The calendar is filling with moments marking Britain's role in moulding events that changed the world.
On July 1, the centenary of the start of the Battle of the Somme will inspire memories of one of the bloodiest contests of World War I, which pitted French and British forces against German adversaries. A few days later, on July 6, after many delays, an official inquiry into Britain's role in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 is set to finally produce its voluminous report.
What binds the two is the ambiguous legacy of power projected onto foreign fields. World War I fuelled an urge to build new orders as old empires collapsed. Borders were redrawn, countries carved up. The seeds that were sown as Western powers such as Britain faded after the world wars, have contributed to some of the most persistent problems and dangerous phenomena of the present. The Iraq inquiry is likely to shine a light on a weakened Britain's uncomfortable role in trying to fix some of the mistakes that were born less than a century after the Somme.
Frail nations shaped by the victors of World War I have faced challenges of their own -- the Arab Spring convulsed North Africa and the Middle East, and Iraq and Syria descended into turmoil, helping give rise to Islamic State.
Frontiers redrawn after World War I could not contain the populations within them. The claimed right of imperial-minded Westerners to expand their presence and influence has been reversed.
"We have entered the age of migration," Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank, wrote recently. "If all the people who live outside the country of their birth united to form their own -- a republic of the rootless -- it would be the fifth-largest country in the world with a population of more than 240 million," Mr Leonard pointed out.
That, in turn, has redefined the balance of geopolitical advantage. A million Chinese settlers in sub-Saharan Africa have recast economies and alliances there. Remittances by India's 20-million-strong diaspora account for a significant 4% of the country's gross domestic product, Mr Leonard said. Turkey's geographic position as a land bridge, once a bulwark against the Soviet Union in the Cold War, now enables its leaders to use the Syrian refugee crisis as a high-stakes diplomatic lever to pursue its ambitions in Western Europe.
For many in the West, migration is a narrow, not-in-my-backyard issue, often depicted as a zero-sum competition for access to national largesse that many Europeans fear will be jeopardised by an influx of outsiders -- from other European countries and beyond. Almost reflexively, the contest assumes an ominous ethnic profile. Consider, for instance, Donald Trump's pledge to bar Muslims from the United States.
In some part, the anniversary of the Somme commemorates Britain's role in the power plays of the past. The country's role in the power plays of the present and future are at issue in another significant date that is just around the corner.
On June 23, voters in Britain will decide in a referendum whether to leave the European Union.
Increasingly, that closely fought debate is linked to Britain's ability to control migration across its borders -- and to the interlinked question of whether the country would be more secure if it pulled out of the 28-nation bloc.
The imponderables reach far beyond Britain's frontiers. According to the United Nations, there are about 244 million migrants who live and work in countries where they were not born. Moreover, wars and upheaval, the organisation says, have created roughly 20 million refugees and left 40 million displaced in their own countries.
"Xenophobic and racist responses to refugees and migrants seem to be reaching new levels of stridency, frequency and public acceptance," United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said this week. The wave of refugees and the rise of mass migration are usually seen as a modern phenomena.
But as the Battle of the Somme anniversary will soon recall, they have deep roots. NYT