Kill the EU

The second way that the EU enflames nationalism is more subtle. The EU creates the conditions whereby nationalist movements can free-ride on the structures created by multinationalism. By providing the semblance of a defense policy, along with a battery of trade policies and its own central bank, the EU makes it easier for secessionist movements to imagine a future for themselves. Catalan, Flemish, and Scottish nationalists would have a much harder time convincing their regions of the feasibility of a breakaway if America wasn’t providing for Europe’s security at the continental level, and the EU wasn’t making the monetary policy decisions anyway.

We should ask if these assertions of nationalist identity don’t trigger others. Is it not a coincidence that a defiantly English-led Brexit won so quickly after a referendum on a Scottish exit from the United Kingdom?

Now that one nation has invoked Article 50, it seems likelier that another one, somewhere in the heart of the continent, will do the same. It may not be France this time. But it could be Italy, or Spain, in the future. Whenever an economic cycle goes into bust and the costs are concentrated in one nation, the reluctance of Germany or other high-performing nations to bail it out will bring euroskepticism to a boil again. Even those who are celebrating Macron’s likely victory are doing so only because he blocks Le Pen. Nobody seems to have faith that he can resolve the social tensions in France, or make the economy work as well for those on the “peripherique” in France.

Dismantling the EU will have major economic costs. Unwinding a bad investment is always painful. But it will not cost Europeans everything that they like about the present.