Elizabeth II’s UK Has Become Global Power But Political Future Uncertain

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When Elizabeth 2The took the throne on February 6, 1952, the United Kingdom was recovering from the Second World War and was experiencing the final moments of the British Empire. For three centuries the country had established itself as a military, economic and cultural power, with territories spread from America to Oceania. But the 20th and 21st centuries would be in a slow process of decline.

Although the country left by the queen, who died this Thursday (8) at the age of 96, remains among the most powerful in the world – it is the sixth largest economy on the planet -, the resistance of its geopolitical protagonism is an unknown for the coming decades.

Five years before the start of Elizabeth 2’s reignThe, the British Empire had lost one of its most valuable possessions: India; part of a decolonization movement that would spread across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. In the late 1990s, Hong Kong, the last of the significant territories, was returned to China.

At the same time, the head of the monarchy was personally committed to strengthening the Commonwealth, of which she was head until 2018, when she passed the role to her son, now King Charles III. The voluntary association of nations currently has 56 members, but almost no geopolitical relevance.

This unique condition contributed to the fact that the United Kingdom was practically oblivious to what was happening at that time in its neighbourhood, on the other side of the English Channel. Less than ten years after the creation of the modern Commonwealth, in 1957, the European Economic Community emerged, the basis of the political and economic bloc that would become the most important in the world.

It was only in 1973 that the British joined the group, but never fully. At the turn of the 21st century, they chose, for example, not to adopt the euro as their single currency, which was no obstacle to the leading role they shared with Germany, France and Italy. A relationship considered more horizontal than the one with the United States, in which it sometimes occupies the position of minority partner.

But then came the Brexit, approved in a referendum in 2016, to change both the positioning of the United Kingdom in the international game and the certainties about the permanence of its global strength. The departure took place more than two years ago, but the queen died without knowing what the real consequences of leaving the EU will be.

In an attempt to relaunch its foreign policy, the Conservative Party government pursues, in parallel with Brexit, the ambition to form a Global Great Britain, with alliances beyond Europe, notably in the area of ​​the Indian and Pacific oceans. The pandemic and the War in Ukraine put sand in the progress of the project, in addition to having different meanings for the country’s image.

While the initial handling of Covid-19 was far from that adopted by European neighbors, the move against Russia — with Boris Johnson being one of Kiev’s most vocal partners, and current Prime Minister Liz Truss serving as its foreign secretary — brought the country closer to the western summit.

For analysts Jeremy Shapiro and Nick Witney of the European Council on Foreign Relations, in a world of increasing geopolitical competition, authoritarian advances and geoeconomic coercion, London should combine its interests with those of similar partners.

“With the US increasingly engrossed and focused on the Indo-Pacific and China, the EU is the UK’s necessary geopolitical partner,” they wrote in an article published in December. “Global Britain is an illusion rooted in a poorly evoked imperial past.”

After 70 years of reign, the queen leaves a country that is one of the largest economies in the world, a member of the G7, with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and extensive cultural influence. It remains to be seen what Charles III, Prime Minister Liz Truss and company intend to do with it.


Countries where the British monarch is head of state

  • Australia
  • antigua and barbuda
  • Bahamas
  • Belize
  • Canada
  • Grenade
  • Jamaica
  • Papua New Guinea
  • UK
  • Saint Kitts and Nevis
  • Saint Lucia
  • Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
  • New Zealand
  • Solomon Islands
  • tuvalu

Countries that make up the Commonwealth

  • South Africa
  • antigua and barbuda
  • Australia
  • Bahamas
  • Bangladesh
  • Barbados
  • Belize
  • Botswana
  • Brunei
  • Cameroon
  • Canada
  • Cyprus
  • dominica
  • eswatini
  • fiji
  • Gabon
  • Gambia
  • Ghana
  • Grenade
  • Guyana
  • Solomon Islands
  • India
  • Jamaica
  • Kiribati
  • Lesotho
  • Malawi
  • Malaysia
  • Maldives
  • Malta
  • Mauritius
  • Mozambique
  • namibia
  • nauru
  • Nigeria
  • New Zealand
  • Papua New Guinea
  • Pakistan
  • Kenya
  • UK
  • Rwanda
  • Samoa
  • Saint Lucia
  • Saint Kitts and Nevis
  • Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
  • Sierra Leone
  • Seychelles
  • singapore
  • Sri Lanka
  • Tanzania
  • tonga
  • Trinidad and Tobago
  • tuvalu
  • Togo
  • Uganda
  • vanuatu
  • Zambia

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