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A Time For Audacity: How Brexit Has Created The CANZUK Option
For Britons, Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders, and their friends and allies, the time has come to consider an audacious option. It is time for many reasons. One is that each of you today faces a series of critical decisions about what and who you are and will be. Britain less than two years ago passed one such decision point, which is whether the historical British Union of the four nations would continue together. Although the option of full independence for Scotland was rejected, the question of how the four nations will work together, and in what sort of framework, has now been opened, and it is time for the options that this book will discuss to be part of that discussion.
Now, Britain is on the verge of making another decision threshold about another Union. Again, this is an issue where the answer appears obvious to an outsider, but seems to be a matter of great controversy within the UK. There may be valid reasons why Britain might not want to exit the European Union, but the lack of adequate alternatives for closer trade relations and partnership should not be one of them. Ironically, many of the arguments of advocates of British membership in the EU work better as an argument for the option presented in this work, a Union of the Commonwealth Realms.
Many of the British people who had sincerely supported EU membership did so from the desire to see the UK magnify its impact in the world by joining together with other like-minded people. As the EU continues to shrink as a fraction of the world’s population and Gross World Product, it would be wise for such people to consider the idea of magnifying their impact in the world by joining together with people who already have more of a common outlook than the very disparate set known as Europeans.
Some British commentators have, in the course of the debate over its European ties, pointed to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as alternative directions for trade and cooperation. Others deride this suggestion, asking whether Britain still has anything to offer them, and point to the widespread feelings of betrayal when Britain joined the then-EEC, raising high tariff walls against the Dominions that had so recently sacrificed so much in her aid.
Yet Canada, Australia, and New Zealand each face challenges of their own, as this book will describe in detail in the following pages. At the same time, the USA, the primary security partner for Canada and Australia in particular, has begun to show more and more uncertainty as to the degree of international involvement and investment of security resources it devotes to its allies. All four nations have armed forces which rank high in quality, but increasingly have been under fiscal pressure, scaling back capabilities and facing problems managing the procurement of new systems capable of interoperating with US forces. Britain’s attempts at enhancing its capabilities by defence cooperation with Europe have if anything made matters worse. In short, all four nations would gain from deepening the cooperation among themselves to deal with their growing problems. This book proposes a quite radical form of cooperation — even, as its title warns, an audacious one.
Now, Britain is on the verge of making another decision threshold about another Union. Again, this is an issue where the answer appears obvious to an outsider, but seems to be a matter of great controversy within the UK. There may be valid reasons why Britain might not want to exit the European Union, but the lack of adequate alternatives for closer trade relations and partnership should not be one of them. Ironically, many of the arguments of advocates of British membership in the EU work better as an argument for the option presented in this work, a Union of the Commonwealth Realms.
Many of the British people who had sincerely supported EU membership did so from the desire to see the UK magnify its impact in the world by joining together with other like-minded people. As the EU continues to shrink as a fraction of the world’s population and Gross World Product, it would be wise for such people to consider the idea of magnifying their impact in the world by joining together with people who already have more of a common outlook than the very disparate set known as Europeans.
Some British commentators have, in the course of the debate over its European ties, pointed to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as alternative directions for trade and cooperation. Others deride this suggestion, asking whether Britain still has anything to offer them, and point to the widespread feelings of betrayal when Britain joined the then-EEC, raising high tariff walls against the Dominions that had so recently sacrificed so much in her aid.
Yet Canada, Australia, and New Zealand each face challenges of their own, as this book will describe in detail in the following pages. At the same time, the USA, the primary security partner for Canada and Australia in particular, has begun to show more and more uncertainty as to the degree of international involvement and investment of security resources it devotes to its allies. All four nations have armed forces which rank high in quality, but increasingly have been under fiscal pressure, scaling back capabilities and facing problems managing the procurement of new systems capable of interoperating with US forces. Britain’s attempts at enhancing its capabilities by defence cooperation with Europe have if anything made matters worse. In short, all four nations would gain from deepening the cooperation among themselves to deal with their growing problems. This book proposes a quite radical form of cooperation — even, as its title warns, an audacious one.
117 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 15, 2016
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May 29, 2022
Well, I'm on board. Drink a toast to the Commonwealth Union, and all 16 Realms.
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