The ‘Global Britain’ Conundrum
As Boris Johnson prepares to host Joe Biden and the leaders of the world’s other G7 democracies this weekend, Britain appears to have recovered something of its old self. After years of stasis, slump, and division culminating in last year’s catastrophic COVID-19 response, the country can legitimately count itself in a vanguard of powers leading the globe out of the pandemic.
And yet, when compared with the other states in attendance at the three-day summit in Cornwall, in southwest England, Britain is also by far the most fragile. Simply put: No other G7 member is staring down the barrel of its own dissolution, which Scotland’s potential secession would cause; facing the prospect of a potentially violent dispute over a trade border erected within its own territory, as there is in Northern Ireland; or dealing with the fallout of a diplomatic and economic revolution that was opposed by almost its entire governing class, which is the case with Brexit.
Confronting such a situation, the British government—like its American counterpart—wants to reassert its influence on the world stage, in part to help answer its critics at home. And thanks to the luck of international-summit scheduling, Johnson has an opportunity to.
