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U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron Visits U.S.
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Visiting the headquarters of the FBI in Washington on May 13, David Cameron inspected the Strategic Information and Operations Center, a fifth-floor suite of offices established, as a helpful official explained, to facilitate “the ability to manage several crises simultaneously.” That ability is being tested to the limit in the British Prime Minister, who is feverishly searching for solutions to a clutch of crises.


He started a three-day trip to the U.S. at the J. Edgar Hoover Building to discuss the lessons British and U.S. counterterrorism experts might draw from the Boston bombings. Later the same morning, he huddled with President Obama to brainstorm on a range of knotty issues, from the conflicts of the Middle East to stuttering global growth. He used the high visibility of the White House podium to announce the doubling of the U.K.’s nonmilitary aid to the Syrian opposition and to pump up hopes that Russia might leverage its influence to ease out the Assad regime. (On the eve of his American tour, Cameron made a 3,820-mile round trip from London to Sochi, on the Black Sea, in less than a day to take his charm offensive direct to Russian President Vladimir Putin.) In whatever down time remains, he has also been working the phones to build consensus ahead of the G-8 summit he will host in Northern Ireland next month.


Yet however far into the distance Cameron seems to gaze, no matter where he roams, his primary focus remains back home in Westminster and on Britain and its relationship with the European Union. Members of his own party have once again erupted into brawling over the subject that torpedoed Britain’s last Conservative government, ushering in an unbroken stretch of Labour rule from Tony Blair’s decisive first victory in 1997 to the elections in 2010 that failed to give Cameron an overall majority. That failure delivered his Conservatives into coalition with the Liberal Democrats, ardent Europhiles who have watched with mounting horror as Cameron has moved from insisting Britain’s future lies in Europe to promising an in-out referendum on E.U. membership, to be held after the next elections, due in 2015 — if the coalition holds together that long.