A nasty Brexit threatens the West

Mrs May's Checkers plan would allow British products to continue to be freely sold in the EU after Brexit, while services would be governed by different rules. In return, Britain would accept European standards for manufactured and agricultural products. From the point of view of many Europeans, even those who sympathize with the United Kingdom, the plan seems to represent an effort to continue to enjoy the benefits of membership of the European Union while accepting the obligations of other European countries. EU. In addition, EU leaders believe that if the path to secession is easy, further departures could take place and the union will be inexorably weakened.

Many Brexit opponents, both in the UK and on the continent, hope that the chaos of a Brexit without agreement will result in a second British referendum. Next time, they hope, a reprimanded British audience will vote to stay. But repeating the referendum until people vote "in the right way" is more likely to fuel the populist anti-Brussels sentiment in the EU than to repress it.

The United States has so far not participated in discussions between the UK and its EU partners. This is not because he has no interest in this matter. From the American point of view, a transaction-free Brexit that weakens Britain and poisons the United Kingdom. relations would be a disaster. This would undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and one of the major allies of the United States. And if a radicalized Labor Party takes power as a result of a Brexit disaster, the survival of the transatlantic alliance could be threatened. The United Kingdom itself could separate. In the United States, it is crucial that any divorce settlement maintains western and allied cohesion in a dangerous world.

Some Europeans may consider Brexit primarily as a matter of economy, but it is also inevitably a major security problem for the West. The relationship between Britain's post-Brexit and the rest of the West can not be evaluated simply as an internal matter for the EU. Britain may be leaving the EU, but it is not leaving the western alliance led by the United States. The consequences of a nasty and brutal Brexit for the Atlantic community are too important for Washington to ignore.

European leaders who take a hard line against Ms May underestimate the role played by the UK in supporting the United States in support of Europe. President Trump hesitated in his commitment to NATO as a whole. But for many constituents of the Trump base – voters indifferent or even hostile to US involvement in European security – the UK is in a similar category to Israel: a country whose defense raises feelings of solidarity and honor. There is no other European country whose place in American affections is as deeply rooted and felt as the United Kingdom. The perception in the United States that an inflexible EU wrongly punishes Britain for asserting its national sovereignty would have profound and lasting consequences for US EU views.

A stiff EU approach to Brexit would strengthen the hands of the Trump administration, favoring a total trade war with Europe and a weakening of the US commitment towards European security. The EU's approach to Britain will be considered at the highest level of the administration as a fundamental test – a measure of France's and Germany's commitment to NATO and transatlantic relations.

This does not mean that the United States expects Great Britain to maintain a privileged position in the single market. The EU's position that non-members can not enjoy all the privileges associated with membership is both reasonable and fair. But while NATO and the transatlantic partnership still make sense in Europe, the spirit of solidarity of alliances must prevail over narrow political considerations.

The strongest part can afford to be generous; This is the spirit that has governed the Western alliance since the 1940s. A Washington "America first" and an inflexible Brussels now risk neglecting this truth. Without magnanimity on the part of its principal members, the Western alliance will not last long.