Britain's Brexit tantrum grates in a brittle world but the die is cast
Declassified US intelligence files show that Washington funded the EU project for decades, but the US would adapt to a post-Brexit UK
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
David Cameron did not know that the world was about to turn nasty when he first set the EU referendum in motion in early 2013 Photo: AFP
Moral blackmail is creeping into the Brexit debate.
We are told that it would be deeply irresponsible to walk away from the European project at a moment when the EU is struggling for its life, and doubly wicked to do so in the midst of a geostrategic storm that threatens to overwhelm the Western liberal democracies.
It is certainly a dangerous time. An exhausted America has lost the will to police the Middle East, leaving a lethal vacuum and a three-way struggle between Saudi Arabia, Iran and a neo-Ottoman Turkey drifting ever further from the Western camp.
Four wars are raging across the region, and we are not far from an epic settling of scores between the Sunnis and Shias. The ISIS caliphate still controls Mosul, Iraq's second city, and jihadi ideology is spreading across southern Asia. Even the Maldives have become an ISIS recruiting ground.
An exhausted America has lost the will to police the Middle East
China blows hot and cold. It chose to work hand in glove with the US at the Paris climate summit, but is acting as a predatory imperial power in its own neighbourhood, asserting military control over the reefs and atols of the South China Sea with complete disregard for the competing claims of other states.
Beijing has shrugged off a case lodged by the Philippines at the international tribunal in The Hague, even though it is a signatory to the convention on the law of the seas. This is the litmus test of Xi Jinping's "China Dream".
A heavily-armed Russia has overturned a recognized border by military invasion, the first time this has happened in Europe since the Second World War. It has violated its solemn pledge in the 1994 Budapest accords to uphold the territory of Ukraine after Kiev agreed to give up its nuclear weapons.
To the extent that Vladimir Putin has been checked, it is in part because he has so far failed to break Europe's unified front. He admitted to Bild Zeitung this week that Western sanctions are "severely harming Russia", as indeed they are, since the freeze on foreign funding has compounded the crash in oil prices.
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A heavily-armed Russia has overturned a recognized border by military invasión
Yet he is still testing the credibility of Nato's Article 5 on a weekly basis. Nato jets had to scramble 160 times last year to intercept Russian aircraft over the Baltics.
It is a little disturbing that India, Brazil and South Africa - though democracies - have refused to utter a whisper of reproof against Russia for tearing up the rules of global governance. The "Brics" alliance comes first.
David Cameron did not, of course, know that the world was about to turn nasty when he first set the EU referendum in motion in early 2013, but critics are clearly right that this is a terrible time for Britain to throw a tantrum.
Even so, it is a stretch to argue that Britons should forgo their one chance to restore full parliamentary control over their laws, courts and borders, given that this referendum is surely the only chance they have to issue their verdict on 40 years of EU conduct. Alea iacta est.
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It is a stretch to argue that Britons should forgo their one chance to restore full parliamentary control over their laws, courts and borders
There is no necessary reason why Brexit should in any way alter the UK's role in the security structure. It remains a member of Nato. European defence is, in any case, a Franco-British venture, and this would go on exactly as before.
Nor should we forget what happened when France and Britain went to war in Libya in 2011 to prevent a massacre in Benghazi, backed by the Arab League, Spain and Italy, and acting under the United Nations' "duty to protect".
Germany lined up with the dictatorships in the Security Council against its EU allies, much to the disgust of former vice-chancellor Joschka Fischer. You can argue that the Libyan campaign was ill-conceived, but you cannot pretend that there was any such thing as an EU foreign policy.
Needless to say, Washington wants Britain inside the EU tent making the Atlanticist case for it.
We know from declassified State Department files that US intelligence agencies funded the proto-EU movement in the 1950s and 1960s, using a network of spies from the former Office of Strategic Services under General William Donovan to funnel money to front groups.
Washington wants Britain inside the EU tent Photo: AFP/GETTYThe documents show that leaders of the European Movement and others who played a key role in the creation of European Community were treated as hired hands in Washington's Cold War strategy, receiving half their budget from the US. The EU has always been an American project, even if it later slipped US control.
America prefers to deal with a unified Europe as a matter of convenience and its anti-Brexit rhetoric should be taken with a pinch of salt. The White House would come to terms with the reality of British withdrawal within 24 hours, seeking the best way to perpetuate a historic alliance under what is for them slightly altered circumstances. The relationship would probably be even closer.
An incendiary column by a Dutch writer in The Guardian this week argued that the EU should "turn the tables on bullying Britain" and punish us for kicking Europe when it is down, and for behaving badly when the world is going to ruin. He urged Brussels to "spell out all the ways in which we will make the English suffer".
It is an attitude one encounters from time to time in the corridors of the Berlaymont and the Justus Lipsius building, but it is an odd argument to make if you are worried about global stability. European leaders must operate in the real world. They will surely be keener to bury the hatchet and reach a modus vivendi with the UK as soon as possible, precisely because the strategic stakes are so high.
Personally, I have not yet decided how to vote, hesitant perhaps because I have spent so much of the past quarter-century grappling with the politics of Europe. My decision will be based on:
1) Whether Brexit poisons relations between England and Scotland, and whether it creates an impossible situation for Ireland, a country for which we have a special duty of care. Concord within these Isles' matters must be paramount.
2) Whether Britain's withdrawal would upset the internal chemistry of the EU, lead to a toxic German hegemony that the Germans themselves do not want, and ultimately set in motion a disorderly breakdown of the European system.
3) Whether the whole process of EU integration has run it course, and it is safe to conclude that our sovereign parliaments will be respected, or whether the elites will continue to seize on every crisis to push further.
4) Whether we can share a judicial union - with an automatic EU arrest warrant on the word of a magistrate, who may or may not be a scoundrel - with three or four member countries under authoritarian control, either led by pocket-Putins, or without a safe rule of law and a free press, and in two cases essentially mafia states.
Theresa May's decision to opt back into 35 criminal and police "JHA" measures when we had a legal opt-out will weigh heavily. She did so overriding the scrutiny reserve resolution of Parliament and in breach of Cabinet Office guidelines.
5) Whether the eurozone can ever be made to work, or whether it is a doomsday machine with a depressionary Fiscal Compact and misaligned exchange rates that will grate forever, so distorting the EU that its all-consuming mission is just to save the euro, and by whatever means.
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David Cameron, the Prime MinisterAny scare tactics, let alone threats from Brussels, will harden British euroscepticism. An appeal to altruism, to the national myth of fair play, has a much higher chance of succeeding.
As for Mr Cameron's four negotiating points: what were they again?
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