President Trump’s visit to Britain was designed to flatter with imperial imagery: Windsor Castle, a carriage ride, flyovers, a glimpse at the Churchill archives at Chequers, the prime minister’s country estate. This pageantry veiled the reality that Britain is no longer the superpower of these symbols, and that Mr. Trump is widely disliked in the country.
Of course, the nostalgia diplomacy serves a purpose. For Mr. Trump, it sates his thirst for validation as the predominant Western leader, with the British establishment genuflecting before him as so many powerful American institutions have done since his re-election. For Prime Minister Keir Starmer, it continues a careful strategy of avoiding worse outcomes on tariffs and the war in Ukraine while showing that Britain has a foot in the door on technologies such as artificial intelligence.
Yet underneath the surface, both the United States and Britain are suffering through crises of identity. For two centuries, London and Washington were the seats of empire, the vanguard of the West, the proselytizers of liberal democracy. Our leaders used to meet to shape the direction of world events; now the balance of global power is shifting to the East. Our leaders used to reaffirm a story of shared democratic values; now the United States has taken an authoritarian turn, and Mr. Starmer is struggling to prevent Britain from doing the same.
As our nations go through a crucible of change, it is no wonder that our people are anxious and unmoored, our politics destabilized. What was it all about? What will our nations become?
These questions are not new. One hundred and twenty-six years ago, in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” Charlie Marlow begins his story in the heart of the British Empire, London’s River Thames. “What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth!” he declares. “The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.” This soaring vision of power and glory flowing outward from the center was laced with a cruder experience: “They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got.”
The grabbing tended to concentrate wealth and power among the few while calling upon the sacrifices of the many. But the titans of government and industry buttressed their empire with loftier stories. For the British, it was a story of imperial might spreading commerce, laws, institutions and common purpose. For Americans forging their own empire in the 20th century, it was a story of freedom, opportunity, justice and common aspiration. Of course, British and American leaders adhered to these stories only selectively, but they did offer a sense of meaning and belonging, an identity connected to a broader project. They served simultaneously as a justification for supremacy and a source of accountability, as citizens in our countries and abroad used them to call out hypocrisy and demand reform.
In 1941, the British and American stories converged at a secret summit off the coast of Newfoundland as Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill laid the foundation for the liberal international order established after World War II. The war accelerated the decline of the British Empire, and decolonization ended it. That loss was cushioned by the familiarity of what replaced it. Through the Cold War and the War on Terror, Britain remained the leader of the Commonwealth and could see itself as a wise older cousin to rambunctious America, which was also a majority white, Christian, capitalist nation. Yet Britain’s influence waned. It chafed at European bureaucracy. Its economy was eclipsed by those of China and India, which once bent to its will. Meanwhile, immigration, much of it from former colonies, changed the sense of who could be British. The empire came home.
In the summer of 2016, British voters severed their relationship with the European Union, motivated by a nationalist backlash to globalization. A few months later, American voters stepped into the same undertow, electing a president who railed against immigration and international norms, institutions and obligations. Within a matter of months, both nations turned against their own stories.
Are the American and the British people better off than they were before the 2016 elections?
They are still polarized and pessimistic. Rampant inequality, rising costs and overburdened safety nets feel beyond the control of governments. Global conflicts have escalated, from wars in Europe and the Middle East to trade wars and tensions with China.
Post-Brexit Britain should offer a cautionary tale to America about the dangers of isolationism dressed up as exceptionalism. Separated from Europe, the value of British citizenship has shrunk. Growth has stagnated. And the social welfare state has continued to depend upon migrant labor. None of that stopped Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K. party from surging to the front of opinion polls. For Mr. Farage, Brexit was far from enough; Britain must do ever more to separate and secure itself from migration, liberalism and diversity.
Like Joe Biden when he was president, Mr. Starmer will be judged on whether he can fend off this resilient far right. And like Mr. Biden, Mr. Starmer has tried to project a return to normalcy: sober leadership, stricter border enforcement and the pursuit of better economic indicators. Yet as Americans have learned, if you cede the terrain of identity, the reactionaries will keep winning, fueled by false promises about a return to an illusory past.
Mr. Trump’s second term has embodied the cruder approach described by Joseph Conrad: grabbing what can be got for the sake of what is to be got. There is no pretense of a story about democratic values. The considerable powers of the state have been leveraged to reward him and his associates, punish his foes and elevate a largely white, Christian, conservative American identity: to “take back control,” as one Brexit slogan put it.
Control has been a relentless focus of the second Trump administration. And Mr. Trump’s efforts to assert that control at home draw on the security infrastructure the United States built to impose its will abroad. Deportations and policing have been militarized and supported by big data. Legal authorities designed to confront enemies beyond our borders have been enlisted to justify actions within them. Threats of crime are hyped far out of proportion, just as we once hyped the danger from “rogue states.” The othering previously reserved for jihadists or communists is applied to immigrants and the “radical left.” From masked ICE agents to hyperbolic online communication and threats against an alleged conspiracy of leftist NGOs, a sense of chaos demoralizes opposition and silences critics. American institutions are sorted into those who are with or against the administration. The empire came home.
And yet, like Britain, we cannot turn back the clock. Populations in both countries will be increasingly diverse, no matter what politicians say. Power in the world will be more diffuse as China continues its superpower ascent. The American and British people will continue to suffer, enthralled by the siren song of blood-and-soil nationalism and imperial nostalgia. In the worst scenarios, we risk being pulled into destructive conflicts both within our borders and beyond them.
The challenge for those who rightly fear this approach is to reclaim the better aspects of our stories as a source of identity and accountability, not supremacy. Both of our countries have benefited when we strove to represent something bigger than a narrow conception of nationalism. Both of our countries can retain a sense of pride and patriotism about the better aspects of our past without whitewashing or clinging to it. That requires leaders who embrace societal change instead of fearing it — leaders who want more than a carriage ride without a purpose, so that we can feel “great again” while the world moves on from America and our problems fester at home.
Given our long and intertwined history, there is much that can and should bring the United States and Britain together. But the special relationship should be rooted in learning from our shared past, not trying to repeat it.
Ben Rhodes is a contributing Opinion writer.
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