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Brexit 사태를 맞이해서 오래간만에 찾아본 Wallestine 옹의 글입니다. '그렇군' 님이 블로그에서 지적한 바와 같이 영국의 EU탈퇴를 미국의 패권 몰락 측면에서 바라보는 입장이 참 재미있네요. 

http://iwallerstein.com/brexit-symptom-not-cause-of-turmoil/

On June 23, the referendum on a British withdrawal from the European Union (EU) won by a clear margin. Politicians and pundits have treated this as an unprecedented and earth-shaking decision. They have been giving various and quite contradictory explanations about the causes of this event and the consequences of this event for Great Britain and the rest of the world.

The first thing to note is that no legal decision to exit the EU has yet been taken. The referendum was, in legal terms, merely advisory. In order to withdraw from the EU, the British government must formally inform the EU that it is invoking Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, which is what provides the right and the mode of withdrawal. No one has ever invoked Article 50, so yes, it would be unprecedented. No one therefore can be sure how it would work in practice. While it seems most unlikely that any British government would ignore the referendum, strangely there has been no major British politician who seemed in a hurry to invoke Article 50, an action that would be irreversible.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who campaigned against Brexit, has said it will not be he who invokes Article 50. Rather, he has announced his resignation as Prime Minister – however not immediately but when the Conservative Party chooses a new leader. Cameron believes this person should be the one who invokes Article 50. This seems on the surface to be sensible. Once Article 50 is invoked, there will be many issues about Great Britain’s future relations with the EU and with other countries that will have to be decided and it might be best that these decisions be made by his successor.

The first question therefore is who will be his successor and when will this person be chosen. There is considerable pressure from other countries in the EU that this succession be done as soon as possible. In response to this pressure, the Conservative Party has set the date as September 2. There were until June 29 two main candidates: Boris Johnson, a leading advocate of Brexit but not yet a member of parliament; and Theresa May, who opposed Brexit but who shares some part of the objectives of the supporters of Brexit. It is stunning to learn that Johnson actually expected to lose the vote and therefore did not prepare a political map for what he should do after the referendum.

It seemed that Johnson wanted to “negotiate” Britain’s withdrawal. Article 50 provides a two-year period for working out post-withdrawal arrangements. This seems to allow for such negotiations. It also says that, if no agreement is reached, the cutting of all ties is automatic. What Johnson apparently wanted was a deal in which Great Britain retained the advantages of a common market but would no longer be bound by the EU’s constraints on immigration and human rights. The other countries in the EU have been showing no sympathy for such an arrangement. As Germany’s quite conservative Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said, they feel that “in is in and out is out.” Since “out” will have immediate negative consequences on the economic situation for most persons in Great Britain, and especially many of the supporters of Brexit, Johnson and others have been dragging their feet about invoking Article 50. This is probably what underlay Michael Gove’s last-minute decision to cease being Johnson’s campaign manager and to announce his own candidacy, backed immediately by most strong Brexit supporters. Gove, it seems, will not hesitate. Johnson has withdrawn his candidacy and is possibly quite relieved not to be the one who gets the blame for invoking Article 50.

What are the matters underlying this debate? There are essentially four: popular anger at the so-called Establishment and its parties; the geopolitical decline of the United States; the politics of austerity; and identity politics. All of them have contributed to the turmoil. But all of them have a long history that predates by far the Brexit referendum. The priorities among these four are different for the multiple actors, including the British who voted to leave Europe.

There is little doubt that popular anti-Establishment anger is a strong force. It has often erupted when economic conditions are uncertain, as they surely are today. If this seems a stronger motivation now than previously, it is probably because economic uncertainty is far greater than in the past.

Still it should be noted that anti-Establishment movements have not won out everywhere or consistently. The movements sometimes win out, and just as often do not. For successes, one can point to Brexit, Trump’s rise to being the de facto Republican presidential candidate in the United States, Syriza‘s becoming the governing party in Greece, and Rodrigo Duterte’s election as President of the Philippines. On the other hand, see the recent electoral defeat of Podemos in Spain or the signs of some voter remorse already in Great Britain. The life span of such movements seems to be relatively short. So, even if stronger today than in the past, it is not at all sure that such movements are the wave of the future.

The geopolitical consequences of Brexit are probably more important. Great Britain’s withdrawal from Europe deals a further blow to the ability of the United States to maintain its dominance in the world-system. Great Britain has been in many ways the indispensable geopolitical ally (or is it agent?) of the United States in Europe, in NATO, in the Middle East, and vis-à-vis Russia. There is no substitute. That is why President Obama strongly and publicly supported the Remain vote in Great Britain and, after the referendum, has sought to persuade Great Britain to remain a close ally. That is why Henry Kissinger, in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journalof June 28, called for the United States to seek “to transform setback (the Brexit turmoil) into opportunity.” How? By reinforcing the “special relationship” with Great Britain and for the United States to redefine its role in “a new kind of leadership, moving from dominance to persuasion.” Kissinger is clearly worried. It sounds like whistling in the dark to me.

Austerity is obviously nobody’s desired policy, except for the ultra-rich who alone profit from it. The fear of increased austerity, as promised by the British government, surely contributed significantly to the move for Brexit, which was promoted as a way to reduce austerity and secure a better future for the vast majority of the population. Austerity is another theme that today is worldwide – both as practice and as cause for fear and anger. There is nothing special about the British situation in this regard. Modal income has been going down there for a quarter-century at least, as it has been everywhere.

The economic turmoil and the fears it provokes have resulted in the prominence of identity politics – Britain for the British (actually for the English), Russia for the Russians, South Africa for the South Africans, and of course Donald Trump’s America for the Americans. This underlies the call for controlling, even eliminating, immigration. As a bugaboo, there is nothing easier to use than immigration. But identity politics is a loose cannon. It doesn’t have to center on immigration. It can concentrate on secession – in Scotland, in Catalonia, in Chiapas. The list is long.

What shall we conclude from all these currents and countercurrents? Brexit is important as a symptom but not as a cause of turmoil. Since the turmoil is part of a chaotic structural crisis in the modern world-system, it is impossible to anticipate the many ways in which this scenario may play out in the next few years. The short run is too volatile. We are not paying enough attention to the middle run, where the long-run successor world-system (or systems) will be decided, and where the decision remains dependent on what we do in the middle-run struggle.

- 2015.9, George Friedman

1492년 신세계를 정복한 스페인에서부터 1992년 소련의 붕괴에 이르기 까지 유럽은 세계의 중심이었다. 하지만, 지금 유럽은 위기를 겪고 있다. 그 위기의 본질은 다음과 같다. 평화와 번영을 약속하며 만들어진 EU라는 체계가 평화와 번영을 보장하지 못하는 것처럼 보일때, 과연 유지될 수 있을 것인가?

이 책은 다음과 같은 세 가지 질문을 던지고 이에 대한 답을 찾으려는 노력의 결과이다. 

 - 왜 유럽이 세계를 변화시켰는가?

 - 왜 유럽 문명은 31년간의 세계 대전을 야기시켰는가?

 - 앞으로 유럽은 어떻게 될 것인가?

유럽의 과거를 돌아보고, 현재 유럽의 문제점을 이야기하고, 앞으로 어떻게 될지를 예측하는 책. 지금 당장은 유럽이 평온해 보이지만, 그 이면에서는 갈등이 커지고 있으며 이 갈등을 쉽게 봉합되기는 어려워 보인다는 것이 작가의 통찰이다. 

저자는 현재 EU에 내재한 불안정을 이야기한다. EU의 경제적 중심은 독일이다. 이에 반해 EU의 정당성을 부여하는 것은 프랑스이다. 프랑스와 독일은 2차 세계대전에서 적국으로 싸웠지만, 냉정기간 중 유럽의 주도권 회복을 위한 서로의 이해관계가 일치하자 EU를 통해서 협력하게 되었다. 그러나, 현재의 경제위기는 경제정책을 두고 두 국가의 이해관계가 서로 엇갈리게 만들었다. 독일은 아직 낮은 실업율에 기인한 흑자재정정책을 추구하고 있지만, 이미 실업률이 높아지기 시작한 프랑스는 경기부양을 포함한 보다 적극적인 경제정책을 선호하게 만들었다. 

다음은 책에서 highlight 한 부분 중 일부 발췌...

- Science is not necessarily atheistic. It does not have to deny the existence of a spiritual realm that it cannot provide guidance to.

- The enemy of science is superstition, beliefs based on authority rather than evidence.

- The Enlightenment sought to rid the world of myths, but the nation could not justify itself without them.

- The three shocks to European culture - Copernicus, Columbus, and Luther - ultimately shattered the European order, freeing Europe and then mankind and creating a single global culture.

- Marxist philosophy was the summation of the Enlightenment.

- The Enlightenment had created humanity, and humanity is far too vast a place for a man to find himself. He needs a smaller place.

- Where the British continued to dream of empire, the Germans waited for others to decide their fate, and the rest of Europe clung to a dubious prewar model, the French were the first to shift their position.

- Binding Germany and France together forced the rest of Western Europe to align with this core group.

- It was in Gaullism that the most ambitious and genuinely European vision of integration originated.

- The ECB inevitably created monetary policies that were optimal for Germany and less so for Greece. Multiply this by all the variations in Europe, and the core problem begins to emerge.

- Hannah Arendt, a postwar philosopher, once said that the most dangerous think in the world is to be rich and weak. Wealth can only be protected by strength.

- Russia needs buffers, and historically that is Poland.

- What remains true is that Islam and Christianity were obsessed with each other from the first encounter.

- The British seduced with the complex mystery of their culture. The Americans seduced with the casual openness of theirs.  

유럽의 현 정세에 대한 조망만이 아니라, 과거에 대한 개요로도 도움이 되는 책이다. 독일, 프랑스, 러시아 사이의 역사적인 반목에 대해서도 잘 설명되어 있다. 원서로 읽은 것 치고는 꽤 빠르게 읽기를 마친 셈.