Brexit: advance to the abyss with eyes wide open – 02/11/2019

Observe a sophisticated democratic society knowingly walk towards disaster Predictable and preventable national is a unique and alarming experience. Most British politicians know that leaving the European Union without an agreement on the post-Brexit relationship will result in a huge damage to your country. They do not go into the abyss like somnambulists, but with wide eyes.

There is a minority of gullible ideologues who do not feel concerned by the prospect of Britain leaving the EU without agreement. Some dreamers on the right, safe from the press, think that the tenacious spirit of Dunkerque will overcome the first setbacks and that Britain will return soon to rule the seas as a great power almost imperial, but without empire. And on the left, neo-Trotskyists like Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labor Party, the main opposition, seem to think that the catastrophe will push the British people finally to demand a true socialism.

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Most left and right politicians are important enough to know all this, including Prime Minister Theresa May, who before Brexit was in favor of keeping the UK in the EU. And yet, almost everyone refuses to move their finger to avoid sinking into a catastrophic exit without agreement.

Proposals that have been made to Parliament for delay or alternatives to May's unpopular exit strategy have been rejected.

It seems that the collective will of British politicians was paralyzed by partisan tactics, jingo media and a strange indifference everything that happens outside the British Isles. Instead of taking steps to avoid the worst, they are mistaken in thinking that more negotiations and concessions in Brussels will save the UK at the last minute.

Although unusual, This particular national suicide show is not unprecedented. The drift of Japan towards a calamitous war with the United States in 1941 is an example. It is true that there are obvious differences: despite all the nostalgia of Spitfires and Dunkirk, Britain does not threaten to wage war on anyone, while the Japanese democracy was stifled by military factions and a authoritarian state control. Nevertheless, the similarities are remarkable.

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A relatively small number of exalted soldiers, motivated by quasi-fascist ideologues and middle-ranking officials, really wanted to go to war with the West. Most politicians, including generals and admirals, knew that it was foolish to provoke a clash with an extremely superior military and industrial power. But somehow they could not or did not want to stop it. There are even those who have repeated the extreme rhetoric of the exalted without believing … A bit like May, supporters of the tough Brexit played.

The chief strategist of the Pearl Harbor attack, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, a very intelligent character who had studied at Harvard and knew the United States very well, had been a staunch opponent of the war. In the vain hope that the negotiations would prevent a raging war, he fulfilled his duty and conceived the plan. The Prime Minister, Prince Konoe Fumimaro, whose son was a student at Princeton, I also wanted to avoid the war.

He continued to demand more meetings for the Americans, while sending confusing signals and waiting for the impossible concession demanded by the Japanese extremists against whom he was too weak and undecided.

There has been a lot of talk about deadlines that could be met or that could be extended. As for the Brexit negotiations with the EU, the Americans have never been very clear about what the Japanese really wanted. In fact, even the Japanese themselves did not know it. The last hope of men who saw the imminence of the disaster, but who refused to act, is that more conversations with the Americans will save them. In the end, they got tired of talking, millions died and Japan almost disappeared from the map.

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The immediate reaction of the Japanese to the announcement of the Pearl Harbor attack was a kind of relief. Finally, there was a little clarity. Everything was better than the endless showdown. Now that Japan really uses its own means, the Japanese version of the tenacious spirit could perhaps get them out of the quagmire. Like the British, the Japanese feel a perverse attraction to "magnificent isolation". And fighting the Western imperialists was at least more honorable than trying to control the Chinese at the time of the mbadacres.

It is quite possible that a Brexit without agreement has a similar effect on the British. You can not blame the citizens for getting tired of the discussions in Parliament and endless negotiations with the EU that seem to never succeed. People can resist up to a certain level of uncertainty and then prefer to prepare for the worst.

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Much of the British press, without the censorship that gagged Japanese public opinion in the 30s and 40s of the last century, was as patriotic as the Japanese media of the war years. It is possible that decades of anti-EU propaganda has persuaded many Britons to endure the hardships that a Brexit term will cause. Without a doubt, Many will blame these accursed foreigners for the scarcity of goods, rising prices, long queues at the points of entry and the loss of jobs.

But even if all this fades over time, disillusionment will soon occur, as in Japan once the euphoria of Pearl Harbor is over. There will be no bombing of British cities or invasions or occupation of the United Kingdom. We hope that no one dies. But Britain's influence will be drastically reduced, its economy will diminish and most people will worsen. Probably, the main characters after a hard Brexit (like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg) are not very affected. It will not be enough to blame them alone. People who know the consequences and do nothing to avoid them are the most shameful they should feel.

Copyright Project Syndicate, 2019.