{UAH} Brexit’ in Perspective

By Adnan Khan

This week the UK will be head­ing towards the polls to decide if the UK should remain within the Euro­pean Union (EU). The UK has had a dif­fi­cult mar­riage with the con­ti­nent wide bloc ever since it first joined in 1971 and after the British pub­lic agreed via a ref­er­en­dum in 1975 to remain in the union. The EU itself is strug­gling with the events of the 2008 eco­nomic cri­sis, with many of its mem­ber nations strug­gling with their finances. Ques­tions con­tinue to be raised of the EU's via­bil­ity going for­ward. What­ever the result of the UK's ref­er­en­dum vote on June 23, there are a num­ber of global trends tak­ing shape which is dri­ving uncer­tainty and forc­ing nations to take posi­tions on them.

The fun­da­men­tal rea­son dri­ving Britain to recon­sider its posi­tion in the EU is the fact that Britain has not just declined as a global power, but is mov­ing towards global irrel­e­vance. Britain has been on a down­ward tra­jec­tory ever since WW2. Despite par­tak­ing in global issues in the decades since, on the cur­rent tra­jec­tory it looks like the sun is set­ting on the British Empire, Great Britain is quickly mov­ing to becom­ing lit­tle Britain. World War Two con­sumed Britain to such an extent that it brought an end to the British Empire and its inter­na­tional stand­ing. This was because Britain was vir­tu­ally bank­rupt from WW1. Its army was over­stretched and Britain was not in a posi­tion to enter another war. This is why in the post war era, British global aims have been restricted by its eco­nomic real­ity. British eco­nomic, mil­i­tary and its polit­i­cal capa­bil­ity have declined to the point it has done well to stay in the game, but its days are num­bered. The decline of Britain is blamed on the EU by some, who con­sider Britain to be a great power, yet still, who when sep­a­rated from the chains of the EU can go it alone. Britain's strug­gle to fund its nuclear weapons is a glar­ing exam­ple of how the British Empire has fallen.

Britain has been on a down­ward tra­jec­tory ever since WW2. Despite par­tak­ing in global issues in the decades since, on the cur­rent tra­jec­tory it looks like the sun is set­ting on the British Empire, Great Britain is quickly mov­ing to becom­ing lit­tle Britain

The project to unite Europe began in earnest after WW2, but in the 21st cen­tury it is strug­gling for sur­vival. The EU was cre­ated due to the his­tory of Europe, espe­cially its his­tory of war. But today the forces of nation­al­ism, which the union was cre­ated to solve, has reared its ugly head and is pulling the union apart at the seams. Today seri­ous ques­tions remain if the EU can even sur­vive. The EU attempted to over­come cen­turies of hos­tile his­tory through a polit­i­cal and eco­nomic union. The EU emerged with the goal of cre­at­ing a sys­tem of inter­de­pen­dency in which war in Europe was impos­si­ble. Given Euro­pean his­tory, this was an extra­or­di­nar­ily ambi­tious project, as war and Europe have gone hand in hand. The idea was that with Ger­many inti­mately linked to France, the pos­si­bil­ity of sig­nif­i­cant Euro­pean con­flict could be man­aged. Under­pin­ning this idea was the con­cept that the prob­lem of Europe was the prob­lem of nation­al­ism. Unless Europe's nation­alisms were tamed, war would break out. The Euro­pean Union tried to solve the prob­lem by retain­ing both national iden­tity and national regimes. Simul­ta­ne­ously, a broader Euro­pean iden­tity was con­ceived based on a set of prin­ci­ples, and above all, on the idea of a sin­gle Euro­pean econ­omy bind­ing together dis­parate nations. The rea­son­ing was that if the Euro­pean Union pro­vided the foun­da­tion for Euro­pean pros­per­ity, then the con­tin­ued exis­tence of nations in Europe would not chal­lenge the Euro­pean Union. The eco­nomic cri­sis that began in 2008 has bro­ken this sys­tem and Britain is at the fore­front of recon­sid­er­ing it posi­tion in this union.

In 1492 Christo­pher Colum­bus dis­cov­ered Amer­ica and in 1497 when Vasco Da Gama man­aged to cir­cum­vent the con­ti­nent of Africa and reach the East, this began the process of the emer­gence of the west as the cen­tre of the world. The rise of the US expanded the west to include North Amer­ica and polit­i­cal, eco­nomic, social, cul­tural as well as the global rules have been deter­mined by the west for over 500 years. A num­ber of trends that have been evolv­ing in recent decades that indi­cate the future may be an Asian cen­tury and even if cur­rent trends per­sist, global power will be mov­ing from the West to the East. The National Intel­li­gence Esti­mate (NIE) stated in 2012 in its global trends 2030 report: "The dif­fu­sion of power among coun­tries will have a dra­matic impact by 2030. Asia will have sur­passed North Amer­ica and Europe com­bined in terms of global power, based upon GDP, pop­u­la­tion size, mil­i­tary spend­ing, and tech­no­log­i­cal invest­ment. China alone will prob­a­bly have the largest econ­omy, sur­pass­ing that of the United States a few years before 2030."[1] The Asia-Pacific region has been the fastest-growing region in the world for the past half cen­tury. It con­tains two of the world's largest economies, those of Japan and China, along with other East Asian economies.

At 2.2 bil­lion peo­ple in the begin­ning of the 21st cen­tury, the Asian pop­u­la­tion is pre­dicted to grow to more than 2.5 bil­lion by 2050. While it's per­cent­age of the world pop­u­la­tion is not expected to greatly change, North Amer­i­can and Euro­pean shares of the global pop­u­la­tion are expected to decline with Ger­many and much of Europe already on the cusp of pop­u­la­tion decline. At some point in the next 35 years China is expected to over­take the US as the world's largest econ­omy. Europe and North Amer­ica com­bined gen­er­ate just over $31 tril­lion cur­rently, with the Asia-Pacific gen­er­at­ing around $20 tril­lion. On the cur­rent tra­jec­tory Asia-Pacific will nearly dou­ble its share of global gross domes­tic prod­uct (GDP) to 52% by 2050, Asia would regain the dom­i­nant eco­nomic posi­tion it once held. As eco­nomic and even­tu­ally polit­i­cal power shifts from the West to the East the EU and nations like Britain will have to bat­tle against falling into irrelevance.

The Euro­pean Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Don­ald Tusk warned Britain of the dan­gers of leav­ing the EU. "Why is it so dan­ger­ous? Because no one can fore­see what the long-term con­se­quences would be. As a his­to­rian, I fear that Brexit could be the begin­ning of the destruc­tion of not only the EU but also of west­ern polit­i­cal civ­i­liza­tion in its entirety."[2] West­ern civ­i­liza­tion in realty faces a far more fun­da­men­tal chal­lenge. After the col­lapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, lib­er­al­ism was con­sid­ered to be the last ide­ol­ogy left stand­ing. But in the past few years extreme cli­matic, social, eco­nomic and polit­i­cal con­di­tions have all con­verged to put West­ern civil­i­sa­tion under extreme strain and it has been often exposed to have lit­tle or no clue on how to resolve the mul­ti­tude of prob­lems that stem from the inter­de­pen­den­cies of these extreme con­di­tions. Global prob­lems such as wealth inequal­ity, global warm­ing, the break­down in the fam­ily struc­ture and pop­u­la­tion decline due to declin­ing fer­til­ity rates have got worse as Cap­i­tal­ism has failed to solve them. But many of these issues exist as capitalism's focus on indi­vid­u­al­ism, self-interest and mate­ri­al­ism has been the unin­tended out­come. West­ern civil­i­sa­tion is strug­gling for sur­vival, irre­spec­tive of the EU and Britains ref­er­en­dum vote.

Global trends for the remain­der of the 21st cen­tury are forc­ing nations such as Britain to adapt to the chang­ing global land­scape. The EU and Britain's posi­tion are just a few of these trends, the rise of China, Ger­many, the end of the Amer­i­can cen­tury and the ris­ing demand for Islam are also trends that are affect­ing global power and forc­ing the world's pow­ers to eval­u­ate their posi­tions to ensure they come out on the right side of history.

Edi­tor's Note: This arti­cle is taken from Adnan Khan's forth­com­ing report – Global Trends for the 21st Cen­tury. Fif­teen of the most impor­tant global trends for the remain­der of the 21st cen­tury are analysed.

 

 

 

[1] Global Trends 2030, Alter­na­tive worlds, National Intel­li­gence Esti­mate (NIE), 2012, pg IV, https://globaltrends2030.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/global-trends-2030-november2012.pdf [2] http://uk.businessinsider.com/donald-tusk-bild-interview-brexit-2016–6?r=US&IR=T

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