Brexit: An End to the End of History

Abstract

Britain has voted to withdraw from the European Union. This is a victory. For European populists. For Putin's Russia. As well as for the new world system of governance, what Victor Orban has called “illiberal democracy.” The era of the modern West, in the form that emerged out of the ashes of the WWII, is coming to an end. The West alone is to be blamed for that. As it has been hit by one crisis after the other, the West has continued to merely scratch the surface in looking for ad hoc, immediate, and almost exclusively economic solutions. The emphasis is always on the symptoms but never on the disease. In so doing, the West has turned a blind eye on a process of deep, internal transformation. The post-Brexit debate that will ensue in the following days and months will most likely stay faithful to this legacy. The discussion will remain superficial, preoccupied with economic and political questions, limited to the short-term quests of reorganizing the EU in pursuit of its long-term viability. But I want to insist that the challenge is much bigger than the future of the EU. It is about the preservation of the West, understood here as a synonym for liberal democracy and the commitment to the rule of law. We are confronted with the difficult—even terrifying question: How are we to build a new modernity on the debris of the modern post-war West in order to avoid repeating the bitter historical experiences of the pre-war Europe.