The policies pursued by the West have sometimes been flawed and sometimes failed, but the system that linked America and Europe in a common defense and common political cause ended the Cold War, reunited Germany, built a new Europe and sought in one way or another to address every other major threat. A crucial brick in that system is now in danger of being removed. – New York Times editorial, June 25, 2016
Admittedly, when I first heard the term “Brexit” a few weeks
ago, I thought it was the name of a new breakfast cereal. Not for a moment did
I believe that Britain would actually vote to leave the European Union. By a
vote of 52 to 48 percent, after a contentious campaign that exposed the divisions
in British society based on age, education, class levels, and geography,
Britain has sought to go it alone. The world today is less secure; shaken is
the foundation of our postwar alliance.
The concept of European unity arose from the ashes of World War
II with the aim of ending the frequent and bloody wars that had plagued the
continent. Anyone with a respect for history understands that to support
European unity is to support peace and cooperation among neighbors. Inspired by
visionary leaders like Konrad Adenauer and Winston Churchill, what would become
the European Union underpins the postwar global order and is an anchor of
global democracy. Consisting of 28 (soon to be 27) member states and “founded
on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality,
the rule of law and respect for human rights” (Article 2, Treaty on
European Union), its policies aim to ensure the free movement of people,
goods, services, and capital.
It should come as no surprise that Donald Trump, having arrived
in Scotland to inspect his golf course, quickly declared that the UK’s decision
to leave the European Union was a “great thing”. Like his supporters in the
United States, Trump said, the voters in Britain were exercising their “sacred right”
to take back their country and their borders and choosing “to reject today’s rule
by the global elite.” Indeed, the impulses behind the vote for Brexit share
many parallels to Trump’s appeal with certain elements of American society.
The “Leave” campaign exploited deep-seated resentment of the
European “elite” and made emotional appeals to British nationalism and a sense
of lost independence. But like much of Trump’s appeal in the United States, the
Brexit vote at its heart was about immigration and xenophobia. The Brexit vote was
a referendum not so much on Europe as on migration and fear of the Other. As
Jonathan Freedland has written in a recent issue of the New York Review of
Books:
The argument was seductively simple. Membership of the EU requires each state to accept the free movement of people between EU countries. Therefore the only way to halt hundreds of thousands of EU citizens coming into the UK was to get out of the EU. Only that way, in the words of Leave’s powerful and defining slogan, could we “take back control.” There are differences of course: the Leavers did not voice overtly a desire to keep out Muslims, as Donald Trump does. But “take back control” was for Brexit what “build a wall” is for Trump: a three-word promise that taps into a seething geyser of anti-immigrant sentiment.
Proponents of the Leave campaign ignored appeals to facts
and evidence, including data showing that migrants positively contribute to the
British economy, adding far more in tax revenues than they receive in welfare
payments. Dismissed outright were rational, policy-based arguments for why Brexit
would result in economic instability and increased social and political
division. Indeed, when the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of
Economic Cooperation and Development, and Britain’s independent Institute of
Fiscal Studies each offered objective analyses of the likely economic and
political consequences of Brexit, they were ridiculed and accused of elitism.
“The people of this country have had enough of experts,” declared Michael Gove,
a leader of the Leave movement. As with journalists and the “establishment” at
a Trump rally, to be considered an “expert” became the ultimate insult. The
Leave movement was marked by lies and half-truths, including a campaign ad falsely
claiming that Britain sends £350 million a week to the European Union. “As with
Trump,” noted Freedland, “this disdain for the elite and for authority rode in
harness with a slippery approach to the truth.”
We are living in interesting, if perilous times. I worry for
the future of the United Kingdom, for European unity, and for the United
States. An anti-intellectualism fed by a disdain for experts, facts, knowledge,
history, and established institutions of government has been fueled by the simmering
anger of a mostly uneducated, bitter, and resentful strain of citizens who feel
that the forces of progress are stacked against them. This is something we have seen before: Ideologically and
politically motivated forces exploiting the fears of less educated, less
skilled workers who have been displaced by globalism and technology and fomenting resentment against immigrants, foreigners, the global elite, and those unseen
power brokers conspiring to make their lives miserable. What worries me, though, is the potential for a strong-willed
narcissist to stir and manipulate popular resentment, for this is how
demagogues rise to power and fascism rears its ugly head. As conservative
commentator Jennifer Rubin (with whom I rarely agree) noted in Sunday’s Washington
Post, “Coupled with a sense that their country – much like themselves – has
been disrespected and buffeted by ominous forces, the temptation is to indulge
in conspiracy theories, blame outsiders, and resort to political nihilism.”
Britain’s shocking referendum proves that such feelings and
trends are not unique to the United States. Right-wing populist movements exist
throughout Europe – in France, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland – each
seeking to “take their country back” and restore order in a chaotic world. The
same wave of fear and resentment that Trump is riding in the United States –
promising to ban Muslims, to build a great wall and get Mexico to pay for it,
to deport 11 million illegal aliens, to “make America great again” – correlates
closely to the Leave movement’s appeals to fear of war-torn refugees and open
borders, and to xenophobia and racism. As foreign correspondent Trudy Rubin noted
in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “nearly every Leave voter I met believed that
Brexit would effectively wall off Britain from foreigners and would somehow
permit the country to renew its historic standing in the world.” Unfortunately,
this is precisely the opposite of what will happen.
The Brexit vote immediately plunged the United Kingdom into
uncertain economic terrain. The value of the pound plummeted and Britain’s
international standing and body politic were shaken. Scotland, which voted overwhelmingly
to stay in the European Union, already has pledged another independence
referendum and placed the future of the UK itself up in the air. I don’t see
how any of this is good for Britain, for Europe, or the world economy.
Trump, of course, thinks all of this is fine. As does
Vladimir Putin, who has hoped for years that something would come along to
divide and destabilize Europe. Brexit is a gift to Putin, who is giddy over the
thought of European unity dissolving over national rivalries, infighting, and a
weakened international governing structure. As an article in the Sunday Times noted, Britain’s decision to leave the EU threatens to undermine “the
postwar consensus that alliances among nations are essential in maintaining
stability and in diluting the nationalism that once plunged Europe into bloody
conflict – even as nationalism is surging again.”
The 20th Century has seen what happens when a strong leader
takes advantage of popular fear and resentment and promises to “take back
control” from perceived enemies and outside forces. No one knows this better
than German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who commented after the Brexit vote: “The
idea of European unity is the idea of European peace . . . after centuries of
terrible bloodshed [this] is not to be taken for granted. In Europe we still
feel the effect of wars.”
Since World War II, the United States and Britain have led
the way in reducing the potential for international conflict. By promoting free
markets, supporting international governing structures, bolstering military
alliances, strengthening NATO, and funding international development and
financial organizations, we have together overseen seventy years of European peace
and prosperity. All of that is weakened by Britain’s exit from the European
Union and stands as a stark warning of the dark forces brooding in America.
“There are lessons here aplenty for Americans contemplating
their own appointment with nationalist, nativist populism in November,” writes
Freedland. Complacent Democrats, cynical Bernie supporters contemplating
sitting this election out, and establishment Republicans still bruising from the
shock of Trump’s rise may believe there are not enough angry white voters who
feel left-behind to win an election. “But Brexit suggests that when that
constituency can be allied to a conservative cause that has millions of other,
more ideologically-motivated devotees, victory is possible. It suggests that
hostility to migrants, a cynical trampling on the truth, and a cavalier disdain
for expertise can work wonders, such is the loathing of anything that can be
associated with the ‘elite.’ And it suggests that even great nations, those
whose democratic arrangements were once regarded as a beacon to the world, are
capable of acts of grievous, enduring self-harm.”
The right to vote is sacred and must be nourished and
respected. Once votes are cast and the results are tallied, you cannot later
claim that you did not truly understand the consequences. “It was already clear
before the Brexit vote that modern populist movements could take control of
political parties,” wrote former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the New
York Times. “What wasn’t clear was whether they could take over a country like
Britain. Now we know they can.” The challenges of globalization cannot be met
by building walls and closing off borders. With Donald Trump and the November
election on the horizon, let Brexit be a wake-up call to the United States.