What Brexit won’t fix

The Leave campaign was right to pour scorn on David Cameron’s warning this week that Brexit could threaten Europe’s military stability and lead to war. Boris Johnson mocks the Prime Minister about his prophecy on page 14. If Cameron really believed that Britain leaving the EU could lead to war in Europe, why on earth did he risk having a referendum at all? Why was he suggesting until a few weeks before his negotiations with EU leaders that he would consider voting for Brexit if he didn’t get his way?

It’s easy to tease the increasingly shrill alarmism of the Remain campaign. But it is harder to say how exactly leaving the EU would make things better. It’s quite true that the EU has never had much of a role in international security, but the fallout from David Cameron’s speech does demonstrate a gap in the referendum debate.

A vast amount of time has been committed to discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the EU, but we are failing to talk about Nato. While it has broadened its membership greatly over the past two decades, its commitment to enforcing Article Five of its constitution — ‘an armed attack against one or more [of its members] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all’ — has begun to look increasingly feeble. Europe would be a safer place (and Vladimir Putin would be less emboldened) had Nato’s eastwards expansion been conducted with the same vigour as that of the EU.

The EU has been firm in its commitment to protect its newer former Soviet Bloc members. Though it mishandled its relationship with Ukraine (with appalling consequences), the EU has done far better by Poland, the Czech Republic and other Eastern European states — who cherish EU membership as a bulwark against Russian expansionism.