Barack Obama is planning to make “a big, public reach-out” to British voters to stay inside the European Union, the chair of the US Senate foreign relations committee has revealed.
The plan emerged amid fears in Washington that the UK’s EU referendum is a dangerous gamble that could unravel with disastrous consequences for the entire continent.
His “reach out” is likely to focus on the need for the EU to stick together to combat the migration crisis and the growing threat of Russian aggression in the Baltics, Ukraine and Middle East.
But there are concerns in both Washington and London that an intervention by the US president has to be handled sensitively and could backfire unless it is pitched at the right geopolitical level.
That Obama thinks that Britain should stay in the E.U. is not news. I wrote a bit about it here and here. That he’s wrong about this is not news either. Getting things wrong is what Obama does. That Republicans appear to be joining in is, well, dispiriting:
The disclosure [about Obama] was made by the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, Bob Corker. It came after he and his fellow senators heard testimony from former Obama and George Bush administration staffers that they feared David Cameron’s referendum gamble was “very risky”, might backfire and lead to a Brexit vote, and then a consequent break up of the UK and a surge in support for separatist groups across Europe.
Corker, saying America’s problems pale in comparison with the EU, openly discussed with witnesses the best way for Obama to pitch his appeal to British voters. “I know the president is planning to make a pretty big public reach-out in this regard,” he said, adding: “how do you think the people of the UK will respond to us at the highest level embracing this?”
The answer, Senator Corker, is not particularly well.
And it’s bad advice too.
British membership of the E.U. is bad for the Anglo–American relationship. In the end, it will be bad for NATO as well. The only remotely serious argument against Brexit from a U.S. point of view is that, so long as the U.K. remains within the union, it can act as a brake on the worst of the E.U.’s anti-Americanism. This may have been what Damon Wilson, former European-affairs director at the National Security Council under George W. Bush, was (obliquely) referring to when he told Senator Corker’s committee this:
The United Kingdom may turn its back on the European Union this year, depriving us of a critical voice in shaping not only EU policy, but the future of Europe.
It is true that that voice used to count for quite a bit (in the 1980s and, even, the early 1990s) but now, well, not so much. The U.K. is the most consistently outvoted country within the E.U. Its ability to shape the E.U. in a way that the U.S. might appreciate diminishes every year. On the other hand, the ability of the E.U. to reshape the U.K. in a way that the U.S. would not appreciate grows ever greater.
And then from Mr. Wilson there was this:
[Brexit] may prompt Scotland to dissolve the United Kingdom, ending the “special relationship” as we know it. These moves could fuel separatist efforts in Catalonia and Wallonia, while opening the prospect of other states leaving the union.
Let’s deal with those points one by one.
Scotland — An irrelevance. A glance at the polling in Scotland (and in particular the fact that pro-U.K. voters are significantly older than the pro-independence crowd) suggests that Scottish independence is on its way, at least once the oil price recovers. Brexit might speed it up, that’s all.
Wallonia (the French-speaking part of Belgium) — It’s far more likely that the (Dutch-speaking) Flemings will quit Belgium than the economically moribund Walloons. And if they did, that’s only to be welcomed. Belgium is, on many measures, a failed state. It needs to be put out of its misery.
Catalonia — Quite why the U.S. should object to an independent Catalonia is beyond me. Or is national self-determination no longer something America supports?
Brexit would prompt other states to leave the E.U. — This is highly unlikely, to put it mildly, but if it did, so what?
Let’s be clear. The E.U. is evolving in a direction that is deeply destabilizing. If anything, it seems set on making a bad situation worse. It is incapable of reform. Britain is better off out. And, yes, America will be better off with Britain out.