EU breakup predicted to follow Brexit

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With the shocking, rebellious decision of the British people to leave the European Union in a recent referendum, analyses predicting the European Union's breakup should be revisited.

Describing the potential "leave" vote as a big loss for Britain's financial elite, on May 15 2015, historical expert and sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein had stated (as reported at this blog), "public opinion in more countries than Great Britain has become less and less enthusiastic about the EU and parties calling for a withdrawal are gaining strength."

Wallerstein wrote, also, "the EU is divided about how to respond to Russia’s reaffirmation of its political role in Europe, especially in relation to Ukraine. Adding a Brexit to this mix of difficulties might be just too much for the EU. The EU and the eurozone are a house of cards, which might simply collapse".

The EU is now in an economic and political war on two fronts, much as Hitler and Napoleon faced. With the loss of Britain, further political pressure on the EU over the Ukrainian crisis would be extremely demoralizing for remaining EU countries like Germany and France, who remember bitter historic defeats at British and Russian hands. It could be too much, with the EU overwhelmed by the economic and political consequences.

Such an analysis, however, was prior to the "Grexit" vote on Greek withdrawal, which had resulted in Greeks voting to remain in the European Union. The financial effects of a UK withdrawal, meanwhile, are potentially more extreme than Grexit due to Britain's eminent position in the EU and the world economy at large.

Also successfully predicted by Wallerstein was that Cameron would regret his electoral successes, which would ultimately strand him in failures and defeats even despite Scots voting to preserve the Union. With Cameron's resignation now certain, Wallerstein's brutal assessment of 2015-2016 political turbulence has proven true, just as his prediction of growing antistatism and regime collapse in the United States will come true.

Analysis by a different author at the US-based Stratfor intelligence firm just two days before the June 2016 referendum predicted:

If Britain leaves the European Union, it would throw the Continent into yet another political and economic crisis, giving Euroskeptic forces greater ammunition against the bloc and voters fewer reasons to defend it... regardless of what happens June 23, Britain has set a precedent that Brussels cannot stop other EU members from following.

While the French President, for example, has already rejected a request to hold a "Frexit" referendum, it seems abundantly likely that demoralized French and German officials will eventually have to agree to similar votes. With the loss of the second biggest economy in the EU already decided, any departure of its remaining big economies will simply caused the bloc to collapse.

The EU's failures to arrive at any common ground to save relations with Britain could signal greater problems in western supranational organizations and lead to the eventual dissolution of NATO.

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— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) June 24, 2016

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Brexit "beneficial" to trade: committee

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According to a British Parliamentary committee report, leaving the European Union could actually put Britain at certain economic advantages.

Various media have pointed out the battle of often inaccurate "claims and counter-claims made by both the leave and remain sides", as Treasury Select Committee Chairman Andrew Tyrie MP termed them.

The video below from 38 Degrees shows the endless trading of truths, half-truths and exaggerations by the two campaigns over the future of Britain and the EU.

Tyrie acknowledged, "the Committee confined itself to looking at economic costs and benefits. But this is only part of the story. For some, other issues are more important. As the founder of Leave.eu put it, for him: "this isn't about pounds and pence, it's about democracy"."

The "In" campaign tends to prey on economic fears. Head of Labour's "In" campaign Alan Johnson MP stated, "The economic evidence isn’t so much piling up as becoming a landslide: leaving Europe would hurt Britain’s economy." Anti-democratic war criminal Tony Blair said just holding the EU membership referendum itself is an "enormous economic problem".

However, there are actually strong arguments that leaving Europe would be economically wise and put Britain on a path to restoring its much-depleted international influence and wealth.

Britain outside the EU could enjoy what Tyrie called "potential beneficial opportunities". As the report stated, "high-quality trade agreements with countries like China, India and the United States" may become increasingly possible to sign after the United Kingdom is no longer constrained by EU regulations and dedication to the European market.

It is certain that there would be a major international realignment if Britain was outside the European Union. Whether Britain will become closer to the American regime or be pushed further away from it towards friendlier relations with emerging economies such as China is not clear.

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— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) May 27, 2016

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"Brexit" may need to be prior to 2017

The Blog

The European Union is an "undemocratically corporatized leviathan" and a "proxy for the agendas of the Western Establishment".

This is the view of Steve Topple, breaking with the perspective of much of the proclaimed British political left. Captured in an op-ed at PoliticalSift on 9 October 2015, Topple advocates a strategic British exit ("Brexit") from the EU before 2017.

From the op-ed:

Everything else we now recognise – the EEC, free trade agreements, free movement of people, the ECB – have all been installed as nothing more than levers to further (and protect) the rise of globalised capitalism.

Topple quotes Robert Griffiths, who described the EU as a "monopoly capitalist United States of Europe", explaining that it has become an imperialist actor competing at an increasingly military and economic level with other powers. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which the EU and the US have been negotiating, is sure to undermine the rights of workers and the sovereignty of the public by enabling private firms to sue the public (i.e. their national government). Further criticism is aimed at the European Central Bank and the European Court of Auditors, both of them being corrupt as their members belong to the same financial and corporate special interest groups.

The op-ed warns us that in 2017, EU states are projected to lose their veto rights over key areas of legislation. The EU will become drastically more powerful, with a mere 55% approval for a law in the EU resulting in the implementation of the law, thereby potentially being forced down the throats of entire populations protesting such law. According to Topple, this means the surrender of popular self-determination.

Even more worrying is the fact that states will in that year become unable to withdraw from the EU, according to the EU's new rules, Topple argues. Countries will need, again, 55% approval by the other countries in order to withdraw, and their own people's demands are to be excluded from any say in the process.

@MrTopple @PoliticalSift Curious what mechanism the #EU has in mind for blocking a country unilaterally exiting after 2017. War, perhaps?

— L'Ordre (@LOrdreNet) October 11, 2015

UK Prime Minister David Cameron promised a referendum in late 2017, after the British people will have lost any sovereign right to withdraw from the EU, if Topple's analysis is solid. While the possibility of unilateral withdrawal would still exist, the EU's increasing federalization and calls to construct an army hint at a possible conflict in the event of such "separatism".

Rather than a pure chauvinist iteration of Britain demanded by rightists as the alternative to the EU, however, Topple advocates a "borderless, socialist union" based on majority citizen interests rather than minority financial interests.

Look how @reason got schooled by @c4ssdotorg's @KevinCarson1 on @Pontifex's anti-#capitalism http://t.co/H1BULRHAep pic.twitter.com/rNhrGj8rHJ

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) October 10, 2015

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Greece: long vs short-term poverty?

The Blog

Explaining the dilemma facing Greece on whether to continue austerity to pay off debts, or to fight for "debt forgiveness", Immanuel Wallerstein offered the following commentary.

In order to put things in perspective, Wallerstein gives the following breakdown of the two sets of political actors and their arguments dueling over Greece's economic future:

The "reform" camp (i.e. the EU)

• "Greece’s difficulties are self-created because successive Greek governments and Greek citizens have spent recklessly money they didn’t have in order to sustain a collective life style beyond their level of collective income."
• Greece must cut "collective expenditures in order for it to repay its extensive loans."
• "Over time Greece will emerge stronger."
• Reform camp's "most vocal and uncompromising spokesperson has been Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. He has been making two main arguments: Greece should leave the Eurozone “temporarily” and Greece should be held to the strict payment of all outstanding debts."
• Greece's problems started "essentially when the military dictatorship was overthrown in 1974 and a left party, PASOK, led by Andreas Papandreou, emerged as a major force on the scene. This date puts the blame solidly on Greece itself for adopting the social-democratic policies of successive governments."

Anti-austerity camp (i.e. Syriza's supporters)

• “Austerity” is "cruel and heartless, forcing an ever-growing part of the Greek population into abject poverty." 
• "A regime of austerity will not, cannot lead to an end to the present acute depression in Greece."
• "Each successive loan has increased, not decreased, the rate of unemployment and has made it less possible to achieve its ostensible goal of restoring Greece’s “competitivity” in the world market."
• "Call instead for substantial debt forgiveness and a reversal of the demands of creditors that Greece make cuts in pensions and other parts of the social security net."
• Debt forgiveness has "increasing support from prominent economists like Joseph Stiglitz and from Christine Lagarde, the president of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)."
• Greece's problems started "earlier, somewhere in the 1930s, when the West European governments, and particularly Germany, imposed a subordinate quasi-colonial system in Greece. This puts the blame squarely on capitalist and imperial forces."

Once it came to power in 2015, the (formerly) radical left party Syriza "had to face up to the dilemmas of being the government, which does not allow the easy positions of being a radical opposition movement".

Syriza betrays the Greek people?

• Syriza promised voters it would not deal with the troika (IMF, The European Central Bank, and the European Union). However, Varoufakis found that no one would talk with him if he didn’t talk with the troika, and had no choice but to break this promise
• Referendum ended in victory for no (OXI) vote against the terms of further austerity
• Greek government committee voted down Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis' "Plan B" or "Grexit on Greece's terms" prompting Varoufakis to resign, despite that he had promised he would resign if the aforementioned vote resulted in a Yes, when in fact it resulted in a No (this confused many people)
• Many now see Syriza leader Tsipras as a "traitor" for agreeing to even harsher reforms than Greece had faced at the beginning of the negotiations

According to Wallerstein, Syriza has proven to disappoint the Greek people through no fault of its own but because of the constraints on any national government that come from the world-system. Any national government has to behave a certain way within the international community and Greece is no exception to this.

Syriza never envisaged any alternative plan than seeking state power, and now that it is in government, it has found that it has almost no options at all. Of the options that do exist, all appear to be bad for Syriza and are likely to result in resentment and a sense of betrayal among Greeks.

The choice facing Greeks can now be narrowed down to the long-term poverty imposed by the terms of loans that Greeks feel they will never be able to repay, and the short-term poverty of leaving the Eurozone. Leaving the Eurozone will have disastrous effects on the standard of living within Greece but will free Greece from the chains of debt. According to Wallerstein, that is the choice facing the Greek people at this juncture.

An alternative economy for the #Greek people and for the whole oppressed world http://t.co/UGE1yG7jZp pic.twitter.com/zMkiCDgwd9

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) July 22, 2015

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