Anger over globalization threatens Europe and US

Little good can COME from the geopolitical divorce of the century that played out last week in the United Kingdom when voters chose to sever their 43-year union with the bulk of the European continent.

The nasty separation bodes ill for Great Britain, the West and the world on economic, security, political and other fronts. For Americans, its adverse impact already has socked the U.S. financial markets and has potential to throw a dangerous curve ball into this year’s already topsy-turvy presidential election.

The decision by a narrow 52 percent to 48 percent majority of Britons last Thursday to break free of the 28-member-state European Union was fueled in large part by anger and frustration at the politics of the powerful international coalition representing 508 million people.

It wasn’t always that way. In 1973, Great Britain joined the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the EU that was created in 1957 as a means to muster up greater economic and political unity as a weapon to battle extreme nationalism that ravaged the continent during two 20th-century world wars. In recent years, however, nationalistic, isolationist and xenophobic currents increasingly have raised their ugly heads, fueling last week’s rupture.

FALLOUT FROM SEPARATION

That unexpected rupture produced immediate and calamitous political and economic jolts. British Prime Minister David Cameron, a fierce proponent of the Remain movement, tendered his resignation, throwing the UK into political crisis.

The British pound tumbled 10 percent in value Thursday night, the sharpest one-day drop in that currency’s history. In the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the prime barometer of the fortitude of America’s financial health, plunged 611 points Friday, its eighth-largest one-day loss ever.

If anything, the stunning worldwide financial collapse should prove to any remaining doubting Thomases that the global economy is not a figment of anyone’s imagination. It is real and carries real consequences.

For the U.S., the crash, particularly if it is prolonged, will eat away at pension funds, 401(k)s and investments of Americans from all economic strata. Although analysts urge investors to be patient for hoped-for corrections, those nearing retirement age have little breathing room for long-term patience.

On a broader plain, the uncertainties created by Brexit are expected to heighten companies’ hesitation for investment and jobs growth at a time when the international economy – not to mention the American economy – sorely needs both.

Beyond economics, the new British declaration of independence will no doubt produce important international security quandaries. Brexit will weaken a long-standing and important link in the network of Western alliances that have worked to promote peace and stability since the end of World War II. It also will crack at the edges of the strong partnership the U.S. has enjoyed with a single and relatively united Europe over the past four decades.

HARBINGER FOR AMERICA?

But perhaps the biggest and most frightful impact of Brexit may be its effect on the American psyche as a potential harbinger of things to come here.

After all, one of the prime motivators behind Brexit’s success has been the rise in nationalism, populism and isolationism among a growing segment of the British public fueled by largely irrational fears over immigration policies.

Those same currents are running deep among a sizable segment of Americans today who have found a champion for their causes in the presidential candidacy of Republican Donald Trump. Trump is expected to be formally nominated as the Republican Party’s standard-bearer next month in Cleveland. He plays into such fears in his rejection of globalization, in his wall-building isolationist ideas and in his supercharged nationalism that has little room for tolerance of ethnic and religious minorities.

The always narcissistic Trump already has used the vote as a campaign prop and an affirmation of his ideologies and platform, callously disregarding the malaise and upheaval it has unleashed.

Today, in the aftermath, many Brits who voted to leave the EU now say they have second thoughts and that much of their anger was misplaced. For them, it is likely too late.

For Americans, the destructive outcomes of anger and frustration illustrated forcefully in Brexit should stand as a warning signal for those tempted to follow the same parochial and perilous path here.