Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[OttoVonBismarck]

It could be that no one actually cares about the "broad, balanced security partnership including external action" with Britain and it is just political fluff. Americans and Brits often seem to be very focused on international relations in terms of security policy and hard power only. See Otto's post above as an example. That has never been the focus of the EU and is also not what its members see as its advantages. The EU has always been about other policy areas and only recently started to even establish first defence and security capabilities. Its member states currently don't want it to have a stronger role in that area.

This just confirms how much Europeans are in a bubble. Historically European states spent a great deal on their own defense, as the threat of war was constant and very serious. We have provided an umbrella over the continent for decades, one that won't be there long term. The idea that the EU countries have been able to not care much at all about security for all these years like it's just some magic thing they choose to do is hilarious. If not for NATO, if not for the U.S. guarantee of European countries and their independence during the Cold War, I can assure you that military power and defense would be the chief concern of every country in Europe, hands down.

The EU, and largely you personally and your way of thinking, are a product of a bygone age. The age when we thought great power politics and clashes would never happen again,  you guys will keep twiddling thumbs and arguing about economic regulations up until the last moment, and by then it will be too late.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I also think it's easy for a lot of Europeans to just think hard power doesn't matter because in their mind, hard power is WWII style stuff. That isn't how wars will be fought and isn't how autocracies will fight democracies in the future. Instead it will start with building allegiances in country, helping to destabilize democratic norms. Suddenly violent desperadoes start kind of being around the country, they're not associated with anyone even though they're technically members of the Russian military. Things of that nature. Europe isn't prepared for this at all. It could also just be they don't care, because the large European powers--France and Germany, don't feel that they would be the ones at risk of this, and they're somewhat correct. Those countries aren't getting Ukrained probably in any timeline, but there are definitely EU countries that could. There's even some EU countries we could see drifting on their own more and more to Russia and anti-democratic forces in general. As the EU's peripheries start to crumble away there will be less and less actual support for the concept of a united Europe in the first place, on trade, currency, or anything else.

It may seem unconnected but it's not--we should also note Turkey's relationship with Europe is changing, and Turkey helped quite a bit in stopping the Muslim refugee crisis from getting far worse. With Turkey's deteriorating relationship with NATO and Europe, and its moves closer to Russia, I'd be very surprised to see Turkey work with Europe like that on any future crises. I don't even know to what degree Europe even realizes how Russia has been building support and power around all of its peripheries.

[Zanza]

Ok, I don't share your views. Europeans and the EU are well aware of the threats you name. There are initiatives like enlargement of FRONTEX or PESCO towards more external security. The entire history of the EU is one of pooling sovereignty in many areas of policy - not just trade by the way - and this will continue as long as there is mutual benefit. Of all the partners countries can pick to help their own interests, the EU is by far the most benign and the one that allows small nations most influence. As long as there is no better option, countries will continue to stay in the EU. Even in Britain the elites know that Brexit does not serve the interests of the country, but a decade long propaganda effort and foreign meddling to weaken both the UK and the EU paid off now. There is currently no indication this might repeat anywhere else soon.

By the way, the US is not in Europe to offer some altruistic guarantees to lessen the defence spending of Europeans, but rather to protect its own interests. These interests could change, but e.g. containment of Russia - even with the current Putin-phile president- will be a long term strategic interest of the US. If you had no interests of your own here, you would have long left.

[Josquius]

In the UK for the past decade we've been non-stop hearing this "the EU is going to collapse any day now stuff". Instead it keeps getting stronger. The UK's seppuku has done a lot to strengthen feelings of European unity across the continent.

For defence, the problem is less that Europe isn't spending on defence, as European countries certainly are spending a significant amount. Rather they're spending poorly. Germany on paper is spending enough on defence, but we've all seen the articles on the crappy state of their military. Something has gone very wrong with their spending.
One good point of brexit for Europe is that it does make more military integration feasible. And if Europe can cut out more of the duplicate costs then it can get far more bang for its euro. All Europe has to do is remain stronger than Russia and theoretically Turkey, which is hardly a major task.

The threats of the future aren't Russian tanks rolling across the European plain. Its far cheaper and more underhand attempts to chip away at our freedoms, such as brexit. Fighting against these isn't going to be solved by throwing money at the military. It requires far smarter use of public funds.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah the spread of spending is ridiculous. I think it's Belgium that spends under 1% of GDP on defence and most of that is on pensions

But it's not just spending more, though that matter, it's commitment to mutual defence. I'm not convinced we're committed enough to, say, the Baltics. There was that polling by Pew on this and if there's no commitment to actual mutual defence there's not a huge amount of point to NATO or integrated EU defence.

The threats of the future aren't Russian tanks rolling across the European plain. Its far cheaper and more underhand attempts to chip away at our freedoms, such as brexit. Fighting against these isn't going to be solved by throwing money at the military. It requires far smarter use of public funds.

This sounds like Dom Cummings

I think it's both at the minute. Cyber-security's been called out as a key strategic priority for the EU and the UK to preserve which makes sense because there needs to be cooperation given how information systems work and it's not cheap.

On this it's always annoyed me that Gavin Williamson got fired over the Huawei leak. It felt very like that Onion headline: "Worst person you know just made an excellent point"

In the UK for the past decade we've been non-stop hearing this "the EU is going to collapse any day now stuff". Instead it keeps getting stronger. The UK's seppuku has done a lot to strengthen feelings of European unity across the continent.

I'm very pro-European in the pro-Macron sense - I think he's the only politician around with any kind of vision for Europe. I don't think it does keep getting stronger, I still think austerity has been a catastrophic decision for Europe that's profoundly weakened pro-European politics all over the EU in the long run. I think the EU is superficially stronger, but the general wipeout of the core social democratic wing of pro-European politics across the continent will, I think, have long consequences.

There's also the question David Runciman always asks on Talking Politics: at various points last year with Brexit, a Lega-M5S government and the gilets jaunes there were three European countries that looked in crisis. What's the crisis that's most important for Europe? My own view is it's not Brexit - that's self-harming, but fundamentally an institutional crisis which seems different to what we've seen in France and Italy.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Ok, I don't share your views. Europeans and the EU are well aware of the threats you name. There are initiatives like enlargement of FRONTEX or PESCO towards more external security. The entire history of the EU is one of pooling sovereignty in many areas of policy - not just trade by the way - and this will continue as long as there is mutual benefit. Of all the partners countries can pick to help their own interests, the EU is by far the most benign and the one that allows small nations most influence. As long as there is no better option, countries will continue to stay in the EU. Even in Britain the elites know that Brexit does not serve the interests of the country, but a decade long propaganda effort and foreign meddling to weaken both the UK and the EU paid off now. There is currently no indication this might repeat anywhere else soon.

By the way, the US is not in Europe to offer some altruistic guarantees to lessen the defence spending of Europeans, but rather to protect its own interests. These interests could change, but e.g. containment of Russia - even with the current Putin-phile president- will be a long term strategic interest of the US. If you had no interests of your own here, you would have long left.

A lot of this talk if really telling to be honest. The only response a European has when confronted with a shifting world and how it's going to impact Europe's amazing lack of self-awareness of its place in it, is to talk about economic benefit as if that is synonymous with national best interest, and to just pretend a number of serious problems are being "handled" by spewing out some nonsense acronyms linked to meaningless and toothless policies.

Whether or not it was in Britain's interest to stay in the EU has nothing to do with economics. It has to do with whether its people want to trade degrees of sovereignty for economic incentives. They chose one way, it's a valid choice. My only real issue with it is I think that choice was not sold in the way I just put it, with Leave basically running an extremely dishonest campaign promising that not only would the choice have no economic costs it would instead produce magical economic benefits.

What I find interesting is this attitude is basically Trumpism on the part of the Europeans, you're assuming your long term national interests can be best assessed by stacking up Euros and counting them, and maximizing how many you have to count. Trump thinks we should get out of Europe because it costs x billions per year to have troops there, but Europe charges us tariffs. He sees that as a "bad transaction." He thinks being in South Korea is bad because those bases cost x billions per year and South Korea isn't paying us for them. He thinks China and North Korea can be fixed by squeezing their pocket books. But it clearly failed with North Korea because some states that have a keen understanding of national self interest recognize money isn't everything here. Kim knows that nuclear weapons guarantee his regime's survival in a way open access to the world's economy never will. China wants it economic relationship with the west to benefit China, not China's billionaires, not China's companies, but the Chinese state.

They have a big advantage here in being an unfree, Communist one party state, it's easier for their leaders to define their success in sync with the national interest because they don't have the sort of stakeholders that elected leaders do in a democracy. China showed over many months of economic warfare with the Trump Administration that there were broad areas of its economic relationship with America it just wasn't willing to make concessions on. It also, frankly, probably realizes some of the few areas it can make concessions on, it'll be easy to just circumvent them because it knows Trump is too lazy to push them on enforcement, he wants a political win and "enforcement arguments" make it look less like a political win.

The world's democracies just aren't run this way. As best I can tell Germany's leaders believe that Germany's national interest essentially is aligned with what the large German industrial concerns want. America has a schizophrenic understanding of its national interest due to its hyper partisan political climate. Britain seems to lean towards believing its national interest are aligned with a bunch of old-money blue bloods and what they want, along with some revanchist immigration policies.

But it's fine, I've seen this attitude from the people who think the world is one way that it really isn't for a long time now. In due course lessons will be learned, and they will be bitter ones.

[Zoupa]

I think you overestimate Russia's reach and power. They could barely handle Chechnya, their navy is shit, their equipment old and poorly funded. The cyber-propaganda stuff is new-ish, but democracies will adapt and counter eventually. Let's not exaggerate their actual threat here.

Putin is slowly bankrupting an already crumbling country. Syria and Ukraine are bleeding them dry.

[Zanza]

A lot of this talk if really telling to be honest. The only response a European has when confronted with a shifting world and how it's going to impact Europe's amazing lack of self-awareness of its place in it, is to talk about economic benefit as if that is synonymous with national best interest, and to just pretend a number of serious problems are being "handled" by spewing out some nonsense acronyms linked to meaningless and toothless policies.

My point - which I could apparently not properly communicate - is that a) the EU is not just about economics and b) its continued existence is the best national interest of its members. So I guess our views are not that far apart in the analysis of the situation, just in assessing the consequences. You expect the EU to crumble - which would not address any of the issues you name for its member states and you don't offer any alternative either. Whereas I consider the EU to be the institutional framework within which the European states will find the best way to serve their own national interest in many different policy areas to address the issues you name. It may be flawed, but it's still the best we could agree upon so far. Unless you can show how the national interests of the member states are better served with a dissolution of the EU, I expect it to stay.

[Iormlund]

Before the EU can mount a significant military it needs to become a true confederation. If Germans or Finns were not willing to send money to Club Med, what makes you think someone in Portugal or Spain would be willing to give their life for them?

The EU is not a defensive arrangement. It might be one day, but that day is very far into the future.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think you overestimate Russia's reach and power. They could barely handle Chechnya, their navy is shit, their equipment old and poorly funded. The cyber-propaganda stuff is new-ish, but democracies will adapt and counter eventually. Let's not exaggerate their actual threat here.

Putin is slowly bankrupting an already crumbling country. Syria and Ukraine are bleeding them dry.

So I think you're thinking the way I was thinking 5, 6 years ago. It's not about tanks and guns and equipment and trained soldiers. All of that stuff is still important, but it's not how we're going to see these conflicts go out. It starts with building divisions in civil society, and then exploiting the portions of the divided country that will advance Russia's goals--which in this case Russia's goal is to just see Europe not work effectively as a bloc.

I don't think Putin really cares about the EU as a formal body, but more about how Europe acts going forward. Putin wants Europe acting as much like 27 independent states as possible, and as little like one power as possible. He doesn't have to destroy the EU to get what he wants. He's also not the only one who will want this outcome. For a variety of reasons countries like Turkey and China will have similar stances on this matter. Obviously China cares a bit less, but China has a very nationalistic view of its economic and trade relationships. It would much prefer a weaker Europe because a union of 27 countries with combined GDP of ~$14 trillion is much more of a barrier for China to bully around than smaller countries. This is going to play out in relationships across the entire world, particularly in regions like South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

I think at least with the TPP, Obama realized the sort of global conflicts that the future would bring, it is genuinely unfortunate Trump withdrew from it as it was one of the best levers we would have had to bully China. I don't really see Europe doing anything proactive and outward facing, the EU to me has always seemed horribly inward focusing. Europe is a continent of old people with few children, it is facing serious migratory pressure from poorer, higher birth rate countries that surround it, it is facing quasi-hostile military forces from Russia. It is facing on its periphery growing ideological rejections of self-determination and democratic norms, if countries like Hungary and Poland drift further away from democracy the EU has to decide if it is comfortable with post-democratic states in its membership. Those states, which will be ever-increasingly lead by power hungry factions, will have to decide if they want to stay or not. What is good for example Hungary or Poland may not be the same as what the ruling party feels is good for them in terms of being able to maintain and keep power.

I think we're a long ways away from those situations bubbling over, but Brexit did not happen in a day either. People seem to talk about Brexit and just hand wave it away as "oh, was just a stupid decision lead by irrationality, false campaigning, and other rubbish." That same exact thing can happen anywhere, it happened in the United States with the election of Trump. Look at the politics that rule the day in countries as varied as Italy to Poland to Hungary, even Germany is seeing a rise in irrational, anti-democratic and anti-Western political thought. You guys are summer children, unaware that winter is coming.

[Zanza]

So what would you do about it?

[Josquius]

Don't confuse the death throes of nationalism with a lasting trend.

[Tamas]

Don't confuse the death throes of nationalism with a lasting trend.

they are dangerous and they can win so they must be fought but these things are reactionary struggles of the old way of thungs, not soke growing trend of the future.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Don't confuse the death throes of nationalism with a lasting trend.

don't think nationalism is dying. It isn't.

[Iormlund]

I don't get why you guys think nationalism is dying. Perhaps because I come from a country with strong, historic Nationalist movements (like Crazy Ivan). Both Catalonia and Euskadi, for example, have been governed by nationalist parties ever since Franco kicked the bucket.

Granted, a few new factors have boosted Nationalism:

• Growing inequality.
• Massive immigration.
• Social networks.

But none of those are likely to go away even in the long term.