Letter to the Editor: So What Does Brexit Have to Do With Us?

So how would the British exit or “Brexit” from the European Union (EU) possibly affect those of use living in Lewis County? Not much in any immediate way, but as part of the Donald Trump and Steve Bannon-led trend toward isolationism and nationalism that concedes global leadership to Russia and China, it is likely to have serious consequences for the United States and Lewis County.

Trump’s betrayal of our Kurdish allies by withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria shows how the vacuum we create when we leave is happily filled by Vladimir Putin. Americans have a right to question our military interventions that are costly in every way, but isolationism is a big mistake we have made before. 

There is little evidence that Adolph Hitler had any real plans to invade the United States. He understood that if he controlled Europe and Asia from Spain to Siberia, the Suez Canal and North Africa and linked up with Japan in the oil fields of the Middle East, the worst of Winston Churchill’s man nightmares, even the America First, isolationist US of 1940 would be forced to obey his orders. 

After World War II, Churchill proposed a “Council of Europe” as an antidote to the toxic nationalism that had swept away 80 million lives in two world wars. 

When Donald Trump advocates for nationalism and the breakup of the EU or NATO, he is doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding. Putin fully understands that if the EU or NATO did not exist, it would be much easier for him to bully or invade Eurpoean countries like he does the non-NATO or EU country Ukraine. If world politics were a football game, the score would be Putin: 50, Stable Genius: zero.

The EU provides a lot of money to member states for infrastructure and energy projects. It has some power to persuade Eastern European countries like Hungary and Poland not to backslide into the totalitarian habits of their years in the orbit of the old Soviet Union. 

The EU can also help curb the very disturbing and under-reported (in the US) rise of extreme right-wing nationalism in Germany. Seventy percent of Germans say it is a major concern. The June 5, 2019 assassination of Walter Luebcke, an ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the recent attempted attack on a synagogue, both by neo-Nazi extremists, shows why. 

The main purpose of the EU has been to allow the free flow of products throughout its member countries, creating tariff- and duty-free markets for their goods.

Ireland and Great Britain have enjoyed their best relations in over two centuries due in part to them both being EU members. The border between Ireland and Northern Ireland (part of Britain), once marked by tight security and murderous paramilitary activity, is now a border similar to crossings between Washington and Oregon. The EU has stood firm in its insistence that any Brexit deal with Britain has to maintain the peaceful current border status between Ireland and Northern ireland and rightly so. 

The US, China, India and the EU are the economic heavyweights of the future. Having already seen $1 trillion in business assets transferred to other EU countries since the Brexit vote in 2016, Britain leaving the EU will be a huge, self-inflicted wound. 

Marty Ansley

Cinebar