STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Peter Ricketts - Lord Ricketts - has been following news of the king's visit. He's a member of the U.K.'s House of Lords and was formerly an ambassador to NATO and to France. Lord Ricketts, welcome to the program.
PETER RICKETTS: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: We called you because you said earlier this month that the U.K. should, quote, "completely forget" the idea that you have a special relationship with the United States. What did you mean by that?
RICKETTS: Well, I've always felt that it's a phrase that is much bandied about between politicians, but honestly, for a long time it hasn't really meant very much. It's always, frankly, been more special to the U.K. than to the U.S. U.S has many countries around the world where it has special relationships. Nowadays, we have a modern relationship, but the special relationship has kind of nostalgic echoes of Churchill and the second world war. And we need, I think, to move on and look at our relationship between two countries with sometimes overlapping interests, sometimes different interests - you now having much greater interests in your hemisphere, in the Asia-Pacific issues and China and so on. And so it's time to move on from it while still maintaining a good and strong modern relationship.
INSKEEP: I'm not sure that King Charles wanted to move on in quite that way, judging by his words over the last 24 hours, reminding Americans, for example, as we just heard, what the two countries have in common, don't disregard everything that has sustained us for the past 80 years, referring back to that period since World War II.
RICKETTS: Well, yes, and it's very good to see that the king was prepared to be quite bold in his speech to Congress. I mean, I'm all in favor, of course, of maintaining very close links between the two countries, and that's what the king was saying. His mother, Queen Elizabeth, I think, was always more cautious, more circumspect, in what she said in public. And while the king is never political in a sort of party-politics sense, there is a very strong consensus in the U.K. for the importance of NATO, for the importance of standing with Ukraine, for the need for strong alliances with our allies across the Pacific and the Atlantic. And I think the king was articulating that in a way which was clear, but, of course, deferentially put, and one which seemed to go down very well with lawmakers in Congress.
INSKEEP: King Charles seemed rather comfortable in this role, judging by the speech, judging by the state dinner last night. How do you grade his performance on style so far?
RICKETTS: Well, he's been preparing all his life for moments like this. This was the - frankly, the most difficult, demanding piece of royal diplomacy he's done so far, given the strained political relations between the president and the prime minister and the overall tensions in the transatlantic relationship. But he's got a tremendous sense of humor, as Americans will have seen over the last day - well-timed jokes to diffuse any tensions, a real sense of history. And the fact that it is a state visit has also got President Trump talking about the Magna Carta - talking about history in a way he never otherwise does.
And I think the present of this bell from the conning tower of the submarine HMS Trump, which saw gallant service in the second world war in the Indo-Pacific, I mean, that's a magic piece of soft-power royal diplomacy in action. It clearly touched the president. And while nobody's going to pretend that will change the underlying difficulties in the relations between the U.S. and U.K. and other European countries, it resets the tone and it reminds people of the deep, deep ties between our two nations, our two peoples, that go back a long time and that have been very much put up in lights in the last 24 hours.
INSKEEP: With that said, of course, there are these differences, to which you have referred. I want to ask briefly about one - the U.K. choice not to follow the United States into war against Iran. How are foreign policy elites, people you talk with in the U.K., thinking and talking about President Trump's approach to Iran, the war itself and his effort to get out of it?
RICKETTS: The decision by Keir Starmer to stand aside from it was almost universally supported here. I mean, we have had experience with America of going into wars without a clear plan as to how to exit them, you know, what the political objectives are. I'm thinking of Iraq in particular. We know where that can lead. And we were not consulted about this war, and therefore, I mean, we felt, I think, that it was not one that we wanted to be part of at the beginning. We've supported America as an ally with bases, with RAF planes flying in the Gulf in support of Gulf countries, but we very much want to get back to a path of negotiation with Iran. We don't think that there's a military outcome from this. Air bombardment will not change the regime. So we'd like to see the negotiations pursued. We agree with the U.S. that we should not have Iran with a nuclear missile or nuclear weapon, but we've got to get that through negotiation.
INSKEEP: Lord Ricketts, thanks so much.
RICKETTS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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