Brexit’s Threat to ‘the Special Relationship’
WASHINGTON
— On June 23, Britons will go to the polls in a nationwide referendum
on a single question: Should their country remain in the European Union or leave it? Their answer will determine government policy.
The
result is of major import to the United States. Hence, in large part,
President Obama’s trip to London this week. America has a historic
investment in the European project and Britain’s contribution to it.
Bookmakers are giving odds that a British withdrawal, or Brexit
as it is commonly known, will be voted down. But the spread has
narrowed in recent months. In addition to frustration with the union’s
ossified bureaucracy, a barrage of bad news from the Continent — an
inundation of refugees, terrorist attacks in Paris
and Brussels, and the likelihood of another showdown over Greece’s debt
— has played into the hands of the “leavers” and put the “remainers” on
the defensive.
As
the suspense heightens, so should the recognition that Brexit could be
the worst news yet for the trans-Atlantic community, particularly for
Britain and the United States, and very bad news for the entire world.
Prime
Minister David Cameron, who is trying to head off that danger, is in
the awkward position of having proposed a referendum back in 2013,
largely to mollify euroskeptic sentiment among his fellow Conservatives.
Then, after his re-election in 2015, he was able to wring concessions
for Britain from its European Union partners on a few specific issues.
That
deal received only lukewarm reviews back home, however, and he now has
to persuade Britons to reject Brexit. If he fails, he will be under
pressure from his own party to resign.
Should
Brexit occur, a two-year transition period would follow, but the costs
to Britain would kick in quickly. The International Monetary Fund
forecasts that investor confidence and financial markets would be
shaken. A report this week from the Exchequer warned that Brexit would risk stifling economic growth.
More
consequentially, Brexit might also shrink the United Kingdom itself.
European Union membership is popular in Scotland, both for economic
reasons and because it provides a counterweight to being governed from
Westminster. When Scotland held a referendum on independence two years
ago, a majority said “no.” Brexit might very well prompt another vote —
but with a different outcome. This in turn would encourage secessionist
movements like Catalonia’s in Spain.
Brexit
could also be contagious for the European Union as a whole. The
possibility of a British withdrawal is already intensifying centrifugal
forces among the 27 other member states. Marine Le Pen, the powerful
leader of the National Front in France, has said that Brexit will help
inspire a Frexit if she becomes president. There is talk in Athens about
“Grexit-Plus,” a threat to leave not only the eurozone but also the
union itself. Geert Wilders, the populist leader of the Netherlands’
surging anti-immigrant Freedom Party, has pronounced the union
“finished.” Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, flouts
Brussels’ rules and derides its institutions.
Meanwhile,
the president of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin, is actively stirring up
trouble and discord in Europe. His annexation of Crimea two years ago
was punishment for Ukraine’s seeking affiliation with the European
Union. Russia has courted right-wing and anti-Brussels parties in Europe, and a Russian bank owned by a Kremlin ally supported Ms. Le Pen’s National Front
with a $10 million loan. Russia’s military has brazenly violated the
airspace and territorial waters of Nordic countries, while the Baltic
States have also been targeted by Russian-based cyberattacks.
For
Mr. Putin, the collapse of the European project would be payback for
what he views bitterly as Western triumphalism when the Soviet empire
dissolved in the early 1990s. The more the European Union frays, the
easier it is for Mr. Putin to promote his alternative vision of a
Eurasian Union dominated by Moscow.
In
the first half of the 20th century, nationalism ran amok in Europe,
spawning two world wars. The United States intervened decisively in
both. In the aftermath of that experience, in 1946, Winston Churchill
envisioned a “United States of Europe” that would depend on American
support and protection. The strongest link in the trans-Atlantic chain,
he believed, was “the special relationship” between Britain and the
United States.
The
compact backed by the American-funded Marshall Plan consolidated
Western Europe and enabled an extension eastward of a zone of peace,
based on democracy, open societies and borders, and a rule-based
international order. The union became an example to other parts of the
globe.
Today,
new challenges have stressed that unity to the limits: the Great
Recession, the strains in the eurozone, Russia breaking bad and, most
recently, the refugee crisis caused largely by Syria’s civil war. But
even during this troubled period, the strategic rapport between Britain
and America has been crucial in achieving joint goals like maintaining
European Union sanctions on Iran and Russia.
That
partnership is at an inflection point. The proliferation of “-exit”
words is a warning that many Europeans are giving up on the progress of
the last 70 years. Worse, extreme nationalist and xenophobic movements
are grimly reminiscent of the dark decades of Europe’s past.
The
chances of the European Union’s pulling together, regaining its
self-confidence, fixing its flaws and meeting the challenges are far
greater if the United States doubles down on its own big bet on European
unity as a vital national interest. Precisely because of the special
relationship, it is vital that Britain’s leaders lean in to the cause
and not opt out.
Mr.
Cameron, as remainer-in-chief, wants to preserve Winston Churchill’s
vision for Europe and the special relationship with the United States.
The question is: Do Britons?
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