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Why Brexit Is Important to Americans
With all that is going on in the US, perhaps the topic of “Brexit” has escaped most people. Until the last week or so, even as an American living in Switzerland, I have to admit I didn’t find it important. But Brexit is important even to Americans. It is about what happens when an “administrative state” is in the process of becoming your unwanted master.
Brexit is the June 23 referendum to decide if the UK remains in the European Union (EU). The peoples of the 28 members of the EU are governed to a growing extent by a complex organization in Brussels that can best be described as an “administrative state.” It has evolved from the original Treaty of Rome; this formed a trading bloc called the European Economic Community (EEC). When the key members formed this bloc in the 1950s, it amounted to a group of countries that sought free trade among themselves and common tariffs with countries outside the bloc. It was simple, effective, and democratic because each member’s participation was governed by the parliaments of each member state.
The European Union has evolved into a political-economic behemoth of enormous complexity and costs, headquartered in Brussels. Because of this complexity, many here in Europe believe it represents the worst of centralized government. It is seen as largely unaccountable to the average citizens of the 28 member states, and equally leaderless, incapable of speaking in a coherent voice about issues such as the tidal wave of refugees coming out of Africa and the Middle East.
So, along comes Brexit: The Movie about a week ago, just 71 minutes in length. After viewing it, I understand more. As few of us Ricochet listeners are UK citizens, few of us will have a vote on June 23. But let me assure you: The Brexit referendum is a complex issue in which hundreds of years of history and national culture are concerned.
It begins with the Magna Carta, the 800th anniversary of which was celebrated last June. Our US Constitution reflects the Magna Carta. One of the many principles in that document, which King John was encouraged to sign (he liked his head where it was), was that no people would be forced to pay taxes without their lawful consent.
When one considers how the EU actually functions, and the course of events during the last 25 years, then any rational person has to conclude that the Brexit people have an argument. The EU in Brussels can hardly lay claim any longer to being “democratic.” It is indeed an ”administrative state” without a constitution and has very limited accountability to the peoples of Europe. The vast majority of EU citizenry have no clue as to how it is organized or functions.
I strongly recommend that you view Brexit: The Movie. You can watch it here.
Published in Entertainment, Foreign Policy
Whatever you’re talking about, it ain’t politics. I know more than a few countries for which the EU is a very important source of political stability. Maybe it will all go to hell & it’s sure as hell it’s been that way a long time, but for all the crazy stuff European politicians cannot stop pulling–I’ve no doubt that democracy & political freedom such as they are in Eastern Europe owe a great deal to the EU.
Maybe it would have been without it & maybe it would have been done better–the help these countries have received. But that does not change anything.
Titus, as you actually live in Europe your views are most helpful. If I am reading your comment correctly you are seeing a failure of European nations to mount a credible self-funded defense force as a much greater threat than its Administrative State? If so, that is a fair comment. But I might suggest that the two are related. When you minimize nationalism, you minimize patriotism and the impulse for national defense. (Given Europe’s history that has been seen as a plus. But with the retreat of the USA that is a problem.) So one result of the Administrative State is a hollowing out of the core to be defended and the voluntary defense of that State.
At the expense of democracy & political freedom such as they are in Western Europe, I fear. I’m really not convinced that evening out the amount of democracy & political freedom — to a point somewhere between none and lots — across the geographical continent of Europe is a good long-term strategy that favours the retention of democracy & political freedom.
No need to be rude. Obviously, I am talking about politics and we both know that. Disagree if you like, but without the snark.
What, precisely, do they owe to the EU vis a vis liberty; use specific examples. I have no doubt they have benefited from trade in the EU, formerly the European Economic Community, but that’s not at issue.
On the other hand, Switzerland seems to be doing quite well with liberty and democracy (not to mention economically) without the EU.
Exactly, there is no evidence that the EU was required for whatever gains were made by former Eastern Bloc countries.
Obviously, it does.
I’m not talking about Western Europe, of course, but that seems like a strange way to think. Do you think the reason Eastern Europe is doing so much better than at pretty much any point since 1989 is because somehow Western Europe is sucked dry of its democratic freedom?
Thank you for the kind word Mr. Rodin. Recently, my friend Mama Toad started talk a NATO-Europe talk that brought out some of my thoughts on the matter. If you like, you can read them here & here. I’d rather not repeat them here.
Historically, European military weakness preceded any real loss of sovereignty. This became massively obvious as early as the fall of the Berlin Wall, before & independent of the Maastricht treaty.
I believe Americans have never properly understood their powers or the responsibility they took in Europe in a political sense. The long-term consequences have been a combination of weakness & ingratitude. JFK was a simpleton, at his best. Who made Europe into a place where politics would be discussed outside of the question of defense–the most obvious common good there is!
This is neither snark nor some kind of joke. As for rudeness, well that’s a different matter. It may be rude–I’ll take your word. Maybe my comments here will elucidate my meaning…
The rest of your comment does not seem to me to address the crucial point. This part does. I come from Romania & have talked with people from several nearby countries & have visited three of them for merely brief stints. I happen to have learned some of the political history.
The political classes in Romania & elsewhere have defined democracy as EU membership. None have any future anymore, in a meaningful sense: It’s been accomplished. The electorates have ratified this view repeatedly. Irrespective of which party or coalition was primarily responsible or more persuasive about it, it’s always there. No party assumed power before FIDESZ in 2010 Hungary on a non-EU or anti-EU platform.
I don’t say this because I mind these facts, but because they’re really irrelevant to the question: Both countries knew political freedom & were democratizing in the modern sense before the EU was even a fantasy. The question was about the effect of the EU on Eastern European countries, places where political freedom had never been much of a thing to write home about & no democracy had ever thrilled the hearts of the people.
Let me be clearer about how I saw the argument developing.
I think the EU has been bad for the UK. This is important to the US because they hold important traditions of democracy and political freedom in common that ought to be mutually reinforcing, but these traditions are being undermined by the forced continentalisation of the UK.
You contend that the EU has been good for Eastern Europe (or, at least, good for democracy and political freedom in Eastern Europe; or, something…). Presumably this should also weigh in the balance for the US as to whether the UK should leave (and weaken?) the EU. Or perhaps you were just responding to the general dismissal of the EU.
My response was that while the improvement of conditions in the East was, good, the EU tended to degrade conditions in the West (including France and Germany, I will add), and that this was not in the long-term interests of anyone (including, by implication, the US).
I’m not sure we actually disagree about anything, since we were addressing different issues.
Almost right.
What we want to do is see them move backward to the broad, sunlit uplands of freedom. The tragedy of Britain, and the object lesson for the United States, is that she gave it all away in the first place. And it wasn’t even a hostile takeover (those haven’t really worked in Britain since William the Conqueror, 1066).
As I implied in a previous comment, the Brits are so sunk into this quagmire, which many of them seem to have embraced, that even if they do vote “Leave,” I’m not sure things will improve much. Absent the spirit of Winston Churchill arising in the unlikely form of, say Boris Johnson or even a loudmouthed reality-television-show host (Simon Cowell for Prime Minister, anyone? Jeremy Clarkson?), I expect that things will go on much as usual.
Me too. And if they do, I hope it matters and makes a difference.
Apparently, this is your only response to my question about what Eastern European countries owe to the EU vis a vis liberty. If the political classes in Romania think that the EU is an exemplar of democracy, they don’t understand democracy. To learn why, they need to view the film recommended in the OP.
You are strangely silent about what most citizens in Romania think democracy is, i.e., not members of the political class. If only the political class has any understanding of democracy and liberty (albeit an erroneous one), that only furthers my original point: democracy and liberty must arise organically rather than being imposed from above. As we have learned from the American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, democracy does not just happen because we want it to.
On the other hand, if Romanian citizens generally have this understanding of the meaning of democracy and liberty then it is at variance with my understanding and, I daresay, the understanding of many here on Ricochet and in the UK. For evidence of this, read some of the other comments and the views of many leading British political figures. And, yes, I’m talking about politics.
I don’t mean to do a lot of talking about this–I have said merely that the electorate has always ratified the EU. Whatever parties are not for it or are against it lose. This is true of most of Europe, even beyond the West-East distinction. I am unsure how you could miss such a fact or not thinking it important enough to state or not think it worth noticing when I state it. I do not have any great desire to talk to you about people you not only do not know but have no capacity to understand–instead you seem to be teaching the varied peoples from afar what liberty really means. Some vasty wisdom seems to have seized you & the experiences of these peoples are no comparison. The implied comparison in their experience could only bring out their many faults & deficiencies.
I dearly wish you were in their situation & as wise as you are. I am under no doubt that you have fought for liberty & have staked everything on it against rather alarming tyrannies–well, alarming to men less stalwart than yourself, presumably because they do not know about liberty like you do. I dearly wish that your as yet unsung achievements are going to be visited upon the peoples of Eastern Europe in some form or another–great benefits for the peopls would swiftly follow from your wisdom & great shame for the EU would swiftly follow them..
Huhmmm, Titus, I think Dr L is an immigrant to the US. ..
and then there’s the whole “it’s hard to make an aquarium from fish soup” thing. . .
True.
One of the marvelous things about being human, and especially human with written language, is that we can learn from others without needing to have experiences first hand. A person who only relied upon his own experiences and stories told by his acquaintances would have a narrow view of the world. Blessed as we are with written communication, we can find out about other times and places, thereby enriching our understanding human nature in its many manifestations. This is not to say that personal experience is valueless. However, personal experiences are best understood in a larger context of the experiences of others and of abstract ideas developed over the millennia.
As a youth in Argentina, I got a close look at bureaucracy, corruption, and political oppression. An aunt and uncle both spent some time in jail as political prisoners. No one is quite sure what happened to my uncle. We emigrated to the US because it was clear that the future in Argentina was bleak indeed. I’ve never been to Romania and visited Czechoslovakia and Hungary only once, many years ago.
If that’s all I had to go on, it wouldn’t be much. But by combining these with some reading, I was able to synthesize the information into some more general ideas. They may be wrong but are not dismissed by a sarcastic screed .
JDAMs.
I enjoyed the film – and apart from some nit picking (the background music occasionally made me think Galadriel was about to tell us something about the rise of Mordor) I can see some solid British objections to how the EU functions (most pertinently wrt direct democracy).
But: that alleged golden age of free trade was in fact nothing of the sort. British industry thrived because it had a massive captive market, aka The Empire.
When Britain lost the Empire after WWII, it reasonably enough looked around for another trading space where its goods would receive privileged access – if not quite as privileged as before. The EU (or its predecessor) looked like the most accessible bet.
The WTO’s advent might well make EU membership far less economically attractive for Britain now – but that doesn’t change Britain’s pre-WTO options. (I’m also unconvinced that an Eastern Europe stabilised by a connection to the EU is not a vital [economic and military] interest for the whole of Western Europe including Britain.)
This falls outside the scope of the film, but I’m curious why there is a belief that Britain would do better outside the EU, but there seems to be no such widespread belief in EU states like Germany or The Netherlands (which are richer than Britain, and also trading nations).
Two items here, and I would like to point out that my wife and I have lived in the UK (4 years), Germany (4 years) and The Netherlands (2 years) in addition to the 15 years here in Switzerland:
Firstly, as the video points out, the levels of UK trade with countries outside the EU has been growing. There are some interesting graphical statistics in http://www.uktradeinfo.com/Statistics/OversesasTradeStatistics. Secondly, it is my sense that the British people treasure their long-established democratic traditions (remember…back to Magna Carta in 1215) , and the long and bloody history as to how these were achieved, more than the peoples comprising today’s Germany. Regarding The Netherlands, and even after living there, I do not have a sense of the feelings of most Dutch in this regard. But, in discussing this issue with a close German friend and ex-colleague, he said something which I think is quite profound:
“For me, the EU saves us from our own governments. The EU-administration is far more detached from the small tricks of local politics. Their decisions are far more rational, they do not bend so easily to lobby groups, bribes and the chase for votes. I can mostly speak for German politics and I see how our so-called elected politicians bend and submit to either bribes or the chance for a few more votes. Just a few examples: The shut-down of the nuclear power plants, a totally unnecessary bizarre decision, only because Merkel had the feeling she might secure a few votes for her party. The EU has a far more practical approach; you want to save CO2? Then let’s build more nuclear power plants; we have the world’s best technology.”
I think it is correct to say that the Weimar Republic, 1919 to 1933, was Germany’s first attempt at a constitutional democracy. We know very well what preceded it and what followed it. My friend and ex-colleague, I sense, has captured what may be the principal difference between the mentality of at least the Germans and the Brits as to their levels of trust in the EU.
I do not know enough about Argentina to speak meaningfully on what the people think about political freedom & democracy, but of course I have heard of the country. I suppose, if I felt a preternatural calling to tell them what to believe on those weighty subjects, I’d nevertheless start by learning what they do believe.
I do know enough about several Eastern European countries to speak without fear of leading people into dangerous mistakes. I do not mind it if people think these lands have no idea about democracy or political freedom; or that their ideas are fundamentally wrong; people have a right to say such things & they do no real harm.
But that is not politics. Politics means learning how people in a given community do live together & what principles underlie the community & action on behalf of the community which the community demands, expects, or sanctions.
Western Europe & then the EU have been both the education about democracy & the hope for political freedom in Eastern Europe, if primarily because of proximity–& this was true both before & after the World Wars & the Iron Curtain & the Berlin Wall. This learning has never been too precocious–except possibly when learning new forms of tyranny–& it has never been without great trouble, as the example of tyranny suggests. But these facts remain…
Let’s start with the fact that the polling on the referendum suggests the nation or the electorate is split about down the middle. That surely is important evidence of the love of freedom.
Not so. The 1871 constitution was the first. While the emperor appointed the executive, laws had to be approved by the Bundesrat and the Reichstag. Not very different from British system where the monarchy appoints the government.
Why wouldn’t they? There is a huge subsidy that comes with membership to the eastern European countries for joining for improvements in infrastructure. But the subsidies eventually stop.
You seem to speak as one who has no idea who these people are. If you had any idea what goes on with EU-project money, that might put a damper on your abstractions. Meanwhile if you want answers at this level of abstraction, the Brits also ratified the EU, although they could not have expected subsidies.
The one thing I would quibble with is that it isn’t about Brussels, but about Germany. It is Germany that gives the orders to Brussels who then does the dirty work.
The Euro is an even more stark example of German control. It provides a currency that is weaker than a German currency would be on its own. The long term structural change will be the hollowing out of the other members’ economies. (Not unlike what trade agreements have done to US.) Greece is the first to fall. Italy, Spain and France are not long before they fall as well.
If Britain has any sense, it will get out of the EU because they will be made to pay for the havoc Germany will have caused in Italy, France and Spain.
I’m interested. Tell me more.
Maybe you can find data for Eastern Europe. I’m not spending my Sunday doing it–I don’t know you from Adam. The best I know is about my native Romania: The stuff one reads is, maybe a third of the money offered are absorbed. If people did it for the money, they sure don’t care about the money. Of course, most of the people who do stuff that absorbs money make up a very small number of people–a small number who have almost no connection to the actual electorate!
So every 3 Euros offered, results in 1 Euro of actual project. Is this what you are saying?
But surely there is tangible benefit from the infrastructure projects.
The other tangible benefit for eastern Europeans is immigration. And that is a headache for others, including Britain.
I’m saying, there are offers made: You can submit projects for EU money up to some cap. I’m not sure the few people who do try ever amount to a third of the sum total offered in any year.
& of course, the ‘join the EU’ parties have had to persuade the electorate in advance of any benefits. Of course, those benefits have not really accrued to the electorate of any party or coalition. There are infrastructure projects. But there is very little to brag about there, lots of corruption & incompetence scandals, not much law or administration involved, & well, I’m not wasting more of my Sunday on these bleak matters-
I’m late to this thread, but this is one fascinating story – and so important. It’s interesting that both the EU and the US have evolved into overblown, bloated, expensive, out of touch governments that no longer have an ear toward the people. Now both are in crisis mode at the same time. Titus, I used to work with a guy from Romania – he owns land there, but said he would not go back – he described it as you have. He told me if you are sick and have to go to a doctor, you stand in long lines and can “buy” your way to the front. There is corruption at all levels, trying to start a business is difficult. He said his mom would receive “social security” – I asked how much – it was barely enough to exist. I can see how having Russia at your back door would make the interests of Eastern Europe different from the West. I remember my Romanian friend back during end of Obama’s first term, was hollering the loudest about how are freedoms were being threatened here and no one was paying attention – he was right.