Trump visit puts Britain in tight spot
May seeks closer ties with US post-Brexit
LONDON: When Donald Trump visits Britain next week, Prime Minister Theresa May will have to face a harsh reality: Brexit makes Britain more dependent than ever on an alliance with the most unpredictable US president in living memory.
Sandwiched between a Nato meeting and a summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Mr Trump’s first visit to Britain as president comes at one of the most important junctures for Europe and the West since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.
From challenging Western assumptions about the EU and free trade to courting the Kremlin and North Korea’s leader, Mr Trump has delivered on his promise of an “unpredictable” US foreign policy.
That leaves Ms May, who held hands with Mr Trump at the White House during her visit after his inauguration, in a difficult position as she seeks closer trade ties with the United States to offset the disruption of leaving the EU on March 29, 2019.
“The irony is that by leaving the EU, the United Kingdom will be less useful to Washington as an ally but it will also need the United States much more,” said Jeffrey A Stacey, a former State Department official in Obama’s administration.
“So Ms May has been thrown into the arms of the most unpredictable US president in living memory,” Mr Stacey said.
Over 50,000 people have signed up for a protest on Trafalgar Square in central London against Mr Trump’s visit, which will include a meeting with Queen Elizabeth and possibly even a round of golf at his Turnberry course in Scotland.
Even taking account of Mr Trump’s penchant for deal making, the visit is likely to be heavy on rhetoric about an increasingly lopsided “special relationship” and short on specifics such as the details of a postBrexit trade deal.
For supporters, Mr Trump and Brexit offer the prospect of breaking free from what they see as obsolete institutions and rules that have weakened the United States and its allies relative to competitors such as China.
But for many British diplomats, Brexit marks the collapse of a 70-year British strategy of trying to balance European integration with a US alliance based on blood, trade and intelligence sharing.
“Ms May’s rushed diplomacy with Mr Trump has been foolish: what has she actually got out of the relationship so far?” said one senior European diplomat in London.
“You Brits are leaving Europe but do you really want to jump into the arms of Donald Trump’s America? And more importantly, do you have a choice?” the diplomat asked.
Mr Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election shocked British diplomats in Washington and relations between Ms May, a vicar’s daughter, and Mr Trump have been strained at times.
The enduring image of Ms May’s visit to the White House in January 2017, when she became the first foreign leader to meet the president after he took office, was Mr Trump taking Ms May’s hand to help her down the steps of a White House colonnade.
But any good vibrations from that moment soon dissipated when Mr Trump, the same day, announced plans to ban migrants from seven Muslim-majority countries — a decision that drew fierce international criticism and appeared to blindside Ms May.
Days later, thousands marched on parliament to protest against the decision to offer a Mr Trump full state visit to Britain, and 1.8 million people signed a petition saying the invitation should be cancelled because he might embarrass the Queen.
Mr Trump has repeatedly thwarted British and other European diplomatic overtures, withdrawing from multilateral agreements on climate change, human rights, and a treasured deal to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for lifting sanctions, often against advice offered by British and European leaders.
Officials around Ms May insist that Britain still has the capability to influence Mr Trump, outlining a handling strategy that involves appealing to his self interest, “planting the seed” of an idea and allowing him time to consider its merits.
But, much will rest on the personal dynamic between Ms May, a staid, career politician who prides herself on careful decision-making, and Mr Trump, the brash, often-bellicose, former reality TV star who declared last month he would know within a minute whether a deal could be struck with North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong-un.
“We talk about Mr Trump and Mr Macron because it seems interesting with some upsides. We talk about Mr Trump and Angela Merkel because it’s ‘difficult’, ” said Leslie Vinjamuri, head of the US and Americas programme at the Chatham House think tank.
“Theresa May gets a bit lost in all of that. She has neither been strong nor weak, there doesn’t seem to be any special affection.”
Asked at last month’s G7 meeting in Canada whether Mr Trump was a “good friend” to Britain, Ms May said: “The US and the UK are very good friends. President Trump and I work together often”.
But just hours after the meeting ended he tore up a joint communique on trade, equality and the environment that Ms May and other G7 leaders had laboured late into the night to agree. Therein lies the difficulty and headache for Ms May.