{"id":25454,"date":"2016-03-22T14:30:40","date_gmt":"2016-03-22T03:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=25454"},"modified":"2016-03-18T16:03:08","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T05:03:08","slug":"brexit-is-patriotic-for-britons-and-smart-for-australia-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/brexit-is-patriotic-for-britons-and-smart-for-australia-too\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Brexit\u2019 is patriotic for Britons\u2014and smart for Australia, too"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for Britain\u2019s leaders to heed the words of US Army general<\/span> Eric Shinseki<\/span><\/a>: \u2018If you don\u2019t like change, you\u2019re going to like irrelevance even less\u2019. <\/span><\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s current institutions no longer meet its member states\u2019 needs, and its glacially slow processes for reform threaten to allow Europe\u2019s political, economic, and cultural heritage to be fatally weakened. The surprisingly<\/span> strong electoral showing<\/span><\/a> of the German nationalist party, Alternativen f\u00fcr Deutschland, provides a<\/span> cautionary tale<\/span><\/a> for governments that claim to \u2018<\/span>know better<\/span><\/a>\u2019 than the citizenry. On the other hand, an economically strong and politically liberal Britain becomes an even more attractive partner for Australia.<\/span><\/p>\n

An independent and strong Britain holds the potential to reverse the dangerous trend toward a<\/span> non-national<\/span><\/a> \u2018European\u2019 army that directly threatens the viability of NATO. That\u2019s especially important given the continued threat posed to European security by an aggressive, expansionist Russian foreign policy. The<\/span> half-measures<\/span><\/a> proposed by the US won\u2019t suffice to check a determined Vladimir Putin, and only Britain has the military and moral power to unite the Europeans against him\u2014a task impossible to accomplish as one of 28 co-equal members. In addition to a robust defence of a rules-based international order, the<\/span> UK National Security Strategy<\/span><\/a> and Australia\u2019s new Defence White Paper echo each other on counterterrorism, international engagement and a desire to seek manoeuvre space between China and the US.<\/span><\/p>\n

Equating a \u2018<\/span>no<\/span><\/a>\u2019 vote on the issue of Britain\u2019s remaining a member of the EU with a Briton\u2019s patriotic duty is illogical. The EU is the nemesis of national sovereignty and nation-state patriotism, a fact visible in the many binding \u2018laws\u2019 it enacts every year. Even Stuart Rose, champion of the \u2018Remain\u2019 movement,<\/span> admits<\/span><\/a> that EU policies depress the wages of British workers and disincentivise the hiring of UK citizens. One can be forgiven for concluding that the European Council would rather \u2018<\/span>dissolve the people and elect another<\/span><\/a>\u2019 than<\/span> make<\/span><\/a> meaningful procedural changes. In its imperviousness to local opposition, national custom, and (often) common sense, an EU law bears a greater similarity to a tsarist <\/span>ukase<\/span><\/i> than the product of parliamentary or republican democracy.<\/span><\/p>\n

The EU bureaucracy\u2019s insistence on its right to intervene at every level of member states\u2019 government means that the vast majority of ordinances directly affecting daily life are foreign impositions against which British citizens have no recourse. As Michael Gove so eloquently<\/span> wrote<\/span><\/a> in his defence of a \u2018yes\u2019 vote, \u2018… whoever is in Government in London cannot remove or reduce VAT, cannot support a steel plant through troubled times, cannot build the houses we need where they\u2019re needed and cannot deport all the individuals who shouldn\u2019t be in this country.\u2019 This isn\u2019t right, it isn\u2019t just, and it isn\u2019t democracy. A referendum on continued membership is the necessary and preferred solution.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the late 19th and early 20th Century, members of the \u2018progressive\u2019 wings of the US Republican and Democratic parties succeeded in making referendum (as well as such democratic exercises as initiative, referendum and recall) a<\/span> key element of progressive policies<\/span><\/a>.<\/span> Comparison of the June \u2018Brexit\u2019 referendum to the 1938 <\/span>Anschluss<\/span><\/i><\/a> plebiscite is misleading and inappropriate, since doing so implicitly equates the 1938 one-party Nazi state with the UK\u2019s parliamentary democracy of 2016. In recent years many scholars have argued that referenda, when conducted in countries with a mature democratic political tradition, are crucial correctives for out-of-touch or out-of-control governments (see for example<\/span> Butler and Ramsey<\/span><\/a>,<\/span> David B. Magleby<\/span><\/a>, and<\/span> Nathaniel A. Persily<\/span><\/a>). Australia has its own legacy of referenda since federation; the fact that most failed doesn\u2019t diminish their value as genuine expressions of popular will. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I am gladdened that patriotic Britons now justify their actions in part by reference to the American<\/span> Declaration of Independence<\/span><\/i><\/a>, that \u2018governments…deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed.\u2019 The <\/span>Declaration<\/span><\/i> also defends the people\u2019s right to dissociate themselves from any government that has demonstrated though \u2018a long train of abuses and usurpations\u2019 that it\u2019s less interested in fostering prosperity and freedom than in the arrogation of all power unto itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, we should be wary of those who conflate the failed Scots bid for independence with \u2018Brexit.\u2019 A British withdrawal from the EU isn\u2019t the equivalent of national disaggregation <\/span>\u00e0 la<\/span> Spain, and won\u2019t be accompanied by the same economic and security risks as Scottish secession posed.<\/span><\/p>\n

A successful \u2018Brexit\u2019 means a revitalised UK\u2014economically, militarily, and diplomatically. It will also present new opportunities for Australia to engage in the exercise of \u2018smart power\u2019 with a like-minded nation independent of ANZUS.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s time for Britain\u2019s leaders to heed the words of US Army general Eric Shinseki: \u2018If you don\u2019t like change, you\u2019re going to like irrelevance even less\u2019. The EU\u2019s current institutions no longer meet its …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":477,"featured_media":25455,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1631,790,1025],"class_list":["post-25454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-brexit","tag-britain","tag-european-union"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018Brexit\u2019 is patriotic for Britons\u2014and smart for Australia, too | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/brexit-is-patriotic-for-britons-and-smart-for-australia-too\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018Brexit\u2019 is patriotic for Britons\u2014and smart for Australia, too | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s time for Britain\u2019s leaders to heed the words of US Army general Eric Shinseki: \u2018If you don\u2019t like change, you\u2019re going to like irrelevance even less\u2019. 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