Well, if you hear that coming out of the weekend, America is at war, you probably think first of Iran, the military conflict that continues, not so much a heated exchange of weapons conflict at this point, but a protracted conflict that has to do with the fact that we have such an asymmetry between the United States of America and Iran, and it is to Iran’s advantage to stretch this out. It is the American ambition to bring it to an end. So those are incommensurate goals, and we’ll be looking more at that in coming days. But as we’re thinking about this past weekend, the war that made the headlines was a trade war with Canada.

This came as something of a surprise because about the middle of last week, both the Americans and the Canadians were indicating that the two sides were very close to some kind of agreement that would eventually either put a pause or eliminate the threat of the sanctions and the tariffs that were threatened by President Trump, as much as 50% tariffs. And let’s just say that’s a radical tariff. That’s a massive tariff. Something that would cost one American dollar will now be 150. And as you’re looking at all of this, you realize this really is another form of warfare.

Now, I’m glad to say that the Americans and the Canadians, given the fact that the pact was not reached, the Canadian said that they would not agree to some of the terms that President Trump or the Trump administration gave going into the weekend. They said that they were unacceptable. But when you say that the United States and Canada are now involved in a trade war, let’s just be very, very clear. This is a friendly war. In other words, when you have Americans and Canadians, yes, there is now a conflict. There is now a trade issue that is a major matter of political contention between the political leadership in Canada and the political leadership in the United States. There will be real effects, but the use of the word war in all these different contexts is actually more confusing than clarifying. But this is a big deal. It is a very big deal and the conflict is real.

Now, as you’re looking at the history of all of this, realize that when you look at the United States and Canada, you’re looking at two of the closest trading partners in all world history. And you’re also looking at a political miracle. And that miracle is the world’s longest non-conflicting border. And it’s been that way for a very long time. The United States and Canada in terms of landmass are two very big transcontinental nations. And we have that very long border and we have friendly relations. Americans and Canadians had better think very hard about how important that is and the fact that it is to the mutual advantage of both nations.

Now, when you look at the United States and Canada, you’re looking at one very large nation geographically. And by the way, Canada’s massive, but you’re looking at two transcontinental nations and you’re looking at an imbalance in the economy. You’re looking at an imbalance in the population. The population of the United States, the economic power of the United States, the international and military ambitions of the United States, far larger than anything undertaken by Canada. But Canada is a major nation on the world scene. Canada is a major economic force. It is a major military force. And even as Canada has continued for all kinds of historic reasons, just remember it never had a revolution against Britain. It is still a commonwealth nation. And so it often thinks both in terms of its culture and its politics in more European terms than does the United States. So then you ask the question, what about trade?

Well, we are talking about a very friendly border, at least since, let’s just say, the 1820s. We’re talking about a very long time. It’s a very important relationship. The friendship between the United States and Canada, just incredibly important. But the trade issues have been an irritation for a very long time.  Now, part of this is simply because of the mammoth size of the American economy and the smaller size of the Canadian economy. But one of the things that has led to a great deal of cooperation, economic and political, between the US and Canada has been an integrated economy, particularly when it comes to many sectors in manufacturing.

So for instance, if you are driving a major American brand automobile, it is likely that some of those parts, and by the way, those parts can become pretty complex even in terms of component units. Some of the parts of your car, even if it was assembled in the United States, were manufactured in Canada. And frankly, it could go the other way. So you could just look at the fact this integrated economic platform has been mutually beneficial, but there are complaints the Americans have made against the Canadians in terms of protectionism on some things.

And no doubt, the Canadians have made some similar concerns very loud about the Americans. But it was the American administration. It’s President Donald J. Trump who has really initiated this because he has had for a very long time, and I don’t mean just since his first term. I mean, going back in terms of his public comments long before he ever ran for the office of President of the United States, President Trump has felt that the United States was basically hurting itself with a commitment to free trade. And so he really wants to go back to something like the earlier decades in the 20th century when you did have tariffs and trade wars as we have, well, increasingly today.

However, now all of these tariffs are coming by executive order from the President. So there are limits to how much can be covered. And so even when we’re talking about the so-called trade war with China, which is hot and is making headlines all over the world, it may affect as little as 5% of the economy here in the United States. Now, the problem is that 5%, when you increase it by 50%, can actually become very expensive. It is, I think, going to be very interesting to see how the American people respond to this.

The reality is that the tariffs under the Trump administration have been largely on and then off, on and then off. And it’s hard to know over time, especially with court decisions that have in some cases reversed the tariffs, it’s hard to know the impact of all of this. And so this is something that we just need to watch. It is not to the nation’s advantage for this to be anecdotal. It is not to the advantage of either the United States or Canada, for this to become personal between the American president and the Canadian prime minister. It is not good for anyone on either side of the border that this becomes a matter of acrimony and simply spreads to even larger sectors of the economy. Let me just state it bluntly. That would be an economic disaster on both sides of the border. Neither nation can afford that.

One final thought on this. When you look at modern trade issues, patterns among nations, you have to wonder at times whether this kind of tariff policy is a tactic or a strategy. Is it a short-term issue to bring about some immediate kind of advantage or some kind of gain? Or is it a long-term economic strategy? To make the matter clear, tariffs have not looked so good as a long-term economic strategy. They may be effective as an economic tactic. We will see. In the meantime, let’s hope that this trade war is a short war.

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So even as we’re talking about the Commonwealth, the British Commonwealth, and we’re talking about what remains of the British Empire, and we’re talking about the British monarchy, yes, we’re growing there. We are going there. We’re going to the British royal family. We’re going to Harry and Meghan. And we’re going there for the worldview issues that are connected to all of this. So let’s just say at the beginning, I don’t believe this is earth-shaking news. I don’t believe this deserves all the attention it gets in the media, but it is interesting, all this attention, and all the conversation and all the headlines and all the rest, it does tell us something about human nature. It tells us something also historical about how monarchies work.

And so, one of the things we need to know is that in every modern society, and to some degree, even in ancient and medieval society, there’s something like this, pageantry. When it comes to royalty, when it comes to the elites, one of the things that money buys is pageantry and attention and celebrity. Now, in the modern age, celebrity’s a whole new thing. And so, of course, we have Hollywood celebrities, we have campus celebrities, we’ve got musical celebrities. In some real sense, that’s fairly new when you look at the modern age. But you just might say that the original celebrities in terms of just the mainstream of human history have been monarchs and members of the royal family and nobility, but the royal family is big. So when you start using titles like emperor and empress czar and czarina, king and queen, prince and princess, man, you are talking large scale celebrity.

Now, that of course is an issue that the United States supposedly avoided. And so we supposedly avoided the kind of celebrity culture that goes with a royal family. But we ended up with another kind of celebrity culture when it comes to the Presidency and the White House and all the rest. And of course, it’s distributed to all kinds of angles in our society. But it does tell us that society has a hunger for a celebrity culture. It really does. And if it doesn’t have one already, it’s going to make one up. And there’s another pattern we need to watch. And that is that when you look at the role of royalty, the famous role of royalty is dignity, majesty, moral weight, seriousness. The throne, the crown, the scepter, the rule, the court etiquette and all the rest, the protocol, all of it is intended to underline the majesty of the state. And of course, this can be taken to ludicrous extremes, as you saw with the French monarchy just before the French Revolution, things like this. The claim that I am the state. Okay. You have extremes like that. 

You also have extremes when it comes to the celebrity culture of kings and queens and princesses and all the rest, you also have a predictable pattern. And this has been predictable now for a long time. In the British monarchy, this is a pattern that is at least as old as the modern media age. It’s probably older than that, going all the way back to the House of Hanover in particular. But when you look at the modern royal family, and in particular, you look at Victoria and onwards, you’re looking at soap opera. And one of the most interesting things about the royal soap opera is that you have good princes and bad princes, good princesses and salacious princesses.

You’ve got, well, if it were in the language of the wild wild west, you’d have some who are wearing white hats and some who are wearing black hats. And you know what? The rake or the misbehaving prince has been a rather constant issue of fascination in terms of royal culture. And right now, Prince Harry is playing that role and he has been now for quite a long time. And when you look at Prince Harry and Prince William, of course one of them is the Prince of Wales. He is right behind his father in terms of line to become king. And he is married to Catherine and they really present a very solid picture of royal respectability.

So when you look at Prince William and you look at Princess Catherine and you just consider, they’re also, by the way, a duke and a duchess, but you look at that and you recognize this is weight. And they’re shown with their children and they’re just shown constantly in ways that are to add and not subtract respect and dignity. When it comes to Harry, it’s been quite different. 

Now, here’s another pattern. Of course, the heir to the throne is going to be the serious one. You would think. You would think. That’s not always the case as we’re about to remember. But you would think that in most cases, the heir to the throne, if you have two boys, the heir to the throne is going to be the serious one. The second in line is going to be the less serious one. Well, that has happened. That has happened. And this is a familiar course. By the way, as I said, it’s not always that way because when you look at Edward VII, a disaster. It was his younger brother after the abdication, George VI, that really went back and restored credibility, respect, and dignity to the British monarchy.

But you know what? A celebrity culture loves a bad boy. A celebrity culture loves a bad boy who marries a girl, or a woman who is going to color outside the lines with him. And you know what? In the House of Windsor, there’s been a lot of tragedy just in that family. But you’re also looking at the fact that it is following a movie script right now. The family follows a movie script. Now you have King Charles III and Queen Camilla. And by the way, lots of soap opera there. We won’t go into it, but let’s just say an inordinate amount of soap opera there. But then you also have what people will say, the watchers of the British Crown will say, “Well, there’s been a transformation in Charles. He was rather, let’s just say, willing to color outside some of the lines when he was the Prince of Wales. But now that he’s king, he’s taken on all this dignity.” And then you have Queen Camilla. And remember at one point she was the mistress here and now she’s the queen. Let’s just say that’s interesting. 

But it is fascinating that when you look at Prince William, who by the way, I fear maybe very secular in terms of his worldview, but at least in terms of the role he’s playing, he has played a more traditional role by far than either his father or his brother. And now you have the announcement that Harry and Meghan are moving back to London, or at least moving back to Britain. And this is making headlines on both sides of the Atlantic. And on both sides, people are saying, “What’s going on here? How could this have happened?” You had Harry and Meghan come over and of course with their family and they established a home. And it was basically a big media platform, a $15 million home in Mendocino. But we’re talking about very, very expensive life, lots of security needed and all the rest. And they had these massive deals first with Netflix, then with Spotify. And by the way, they didn’t produce what was expected.

Now with Netflix, the very first thing they did was very, very popular, but the popularity really plunged. And that’s because here’s another thing about being the rake or being the misbehaving, rebellious, colorful, more outlaw of the princes. One of the problems is the script grows old. It grows old pretty fast. And there was all of a sudden this announcement that Harry and Meghan and their children, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are going back to Britain.

Now, it is interesting that you can just look at press reports and you can see where Harry said that he could envision no situation in which he and his family would go back to London. And let’s just say that the news for the Duke and the Duchess, for Harry and Meghan, has not been very good. Just in recent days, a massive court judgment in the multimillion dollars against them. Very little chance most observers think that that will be reversed on appeal. And the government made an announcement just coming out of the weekend that security, that means personal security, all the security that they would need, is a private matter for the Sussexes. And again, the prime minister’s office released that explicitly.

So I don’t know how this is going to turn out, but I do think it’s interesting that royalty is such an issue of celebrity fascination. And I think it’s also just extremely interesting how interested Americans are in British royalty. And it is pretty much British royalty. Every once in a while you’ll have a Princess Grace of Monaco or someone like that who gets considerable attention, but that’s because she was famous as a Hollywood actress before she married into that royal family that just added to the mystery.

But when it comes to Britain, the United States declared a revolution, declared independence on the British Throne. And for about a hundred years, wasn’t all that interested, at least officially. It was really Queen Victoria and Prince Albert who helped to turn the tide there. And a part of it was because of Albert’s Protestant understanding, coming from his German Protestant background, of the importance of hearth and home and family and the domestic life of the royal family.

And so I’ve mentioned this before when it comes to Christmas, you had a famous drawing, engraving of Victoria and Albert and their children with a Christmas tree. And that just broke all kinds of royal protocols, but it really changed the culture. And on both sides of the Atlantic, people began to feel closer to the royal family. And then you had, of course, all kinds of tumult in the 20th century. We had an abdication and all the rest. 

But the point is that it really was two world wars that helped to bring about a much closer relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom in one sense, but especially with the British royal family. And it was a royal visit during that troubled era that brought King George VI, and then his consort, Queen Elizabeth to the United States. And it was a vast success. 

And then since then you’ve had royal visits and of course Queen Elizabeth and then King Charles III, you’ve had royal visits to the United States. It’s just a lot of fascination. There’s also a sense of humor. There has to be, because when you talk about the United States of America and you talk about the United Kingdom, and you talk about a war of independence and all the rest, you better have a sense of humor or this is going to be heavy all the time. The fact is, as Winston Churchill said, in the early decades of the 20th century, reaffirmed in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, it was Prime Minister Winston Churchill who pointed out the unity of the Americans and the Britons in the history of the English-speaking peoples. He celebrated that union, that commonality. And of course, he had an American mother and an aristocratic British father. 

But he also went on to say that that relationship will be the most important relationship for both nations. And in some very real sense, it was and it is. And so all this to say that when you look at the morality of this unfolding royal story, when you look at how much in common it has with some previous rakes and misbehaviors in royal history, when you look at the fact that on both sides of the Atlantic, the Britons, who have the royal family and the Americans, who absolutely do not have a royal family are still fascinated with the same royal family. Walter Bagehot, the great scholar of the unwritten British Constitution, said that of the British government, there are two essential parts, the dignified and the efficient. And the royal house, the monarchy only works if it is the monarchy that provides the dignified part of government. Something the royal family had better always keep in mind.