Britain’s exit from the European Union would have far-reaching consequences for ties between the United Kingdom and United States of America, writes guest columnist Tom O’Bryan. This is a revised version of an oped article published in The Hill on December 30, 2015.
Britain lurches ever closer to the European Union’s exit door.
As a British millennial committed to our special relationship with the United States of America, I’m concerned. Americans should be too.
By this time next year, America’s “closest and most reliable ally” may become the first ever country to vote to leave the E.U. in the institution’s sixty-year history.
A so-called “Brexit” would be damaging for Britain’s economy, security and society. It would also be detrimental for our partnership with America. The U.S. – U.K. bilateral investment relationship is the largest in the world. U.S. exports to Britain were worth nearly $54 billion in 2014 alone, and Americans make over 3 million trips to the U.K. each year. London is also an important partner in the global effort to counter violent extremism.
While President Obama has voiced his concerns about Britain leaving the E.U., both Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush have signaled cautious support for Brexit. Democrats and Republicans alike should be anxious.
Prime Minister David Cameron’s pledge in January 2013 to hold a referendum on Britain’s E.U. membership was a calculated political move. Assuming he can negotiate a restriction on migrants’ benefits in the U.K., Cameron himself is said to support continued E.U. membership. Despite this, the Prime Minister has decided to offer the British people the opportunity to determine our country’s future relations with the continent.
At first it seemed to work: Cameron’s gamble helped the Conservative Party to win over Eurosceptic voters in an unexpected and decisive general election victory earlier this year.
But it’s now clear that gamble has backfired.
Just a year ago, 61% of the British public opposed leaving the E.U. Yet there is growing popular frustration with perceived waste and inefficiency in Brussels, fomented by a well-funded and well-organized ‘Out’ campaign. Today, voters are evenly split.
The Conservative Party is now divided by a “civil war” over Europe reminiscent of the Margaret Thatcher era, with “most Conservative parliamentarians” defying the Prime Minister in their support for the U.K. leaving Europe.
Brexit is now a very real possibility in 2016: Conservative Party insiders believe the referendum will likely be held as soon as June. An ‘out’ vote would affect America’s national interests in a myriad of ways.
Trade relations with the United States would certainly be damaged. The U.S. will gain $95 billion per year from a free trade agreement with the E.U. set to be concluded within the next year. But the U.K. would be excluded from this Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) if it leaves. This would also reduce the benefits of TTIP for the U.S. given Britain’s status as Europe’s second largest economy.
British Eurosceptics have justified cutting Brussels loose on the grounds that we will be able to “stay within some sort of free trade agreement with America.” However, the U.S. Trade Representative has categorically ruled out such a deal: we would be subject to the same trade restrictions as China, Brazil or India.
Brexit could have consequences for American jobs, too. British businesses and affiliates employ almost one million American workers, and over 90% of Britain’s fastest-growing enterprises believe an ‘out’ vote would be bad for business. We should heed this emphatic endorsement of continued E.U. membership from the private sector.
David Cameron and Barack Obama at G8 summit, 2013. Public Domain Mark 1.0
U.S. national security would also be compromised if Britain votes to leave Europe.
Growing up in southwest England, it’s all too easy to forget just how recently our country was devastated by war. My grandparents’ neighborhoods were damaged in air raids; their families evacuated; their friends wounded or killed. The physical and mental scars of war in Europe linger.
The European Union is one of the most successful experiments in post-conflict reconstruction in human history, and was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. France and Germany fought three wars over seventy years. Conflict between Berlin and Paris is now unthinkable: their peoples united in friendship and respect, their economies interlinked. In large part, that’s thanks to the E.U.
Today we face altogether different, but nevertheless substantial, threats to our security as demonstrated by a score of violent terrorist attacks across the continent in recent months. The proliferation of extremist networks – including but not limited to the Islamic State – across Europe directly threatens American national security. European countries must work together to counter violent extremism, identify and disrupt safe havens for terrorist networks, and effectively police sovereign borders.
It will be harder, not easier, to marshal and finance integrated European counter-terror operations if Britain withdraws from the E.U. Homeland security on both sides of the Atlantic will be threatened, not reinforced.
A post-Brexit British society would be more inward-looking, isolated and insular than it is today. These values are antithetical to the moral foundations that underpin our special relationship with America: a proud commitment to liberal internationalism, democracy, human rights and free trade.
In the interests of our mutual prosperity and security, America must hope that the British people embrace a future at the heart of the European Union.
The challenges that the next President of the United States inherits may be all the greater if they do not.
This blog first appeared on The Hill. It represents the views of the author and not those of the BrexitVote blog, nor the LSE.
Before responding please review our comment policy.
Tom O’Bryan is a U.K. Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University, representing Britain’s living memorial to President John F. Kennedy. He is also a U.S. State Department Young British Leader and former policy adviser to the Liberal Democrats. Follow him on Twitter @TomOBryanHKS.
This doesn’t make sense; if the US exported nearly 54 billion dollars worth of stuff to the UK, out of a potential 96 billion of expected ttip trade with the whole of the EU, including the UK, the US would be better off doing an individual trade deal with a, post Brexit, UK. I notice the writer fails to note the value of exports going towards America.
The value of 96 billion is on top of what it is today, and not the whole trade value between EU and US. See the study from the link provided in the text: ” The results indicate positive and significant gains for both the EU and the US. GDP is estimated to increase by 68-119 billion euros for EU and 50-95 billion euros for the US (under the less ambitious and the ambitious FTA scenarios, respectively).”
From the same report, EU outward FDI stocks towards US in 2010 was 1195 billion euro and EU inward FDI stocks from US was 1201 billion euro.
It makes sense.
I don’t suppose anybody has pointed out the hypocrisy of a nation founded on self determination stopping the old mother country from getting their self determination.
The interlinking economy and the UK being the largest single investor in the US is why the US will have a free trade agreement post Brexit and why the GOP is correct. They have one with Honduras, they will have one with the UK despite what Froman (Who along with his wife worked for the EU before working for Obama) says.
Oh and as for security, the US isn’t even sharing data on financial transactions in the wake of the Paris attacks. The reason is simple – the US trusts 5 Eyes, not the EU. NATO is the main driver for European security, the EU is merely something that gets in the way of this security.
I disagree. Certainly the UK taught the US nearly everything we know… altho we added a few wrinkles of our own, as well… and now we’re in different positions. As in 1945 and before, The Problem for both of us is not one another, but Europe — and as in 1945 and before, we can help one another with that shared problem, or each go our separate self-determined ways and then both suffer from the failures… our choice, yes…
The US is very isolated now, in foreign policy, for a vast variety of reasons… The UK, on the other hand, is at least plugged-in, has a seat at tables where we are not even welcome, in many places in the world still and particularly in Europe. So certainly the US welcomes UK help there via the Special Relationship. UK/US relations will continue even if there is a Brexit, but there would be that much less the UK could offer on the shared “Europe” problem, and that would be a loss to both.
Perhaps a great loss — and that’s why both US Americans and the British need to be very careful about this — because Europe is the world’s largest trading bloc, so there is real money involved — also, though, it has been and still might be one of the world’s most dangerous corners, hinges, places where things happen — remember 1945, and 1918, and 1875, and 1815, and… The very reason why the EU was founded was to prevent a repetition of those catastrophes — not the money, no, not even the economics, the sheer _politics_ of it, which were so poisonous at the beginning of the last century, and by the 1930s had become entirely-toxic — we both, the UK and the US, need to keep our hand-in there.
So let it be the British, please, who do that better than we do. London can do the banking better, too. Also Harris Tweed, beer, many wonderful things… We the US can offer technologies, and energies, and influence in Asia and elsewhere in places where the UK has less than it did before.
But there can be no purpose served by British isolationism: that would be a step backward, and once again perhaps a fatal one — the Europeans are becoming so desperate that they are courting all their Old Devils, now, including fascism, anti-semitism — there even is talk of a Madrid-Berlin-Moscow axis, an idea that’s been tried before with very fatal consequences — we’ll still be friends, of course, but Europe needs steadying now, and we both must move to help them rather than run.
No.
Britain must not keep engaged with Europe. Soon Britain will withdraw the last of its army from Europe & for the first time in over 70 years no British troops will be in continental Europe [apologies to Cyprus & Gibraltar].
Sure, Poland makes purring sounds to Britain & promises access to the single market if Britain leaves the EU & if British troops were to be stationed in Poland near the Masurian lakes [a heavy brigade]. But Poland is fond of offering what is not in its gift to give.
Leaving the EU does not mean isolationism for Britain at all. Far from it – Britain can learn from the ghastly mistakes of building the EU to form a grand trade alliance with powerful countries, Japan, Brazil, South Africa not to mention our friends [some would say family] in Canada, Australia & New Zealand. The World is out there looking for a trade group of democracies & forward looking free-traders.
Leave The EU!!!!
Depends on who is being set adrift… One famous UK headline, perhaps-apocryphal, read, “Fog In Channel, Continent Cut Off!”…
Isolationism has a long and not-so-distinguished history in both our countries, Tony. In neither case has it ever worked out very well. Usually that’s been the ostrich-problem: hiding heads in the sand gives time for problems to fester, and grow. For example earlier British intervention during the European 1930s might have averted the Second World War: that was Isolationism and even Appeasement, and when the time finally came Britain faced a crushed Poland, an alienated Russia, a defeated France, fascist Italy & Spain, and a fully-re-armed Third Reich — had the intervention come 10 years earlier things might have been very different, and a lot less terrible.
Ditto The Great War, ditto Franco-Prussia, Napoleon, in all the many such cases the delay was key — problems across the Channel do not simply go away, they fester and grow, often, and the Channel has proven nearly always to be a very weak defense system.
Remember too that the ties binding Britain to Europe are not simply military. Nowadays those ties are financial, digital, cultural, social, historical, and all-such deep and significant — breaking them now will disrupt British society as much as a military invasion would.
Turning the other direction, too, the Commonwealth and your Allies still love you dearly, but our World has changed as well. We all are jockeying for positions too, now. In Asia, Australia and New Zealand are trying, somewhat-desperately, to carve out strategic positions with New China and New India which will not leave them both as mere latifundia resource-producers — fungible commodities, remember, price-inelastic and so very vulnerable — to those two enormous emerging super-states, and at a time when commodity prices are severely depressed and may never recover, China and India are shifting to Services too. Japan is cratering, basically, so the Aussies and the Kiwis are losing a major and this-time-more-reasonable market there. Both still love the Queen but that doesn’t mean her UK government’s policies, and anyway sentiment seldom trumps self-interest.
I am sure you can set yourselves up as The Bankers — you are the best in the world now at that — remember too though that the status is a famously-floating one, has cropped up in other places before and will move to other places in the future — bankers are unsentimental, and now The Digital has made them very mobile. The City easily can become the premiere offshore center for World Finance, currently, but so nowadays or in the future can any number of other places located anywhere on the planet — Grand Bahama, Cyprus, Capetown, Nauru, Dubai, maybe the Japanese or Mr. Trump will build a floating-one in-fact and it will sail around the oceans, immaculately-cleansed and massively-defended, or filthy & hideous as Ridley Scott already has depicted — all it needs, these days, is laissez-faire & “connectivity”… might be a nice place to live but per Scott also it might not… Global Banking began in now-moribund & tiny Antwerp & Florence, though, so be careful — your friends in Manhattan can guide you re. some of the most recent risks.
To align with your friends tho you must see it from our perspectives. Everyone must bring cards to the table, of even a friendly poker-game…. One you possess now is very valuable, Europe, the World’s Largest Trading Block, so don’t throw that away needlessly. You can do both, after all, continuing on your current hard-won Special Membership path, be both Europe’s Banker _and_ The World’s… And Europe currently is crumbling, if it descends into chaos and becomes fascist or worse — as it has several times before — then all of the above, for all of us, and very much including your own opportunites, will be damaged beyond repair, and you still have the power to help them avert that. So don’t throw it away, and please don’t leave it to the last-minute, this time.
No one is talking about severing ties with Europe & it is ridiculous to state or hint at that.
Germany alone has over 1 million workers dependent on their exports to Britain &
Germany must safeguard their workers jobs. The same goes for other EU countries.
There are powerful forces at work trying hard to keep Britain in the EU & it is not difficult to quickly spot those who are of that ilk.
Mr. Kessler waxes lyrically about the US & Britain being best buddies & close allies. I remind Mr. Kessler of the Dulles Doctrine. When the US stabbed Britain in the back at Suez [1956] the British Foreign Secretary protested & said “But we are allies”, “yes, said Dulles [Secretary of State] we are allies – but we are not allies all over the World”.
That doctrine is now carved in stone.
We have excellent memories Mr. Kessler.
Thanks for your reply, but I think that if you exit the EU you exit Europe, in political reality, even if not in the merely economic and business sense — and it’s the EU that counts, here, that’s where policy, and mistakes, get discussed and made. You’d have the status of “guest”, same as the US, same as Russia, able to suffer the slings & arrows but no longer with your current exceptional-capacity to end them.
That last is from the European point of view — I know them well — remember that they are ever-touchy folks… A Brexit would be a “slap-in-the-face” for France, whatever the “mere”, as they too-often say, economic & business practicalitiies. The French are proud people, too-proud, qua américain I can recite countless vignettes for you of their putting that pride of theirs well in advance of their also-excellent but sometimes-secondary common sense. Look at those elections of theirs, voting with their hearts one Sunday and their heads the next — that last one was a very near thing.
Ditto the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Italians, others…pride, and very often before a fall… Brexit will “insult” them all.
Justified or even ridiculous, or not, that is the _political_ reality you face, with Brexit. Europe also is a centralized & authoritarian place, power and decision-making flow from the top down, they are not adept at muddling-through, which you, & we learned through you, use to moderate our mistakes.
So you will alienate the Europeans, with your Brexit: there goes your political capital, with them — and because of their different administrative structure your financial capital as well.
As for cherry-picking history, I don’t do that. If you truly believe the US was Britain’s enemy, in the Second World War or even at Suez, then we’ll just have to leave it at that. You and I have different understandings of the term “allies”, then, the truly-terrible Dulles notwithstanding.
So….let me see if I get this right.
Britain must remain in the EU otherwise France will be miffed. Is that it? And being miffed they will be unkind to Britain.
Britain is not Norway or Switzerland. Britain can & will drive forward with a new World wide free trade group having learned the dreadful lessons of EU mistakes.
The trade figures between the EU countries & Britain tell their own story. Too may jobs are at stake in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands & others. Too many to lose.
As to Cherry picking history, there was also the matter of the Falklands war when the US tried to prevent Britain from using the airfield on its own Ascension island & tried very hard indeed to stop Britain from using US supplied sidewinder missiles because “it was outside of the NATO area”. Subsequently of course the US miraculously found that Iraq & Afghanistan were in the NATO area.
“Allies” is not a term – it is an ever diminishing currency.
Britain ought to remain in the EU because it is in Britain’s interest to do so: you can contain your unruly closest neighbors, enjoy your soverignty, and retain your international role which we the US and your other friends need you to play, using your exising Special EU role 3 generations of your leaders have worked hard to carve out, it makes little sense simply to abandon it.
While that loss is obvious the advantages, to Britain, of Brexit are not clear: where & what is this “new world wide free trade group” you mention, something to be invented? The world community has been trying for that for centuries without much success — last time it really existed was within the then-“global” empire of ancient Rome.
You appear to believe that you have The Europeans over-a-barrel — economically, in jobs — well they think that about you. Consider that you may both be wrong: you go your way, they go theirs, to the detriment of both, and both end up weaker — to your friends-outside, I believe uniformly, this appears to present a loss, to the global community, not a gain. The outside-world needs Europe as a strong player, not a weakened one — the other, newer, players are too inexperienced, untried & untested, they need steadier hands at the table still.
My own point about your cherry-picking history is that I won’t do it… If you wish actually to re-fight The Falklands tactics in order to snipe at Americans now, please do so somewhere else, ditto Suez, ditto the Second World War: sheer armchair-historicism — all that was a long time ago and seems pretty-well settled, to me — happy always to engage in rigorous academic analyses, but not for idle sniping, it dishonors the dead to snipe at them idly when they can’t fight back. Analysis, then, but not retribution or revisionist agendas.
As for “allies”, at Suez and so on — the essence of having an ally is being able to talk frankly, get honest input, disagree while retaining mutual respect — I won’t quote Churchill to someone British, but I encourage you to read again or look-up what he wrote about it, for the prime example his relationship with FDR was hard work but both sides benefited greatly: and it succeeded, in the final analysis, we both won that one.
You mention Churchill. Well Churchill said that you can always depend on the US to do the right thing – after it has exhausted every other possibility.
The US is indeed an ally. However, when you really need the US it is not there. I was not sniping at Americans – I was pointing out facts which you wisely chose not to comment on.
You totally miss the salient point which is that this time it is the people who will determine everything & they are not well disposed to the elitists who created the dreadful EU systems & policies & crucially they ignore all of your arguments, even if they bother to read them, which I doubt.
As for the great alliance it was de Gaulle who said that an alliance is like a pretty girl – it lasts as long as it lasts.