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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30006 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

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Do We Live In the Dankest Timeline?

Or

Is the United States Going to (Re)Join the British Commonwealth?

(Probably not, but this is funny.)

Earlier this month, @hydroacetylene gave a flattering compliment about how if he ever lucked into power, he'd consider me for an advisor. However, I deferred at the time and now must formally defer in favor of another Motte poster, who has a geopolitical creativity I would never have thought of despite dropping their hints in ways that only most perfidious minds of Albion could make appear unserious at the time.

Specifically-

If I had a nickel for every time someone had proposed expanding the British Commonwealth as a way to address a geopolitical question...

@FiveHourMarathon, care to explain how you convinced King Charles that all he had to do was just ask Trump to join the British Commonwealth?

Because according to Trump... Sounds Good!

More seriously(?), emerging reporting of the hour(s) is that Trump has pre-empted (via his Truth Social, no less) a planned-but-not-yet-extended invitation by the British government to bring the US into a voluntary association agreement with the Commonwealth of Nations, aka the British Commonwealth, aka the post-British empire talking club.

As a geopolitical unit, the British Commonwealth... isn't? The wiki page summarizes obligations as-

Member states have no legal obligations to one another, though some have institutional links to other Commonwealth nations. Commonwealth citizenship affords benefits in some member countries, particularly in the United Kingdom, and Commonwealth countries are represented to one another by high commissions rather than embassies. The Commonwealth Charter defines their shared values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law,[12] as promoted by the quadrennial Commonwealth Games.

A no-obligation talking club isn't the worst thing in international politics. It offers a channel to communicate, nice summit opportunities, and engagement opportunities. Not much, but not nothing either.

So... why now?

The Independent speculates-

Having America joining the Commonwealth, even as an associate member, could be a way for Charles to smooth over tensions between Washington, London and Ottawa that have erupted over Trump’s frequently-stated desire to make Canada — a Commonwealth founding member and one of the 15 nations that still counts the King as head of state — the 51st American state rather than the fully independent nation it has been since the 1982 Canadian constitution removed the country’s vestigial legal dependence on the British parliament.

Would Commonwealth-association defuse the trade war? Probably not.

But it will be a heck of a funny if the British government tries to run with this opportunity(?) of a generation.

It will also be funny to watch how European (social) media covers this story, if it goes anywhere. A significant policy effort by the Europeans of late has been to try and get the current Labour government more and more involved with EU projects vis-a-vis US engagements. This is... not necessarily a reversal, but at the same time anything that lets the UK play the US of the EU (or vice versa) complicates efforts at reversing British disentanglement from the EU that followed Brexit.

Plus, the memes will be funny.

I imagine some British foreign policy experts (cough @FiveHourMarathon cough) have an interesting weekend ahead of them from this Trump tweet-leak.

I still have no idea why any Republican would want to make Canada the 51st state and thus add tens of millions of people who tend to lean significantly further left than the GOP to the US electorate.

Because Trump said it.

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