind the front line in the Vietnam war – apparently on medical grounds that healed after the war ended.

Contrast Trump’s failure to fight in Vietnam with that of the British princes Andrew and Harry who saw action in the Falklands and Afghanistan respectively – Andrew in 1982 and Harry in 2008 and again 2013.

They are not popular in Britain at present, but what no one can take away from them is that their privileged status as royals did not exempt them active military service on Queen Elizabeth’s insistence – in the case of Andrew she even vetoed a cabinet decision to exempt Andrew from going to war in the Falklands.

Like the Queen, Dimbleby belongs to a class of Brit with old fashioned grit. Many of that generation never accepted America as the benign successor superpower to Britain in the last century. The Labour politician Tony Benn was another, and it is a great pity he is no longer with us to castigate the government for refusing to condemn the US.

People like Dimbleby and Benn never believed that staying close to the Americans is in the British national interest, let alone close to an American president who suffers from a bully mentality characterised by aggression and a wish to attack countries perceived to be weaker. Since coming to power, he has threatened or attacked Canada, Greenland, Panama, Venezuela, Cuba and now Iran.

At the official level the only Brit with grit prepared to call out the US president’s threat to

“bomb Iran into the Stone Age” in his address to the nation on March 31st was the UN’s Tom Fletcher. No UK minister has been prepared to tell it the way it is like Fletcher did last week as follows: “You don’t hit civilian infrastructure. That includes hospitals. You don’t hit schools, energy sources, bridges. That is a war crime. That is absolutely clear in international law. Somewhere along the way we have thrown all that aside. We have chosen impunity, indifference and game‑show gambling over solidarity and humanity.”

So why indeed would Britain want a special relationship with a country whose president revels in aggressive war and uses the language of war crimes and insults Britain for refusing to join him in his illegal war?

There is an erroneous belief that the international crimes proscribed by the International Criminal Court (ICC) are not committed because they cannot always be prosecuted. This is a misunderstanding of the full rationale behind criminalising behaviour of political leaders of states in their conduct of foreign wars.

International crimes like the crime of aggression and war crimes identify really evil conduct whose perpetrators deserve to be condemned and shunned and avoided even if they cannot be prosecuted and sent to prison – in other words prosecution is not the be all of criminalisation under the ICC.

The US is not a party to the ICC Statute signed at Rome in 1998 but the reputational damage to its president of being thought by most of the world as having waged the crime of aggression and war crimes would be enormous if he carries out his threat to bomb Iran back into the Stone Age.

This is the reason why the UK government is wrong to insist that the King’s state visit to the US should go ahead. Why impose on the King a duty to dignify Trump with a state visit he does not deserve? Anecdotal evidence suggests that most British people are against the state visit and as the damage to the world economy gets worse people would begin to question the wisdom of imposing on the King a state visit to please and glorify Trump when he should be made to realise that he has caused untold death and destruction – the planned state visit by King Charles to America would be in bad taste.

The greatest believer in the special relationship was Winston Churchill but he was charmed by President Roosevelt into believing that America would help preserve the British Empire when the opposite was the case – America wanted to replace the British empire, not preserve it – which is exactly what happened.

The best that could be said about the special relationship was by the Irish playwright and wit George Bernard Shaw who is alleged to have said that Britain and America are divided by a common language.