Indeed, it is the end of a world, and in this respect it is similar not so much to the 1930s as to August 1914. The only difference is that back then very few people realized it, confidently predicting that the war would be over by Christmas and not 31 years later, whereas now some people have been able to draw lessons from recent European history and are warning the sheep against marching off the cliff. In vain. It turns out.
Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it; those who do, are doomed to watch those who don’t study history repeat it.
Obviously this time the world order will crumble differently than a century ago – because the world order itself is different. In fact, we don’t know what form the collapse will take. All we can do is delineate the obvious risks and identify the most exposed players.
The immediate task for London is to keep the United Kingdom from splitting as Scotland holds a second independence referendum while Northern Ireland moves to revisit the Troubles with a call by Sinn Fein for a vote on unity with the Republic. When all’s said and done, England may be cut down to its pre-Elizabethan borders that existed half a millennium ago.
Brussels, meanwhile, faces the risk of France and the Netherlands following with EU exit referendums of their own, and economic difficulties in the wake of the British vote could push continental Europe into the arms of the far right. What that will mean for Belgium, Catalonia, the Basque country and other restive areas of Europe is anyone’s guess.
Meanwhile, on the eastern periphery, rogue governments such as the thieving Hungarian and nationalist Polish ones will see the UK example as license to go on undermining the democratic achievements of the post-communist era in their countries. And why not? If Brits behave like idiots, they should be allowed to do at least as much.
And then there are the major losers from this whole Brexit fiasco – the nations which are currently on the outside, looking in – Turkey, Ukraine, Serbia and Georgia. Their dream of joining the EU one day soon and benefiting from its economic prosperity, peaceful coexistence, rule of law and democracy has been shattered – or at least set back several decades. By then it is likely to be too late. Turkey is already on its way to becoming a rogue state; Serbia may give in to its darker nationalist forces which have been held in check by the dream of joining the EU; Ukraine will have even more difficulty defeating corruption and standing up to Russian aggression and Georgia will be marooned in the Caucasus, which has the potential of becoming the Balkans of the 21st century.
There are risks across the Pond, too. Max Boot, a Russian-born neocon – one of those who has done so much to create Donald Trump but who has now, sensibly if late, has turned into his implacable opponent – tweeted: “Opponents of Brexit were too complacent. Opponents of Trump need to learn lesson. Unthinkable is not impossible!”
Trump is riding the same tiger that the proponents of the Leave vote rode to success in Britain. It was, essentially, and anti-London rebellion, as the grimy, underemployed, poorly educated heartland stuck a finger in the eye of the overpriced, cosmopolitan London with its restaurants, modern art and Chunnel train. In the US, it is an even deeper, darker, less civilized rage against the bi-coastal economy, banking, technology and the foreigners and educated elites who benefit from all that.
Looking from the longer-term historical perspective, what we are seeing are the death throes of the Reagan-Thatcher economic prosperity. The basic principles of Reaganomics were to promote entrepreneurship and corporate welfare and to stoke them with unprecedented deficit spending. Loose fiscal policy soon came to be supplemented with equally unprecedented monetary ease, leading to three decades of wealth creation – not only in the rich industrial nations but in a substantial number of developing countries around the world, most notably China and India, who were able to take advantage of those favorable economic circumstances.
For Britain in particular it meant the ability to reinvent itself after losing its overseas colonies, to shake off the post-imperial gloom of the 1970s and to straddle the United States, Europe and the Middle East, becoming the world’s banker, designer and, in the case of London real estate, money launderer.
However, this prosperity had several major flaws.
First, it created a bubble economy, leading to periodic painful crises; second, it could only function on fiscal or monetary infusions, so that when the spigot was turned off, the show came to an end; and, third, it created 1 percent of big winners and a whole lot of losers. Eventually, the first and second flaw were going to put an end to the Reagan-Thatcher era, but it looks as though it was a voter rebellion has done the trick in Britain – and it is very likely to do the same in the United States, whether or not Trump is elected this November or some other, probably worse demagogue gets to the White House in November 2020.
History likes those sardonic parallels. It was Margaret Thatcher’s election in 1979 that started it all, and was followed by Ronald Reagan’s election a year later. We may see the same pattern this year.
Prior to the referendum, someone posted a picture of Vladimir Putin with a caption: “The only man in the world to benefit if the Leave vote wins.” Putin and his propaganda machine were certainly rooting for Brexit and in the aftermath of it are acting even happier than Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party. Trump, who greeted Brexit warmly, has also admitted that it will benefit Putin.
Indeed, history that it was Putin’s win, too. Whenever Europe is divided, the Bolsheviks benefit, and vice versa. Thus, Lenin’s 1917 coup would have been unthinkable without the turmoil of World War I. Similarly, Stalin used the European tragedy of World War II, which he had done so much to bring about, to greatly expand his empire, further subjugate his people and promote himself to the rank of Generalissimo. Conversely, postwar unity in Western Europe eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and its European empire, which Putin has termed no less than “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
In the post-Brexit world Putin may be emboldened to expand his aggression against Ukraine, to sic Armenians and Azeris on each other and to stir trouble in the Baltics.
But the post-Brexit world will be nasty and unforgiving. There will be other players on the international arena with whom Putin’s Russia will inevitably conflict. They will be richer, more advanced economically, have better technology and superior organization. They will be more populous and far stronger militarily than today’s Russia.
The truth is, in short, that Putin has very few resources at his disposal that he could bring to a serious fight. His little hybrid wars with their propaganda lies and bribery of some marginal politicians are successful in the peaceful environment of today, when no one wants trouble. But they will be ridiculous in a harsher global environment. Putin may at the moment look like the only winner in Brexit, but he – and Russia – actually run the risk of being among its greatest losers.
