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Governance

Brexit doesn’t insulate Britain from external threats

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CIOL Writers
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CIOL Brexit doesn’t insulate Britain from external threats

The fears of those who predict havoc on the global economy due to the trade disruptions Britain’s departure would create have come true, as the people of the United Kingdom today voted in favor of withdrawing from the European Union.

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In India, the BSE Sensex slumped over 1,050 points or nearly 4 percent, while the broader Nifty index traded below the psychological 8,000 levels as #Brexit fears came true. The rupee plunged over 1.4 per cent to 68.21 per dollar mark.

Once Britain exits, it will have a two-year window to negotiate a new treaty to replace the terms of EU membership on trade tariffs, migration, and the regulation of everything from cars to agriculture. The uncertainty about Britain’s future relationship with the EU, its largest trading partner, could also push the UK into a recession. Many economists expect both the British stock market and the pound to open lower on Friday morning.

That’s all what economists say; but the public of Britain voted based on one common primal fear of foreign threats infiltrating the UK and terrorize its citizens. The easy access EU member countries have to cross one another’s borders, they argue, amplifies that threat.

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Probably Britain is wise in closing up its borders, given the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. But does it really secure its border? History has proven that economic markets can never survive in isolation, especially in this age of the Internet. Stricter immigration laws can prevent people from physically moving from one country to another, but they’ll never be able to prevent foreign ideologies from spreading online.

“There is absolutely, matter-of-factly, verifiably, no isolation in the world today,” says Parag Khanna, author of the book Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization, which argues that the world is now defined less by countries and more by connectivity.

In the recent times, radicalization has been spread primarily through social media. For instance the ISIS, whose social media machine is startlingly sophisticated and essentially impossible to cut off. To prevent that a country would have to cut off from the Internet, is that possible?

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David Cameron resigns as UK shocks the world by voting for Brexit, and here's how the world is reacting to it:

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