The EU has spoken. The result is UK’s prime minister got a deal to carry back to his nation.
It’s up to the UK now, a banker told DW News on the 19th — not that it needed reminding,
“At the end of the road, the UK will decide whether they want to be in or out of the European Union.”
Telecast by BBC on Friday, UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, adamantly stated at his post-Brexit summit press conference,
“Britain will be Permanently out of an ever closer union, Never part of a European superstate. … Britain will Never join the euro.”
Regardless what she decides, it’s no longer just a matter of whether Britain votes to remain part of the EU or not. Europe, with or without her, is undergoing another one of its historical transitions.
Regeneration or Disintegration?
On January 27, 2016, Stratfor published an in depth article by Ian Morris on this very topic. It was later republished by other news sources. The headline read,
“Why Europe’s Great Experiment Is Failing”
Morris wrote,
“Between 1914 and 1945, Europeans killed more than 60 million people in two world wars, but by 2015 the European Union had become the safest place on Earth.”
According to Morris, the way the European Union developed is extremely rare.
“For 5,000 years, since the first states were created in what is now southern Iraq, governments have been using violence to create political unity and then using politics (and, when necessary, more violence) to create economic and cultural unity everywhere that their power reached. From 3000 B.C. through the late 1940s, it is hard to find a single example of a state formed in any other way.”
But the road the EU traveled is destined to change. Morris added,
“Since 2010, however, evidence has been mounting that the European path toward state formation only really works in the best-case scenario. Confronted by genuinely Hobbesian challenges of greed and desperate refugees, the limitations … have become clear.”
UK’s critical decision is just about 4 months away. Europe’s transition will take a little longer.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Number 10, Photographer: Georgina Coupe; License: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
