As I watched a clip of Russian President Vladimir Putin presiding over a scaled back Victory Day parade, I was reminded of the important role the British monarchy plays in limiting the ability of political figures to manipulate the military to reinforce their own power.
When soldiers join the British Army they swear an Oath of Allegiance to the Monarch and their successors, not to the Government of the day.
Queen Elizabeth II was colonel-in-chief of 16 British Army regiments and corps, as well as many Commonwealth units. This created a close connection between those regiments and their Monarch and when King Charles III succeeded his mother, he became Head of State and Head of the Armed Forces. On Remembrance Day it is the Monarch, not the prime minister who takes the salute at the March Past.
The stabilising force of this ceremonial role is often overlooked. Yet in an era when ‘strongmen’ rulers in China, Turkey, Russia and North Korea, proudly associate themselves with the military power of the state, constitutional monarchy, in Britain at least, provides a safeguard against such behaviour.
As China builds up its military in an effort to achieve parity with the US and the use of force is increasingly legitimated as an instrument of politics, it is telling how personally disassociated those leaders, who send their nation’s young men and women into battle, are from modern warfare.
At the time of the US invasion of Iraq, only one member of Congress, Senator Johnson, had a child enlisted in the military. James Callaghan is the most recent British prime minister with military connections as an armed forces veteran, having served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. Tony Blair committed troops to Iraq, against the objections of a million active protestors, yet none of his offspring or relatives were involved in that exercise. Likewise, none of Putin’s relatives are serving in the war against Ukraine.
Critics of war contend that military conflict might be less likely if the elites who take the decision to commit troops to fight had children in the military.
Which brings us back to the Royal Family. The brother and son of the Monarch, Prince Andrew and Prince Harry, served their country in battle, as have previous generations of the Royal Family.
In September 2022, 5,949 military personnel took part in Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral and committal, with a global audience of 4.1 billion. It was a remarkable display of military pageantry, combined with the greatest demonstration of soft power in history. It highlighted the importance of constitutional monarchy because it proved that no political leader could appear as powerful if, in watching a military parade, they did so playing second fiddle to an ostensibly powerless woman or man wearing a crown.
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