Interventions of Charles III to Promote Britain’s Warmongering Role in the World

The coronation of Charles III continued the tradition of a military procession with 6,000 soldiers, sailors and aviators escorting the King and Queen and hundreds of military from 35 Commonwealth countries, including a contingent from Canada.[1] British warships and army bases across the country fired their guns in salute to the King, and later military aircraft performed a flypast over Buckingham Palace. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace in a government press release announced that “we can be enormously proud of the professionalism and precision of our Armed Forces as they honour His Majesty, their new Commander-in-Chief.” Admiral Tony Radakin, Chief of the Defence Staff, said the military side of the coronation “reflects centuries of tradition, but is indicative of the integral role the armed forces play in modern Britain.”

The propaganda that the armed forces of Britain are fighting for “King and Country” carries on alongside current U.S./NATO warmongering and militarization – both subjects close to Charles III’s heart.

On March 30, Charles III’s made his first state visit abroad before his coronation, to Germany, after his attempt to visit France was stymied by the French workers. In Germany he delivered a warmongering speech to the German Bundestag, in Berlin.[2] As if the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine has nothing to do with Anglo-U.S./NATO expansion to surround Russia and the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine, in his speech Charles claimed that Russia was responsible for the “scourge of war that is back in Europe.” He claimed that Russia was “unprovoked” by the U.S./NATO/EU and that it was Russia that had threatened the “security of Europe” together with its “democratic values.” He said that we “have not stood by” and that “Germany and the United Kingdom have shown vital leadership.” He declared that as “Europe’s two largest donors to Ukraine, we have responded with taking decisions which might previously have seemed unimaginable.”

Charles III’s intervention to try to bolster U.S. and NATO ambitions by uniting Germany behind them in their dangerous proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

One of the reasons for Charles III’s visit to Germany, as well as his failed visit to France, is that there are huge demonstrations and opposition to war in Germany, France and elsewhere in Europe. He pits himself and the British monarchy against the peoples of Europe when he advocates that Britain and Germany should be united in their escalation of the war in Ukraine.

Charles hailed “Germany’s decision to send such significant military support to Ukraine” as “remarkably courageous, important and appreciated.” He went on to boast: “Today, our pilots are flying side-by-side on joint operations over our Baltic allies. Here, in Germany, our armies have established a joint Amphibious Engineer Battalion, which I will visit later today. Germany is the only nation in the world with which the United Kingdom has such a joint unit, an extraordinary testament to the partnership we enjoy.”

In fact, overt warmongering has become Charles’ stock-in-trade as he promotes British arms production and its war industry. As Prince of Wales, Charles served as an arms lobbyist for decades. One infamous example was in 2014 when the British Prime Minister could not convince the Saudis to agree to the financing of a multi-billion-pound arms deal. Charles was dispatched to the Middle East to a festival supported by the UK firm BAE Systems to perform a sword dance wearing traditional Saudi attire. The next day, Saudi Arabia and BAE announced the deal had been finalized for the supply of BAE Systems’ Typhoon jets to Saudi Arabia, to be used in its bombing of Yemen in a war backed by Britain and the U.S.

Placard from day of action in Britain in support of Yemeni people and against BAE and other arms manufacturers, December 12, 2022

The British government has a golden share in BAE Systems, the largest manufacturing company in Britain and among the largest arms producers in the world. Golden shares are a type of holding that gives its owners special powers.[3] For example, the owners can veto certain strategy decisions, block other investors to build up a significant stake and stop a takeover by another company. They have the same profit and voting rights as ordinary shares, although one golden share will correspond to 51 per cent of voting rights. They have been implemented by governments to retain some level of control over companies that used to be state-run but ended up going private during the 1980s and 1990s, mostly in the defence and energy sectors. It’s an accepted practice in the UK but it has been ruled unlawful in the European Union.

BAE Systems is Britain’s largest engineering company and its order intake for 2021 totalled £37.1 billion, taking its order backlog to £58.9 billion. It defines the British economy as a “war workshop of the world.” Among much military hardware and ships, it builds Britain’s nuclear attack submarines and Typhoon fighters. Demand for BAE’s weapons, ammunition and military equipment soared over the last two years. It employs 36,000 people in the UK with 90,000 worldwide in 40 countries. Underlying operating profits for 2022 came in at £2.5 billion – up 12.5 per cent on 2021 – as top-line sales grew by 4.4 per cent to £23.3 billion.

On April 14, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) awarded BAE Systems a contract extension worth £656 million “to progress the concepting and technology of the next generation combat aircraft, known as Tempest in the UK,” the MoD said. “The new funding will build on the ground-breaking science, research and engineering already completed under the first phase of the contract delivered by UK Tempest partners BAE Systems, Leonardo UK, MBDA UK and Rolls-Royce.

“The UK Tempest partners, working in close collaboration with the MoD, will now progress the maturity of more than 60 cutting-edge technology demonstrations, digital concepts and new technologies. These are critical to the UK’s sovereign defence capability and will help shape the final requirements — together with the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) partners in Japan and Italy — for the combat air platform, due to enter service with the Royal Air Force by 2035.

“The aircraft is designed to be an innovative stealth fighter with supersonic capability and equipped with cutting-edge technologies, including state-of-the-art sensing and protection capabilities. This will make the aircraft one of the world’s most advanced, interoperable, adaptable and connected fighter jets in service, delivering battle-winning next generation weapons to protect the UK and its allies.”

The interventions of Charles III on behalf of the British state to promote war production and warmongering also stand in contradiction with his claims to support measures to end the climate crisis. It is known the military have one of the biggest carbon footprints and their contribution to pollution is second to none.

The times are calling for decisions related to matters of war and peace to be taken by the people of each country, not the private interests making huge profits from war production. Sovereignty needs to be vested in the people and not a head of state said to represent them and speak in their name. Both in terms of government and industry and other fields of life, the interests the monarchy in the UK and Canada represents are not the interests of the peoples of these countries. Charles III is lining himself up to play an ever greater role in warmongering on behalf of British war production. This is yet another front which exposes the kind of values the monarchy espouses which the peoples reject.

Notes

1. In the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, 30,000 armed forces took part in the procession — 3,600 from the Royal Navy, 16,100 from the Army, and 7,000 from the Royal Air Force, 2,000 from the Commonwealth and 500 from the Colonies.

2. For the speech of Charles III at the German Bundestag, click here.

3. The companies on the London Stock Exchange in which it is listed as having “golden shares,” include BAE Systems PLC, Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC, as well as some dockyard assets of Babcock International.

Charles III and “Soft Power”

Abolish the Monarchy, Derry, north of Ireland

Since becoming King, Charles’ very role as sovereign and his symbolic function as representative of the state have also come into question. The UK Constitutional Law Association published an article on March 27 entitled “Ursula von der Leyen’s visit to Windsor: Who defines King Charles’ constitutional role?” The article reports that “King Charles found himself embroiled in controversy for hosting Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission of the European Union, at Windsor Castle, only hours after the new Brexit deal concerning Northern Ireland was unveiled by von der Leyen and the UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak.” King Charles’ meeting with von der Leyen was seen as his giving public support for the “Windsor Framework” — a proposed post-Brexit arrangement for the movement of goods between the EU and UK — which is itself a highly charged political matter.

Charles’ meeting with von der Leyen was seen as a “notable departure” and deviation from the “convention of political neutrality” expected of the King, and seemed to illustrate his desire to actively intervene in the political life of the country using what has been termed “soft power.” “Soft Power” is defined as “a persuasive approach to international relations, typically involving the use of economic or cultural influence.” It is far from benign and involves use of the political police to carry out subversive operations intended to carry out so-called colour revolutions and bring about regime change whenever the likes of the U.S., Britain and their allies decide this is required to uphold their “civilized values.”

This term “soft power” was conceived and elaborated by the government of Tony Blair which committed many crimes against humanity in its name. It was used again in March this year when Charles visited Germany and met with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and first lady Elke Büdenbender. Newspapers around the world declared his visit a great success of “British Ceremonial and Soft Power.” The term “soft power” purposely connoted a benign and innocuous influence to hide a more sinister and dangerous political motive.

Back in 2014, the Parliament UK Website commissioned a Select Committee report on “Soft Power and the UK’s Influence.” In Chapter 4 of this report, entitled “The UK’s soft power assets: their role and function,” it says: “As our witnesses have made very clear, the days are long gone when this nation’s, or any nation’s, power could be measured in the size of its military forces, or in traditional patterns of enforcement. New, softer and smarter methods must now be combined with older approaches in order to secure and promote the UK’s interests and purposes.'”

By having meetings with world leaders such as the one Charles III held with von der Leyen and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Charles is seen to be stepping beyond his allegedly symbolic role. This role is said to be symbolic to suggest the King has no power but is a kind of harmless independent “actor” whose role is to maintain the balance of power in the political arrangements so as to keep factional fighting in check which includes the largest faction, the people who in the 17th century were without property, known as the propertyless faction. When he is seen as actively serving the “softer and smarter methods” alluded to in the Parliament UK report, all notions that the monarch is of above the fray are shattered.

Far from being “above politics” Charles is throwing himself right into the fray, acting more like the heads of state of the U.S., France and other countries who are the key spokespersons for the war industry in their own countries and on behalf of the U.S./NATO alliance of which they are members. He is behaving as though he comprises a faction based on his own vested interests, which are considerable, vying for power and influence. And this is the crux of the matter. Charles III cannot be both a symbolic actor embodying a fictitious person of state whose job is to represent the unity of the nation and push narrow private interests at the same time. This does not mean that kings and queens in the past did not represent the interests of the property holders at any time but merely shows what those interests are today and that the arrangements brought into being in the 17th century to hold everything together are coming unglued. There is nothing symbolic about the role the head of state plays and under the reign of Charles III any illusions about the role of the constitutional monarch being symbolic will come tumbling down.

“The essence of the Covenant between the Sovereign and the UK government,” as the UK Constitutional Law Association article reports, is that “in Britain’s constitutional monarchy, there exists a convention that the sovereign maintains strict political neutrality, which is achieved through the principle that the monarch acts on the advice of government ministers when carrying out public functions.” Beyond this, the monarch has certain “discretionary powers” under what is termed the royal prerogative. The article goes on to say that “whilst remaining politically impartial, the monarch is entitled to ‘advise, encourage and warn ministers’ — what is known as the ‘tripartite convention.'” This is the fiction of the Fictional Person of State as contradicted by the reality of the factional exercise of “soft power,” which indeed goes hand in hand with the “hard power” of military might and aggression.