What Joe Biden might say to Liz Truss

King Charles has promised a modern monarchy; Britain also needs a modern worldview

Were Joe Biden casting around for a text for his meeting with Liz Truss at this week’s United Nations General Assembly he could do worse than reprise some candid advice offered to Britain by a distinguished American statesman. December will mark the 60th anniversary of Dean Acheson’s wounding “lost-an-empire-and-failed-to-find-a-role” speech. Given the pretensions of the new prime minister, Acheson’s sentiments seem as apposite today as they were in 1962.

The abiding delusion in British foreign policy since the second world war has been located in the gap between lofty presumption and shrinking capabilities. Winston Churchill could not let go of the idea that Britain was one of the "Big Three" great powers. Margaret Thatcher was horrified to discover that her great friend Ronald Reagan had been ready to negotiate away the UK's nuclear forces in his talks with Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik. Successive prime ministers failed to grasp that Germany and France had their own ideas about the direction of Europe.

Plus ça change. Without a hint of embarrassment about the relative scale of US and British military aid, Truss declares the UK has led the world in the fight against Vladimir Putin’s attempt to subjugate Ukraine. She wants a new “Marshall Plan” to rebuild Ukraine. Presumably, Washington would pick up the bill.  Thirty years ago British officials boasted that Margaret Thatcher had stiffened American resolve after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. “Don’t go wobbly on me”, she is reputed to have told president George Bush. Perhaps Truss is carrying the same message to Biden.

Acheson’s address at the West Point Military Academy was not framed as a broadside against America’s closest wartime ally. Much of it focused on the broader western alliance against Soviet communism. It did, though, reflect Washington’s frustration with its ally’s stubborn unwillingness to adjust to the postwar shifts in global power. It was past time for Britain to admit that it was part of Europe.

“The attempt to play a separate power role”, Acheson observed, “that is, a role apart from Europe, a role based on a ‘Special Relationship’ with the United States, a role based upon being head of a ‘Commonwealth’ which has no political structure, or unity of strength …. this role is about played out.”

The words detonated like a bomb in London. Harold Macmillan accused Acheson of an error “made by quite a lot of people in the course of the last four hundred years, including Philip of Spain, Louis XIV, Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler”. In truth, the words struck a nerve because the then prime minister knew them to be broadly true. They explained why he had already lodged an application to join the Common Market.

The death of Queen Elizabeth should mark another moment of reassessment. The late monarch’s 70-year reign spanned the UK’s long journey from empire to second tier global power. She was deft in navigating a difficult course. But the glorious spectacle of her funeral must mark the final farewell to the trumpets. Her successor King Charles has promised to adapt the monarchy to contemporary society. The nation needs to make the same adjustments when setting its international role.  

Truss will not find this easy. She has put herself at the head of a school of right wing Tories for whom sober recognition of relative decline is tantamount to declinist treachery. These were the people who once loudly declared that departure from the European Union would allow the UK to write the terms of a new, more favourable relationship. “We hold all the cards”, one leading Brexiter famously declared.

Boris Johnson’s grand conceit - “global Britain” - spoke to the same delusion. And Downing Street continues to see the world as it wants it to be. Biden’s irritation with Truss’s unilateral disregard of the Northern Ireland trade arrangements in the Brexit treaty signed with EU governments is blamed on White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Europe director Amanda Sloat. We are supposed to believe a president long famously proud of his Irish heritage has been led astray by aides. 

When Truss visited Washington as foreign secretary her hosts found her notably prickly. What was “special”, she complained, about a relationship which had seen the United States refuse to agree a post-Brexit trade pact. As for Biden’s call for a negotiated settlement of the Northern Ireland dispute, Truss has staked out rather different ground: "I think we've learned from history that there's only one thing the EU understands, and that is strength. I'm strong enough to make it happen."

The snag here, and this is fully understood in Washington, is that the prime minister has nowhere to go. The rupture with Britain’s European partners now runs much deeper than the fact of Brexit. Seen from Berlin, Brussels, and Paris, the UK has ceased to be a trustworthy partner. Political, foreign policy and security co-operation are held hostage to its unilateral repudiation of the Brexit treaty.

Truss cannot afford an open breach with Biden. That’s why she has been lobbying hard for an early invitation to the White House. Brexiter dreams of reviving the “Anglosphere” as a power bloc to rival Europe have always been implausible. Without a close and deep relationship with Washington they look risible.

Here is the president’s opportunity. Courteous as he always is, Biden might note during their meeting that Britain still has a leading role in the western alliance. Its strengths - from serious military, diplomatic and intelligence capabilities to the soft power that flows from its cultural reach and global mindset - are undeniable. The nation’s contribution to global affairs, however, would be greater were it to repair the European bridges it has blown up since Brexit, and recognise that its relationships with the United States and with its own continent are complementary rather then contradictory. Truss may refuse to call France’s Emmanuel Macron a valuable ally. Biden has no such hesitation.