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To be clear, the United Kingdom has not yet left the European Union. The June 23 referendum in the UK was an expression of the will of the people (by a majority of 52 percent to 48) that the British government should begin the process of negotiating an exit from the EU. The EU Treaty allows for such a process. British government officials have said that negotiation may take a decade because of its complexity. The Brexit decision, however, marks a historic turning point that will have ramifications in expanding circles from inside the UK, to the EU, and to the rest of the world, including the United States and Korea.
Europe and Korea, and their relationships to the U.S., and to one another, are not separate issues. The U.S., Korea, and EU are all part of the democratic, market-oriented group of countries that must for their own interests work together to promote the rule of law, liberal economic policies, collective security, and human rights. Anything that happens in one makes a difference to the others.
What happens next after the Brexit vote? In the immediate future, not much. The economic agreements between the U.S. and the EU, and the EU-Korea Free Trade Agreement remain intact and the UK remains part of those agreements until the terms of its departure from the EU can be agreed and implemented. Even then, it is imaginable that that the UK will remain part of an economic relationship with the EU that keeps it within international trade agreements.
If, for example, the UK became a member of the European Economic Area, along with Norway and other non-EU member states then, for all practical purposes, the U.S. and Korea would continue torelate to the UK as a member of the European trading bloc. At a more extreme case, it is conceivable that the EU may reconfigure itself into a different type of organization, with a European Political Union consisting of a smaller set of member states, and a European Common Market consisting of a different set. In that case, countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands, or Ireland might join the UK in a reformed Common Market, with themselves departing from the Political Union.
If the break is complete, then the U.S. and Korea would need to conclude economic agreements with the UK separately from the EU. It is worth noting that the UK only comprises 17 percent of the overall economy of the EU. It would be an important trading partner on its own, but for the U.S. and Korea, not in the same league as China or the rest of the EU.
Some commentators simply do not believe that the result of the Brexit will be a UK departure from the EU. They believe that during the years ahead, the British public will change its mind and decide to stick with an EU that may have reformed itself in the meantime. There are many uncertainties ahead. One of the issues that will soon surface will be that Brexit from the EU does not mean that the UK would leave the European Convention on Human Rights and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. That is part of the Council of Europe legal framework, which is not part of the EU. What will the British public (and the Scots in particular) think of burning yet another bridge with Europe?
The main point to be taken from the Brexit vote is that it is part of the tide running against globalization everywhere. While being very different phenomenon, Putinism in Russia, Chinese international assertiveness and its crackdown on domestic dissent, violent religious extremism, and populist nationalist movements within democratic societies (including the U.S. and Korea) have in common their rejection of globalization.
There is a strong strain within global society and politics of people who want to live within traditional communities, stop having to compete in a global market, maintain traditional attitudes and cultures, and to have a pride in the groups to which they belong, which are often defined by which people do not belong. People in the UK who voted for Brexit often said in interviews that they just wanted "to live the way we used to." It is hard to think of any society that has succeeded in recreating a past in which to live. And in the end, the problem with building walls to keep the world out is that they also keep you in.
Mark Tokola, a former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Seoul, is vice-president of the Korea Economic Institute of America in Washington, D.C. The views expressed here are his own and should not be taken as representing those of the KEIA.
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