Changing World Order: The Effects of Brexit

The global system seems poised for major change. Last Thursday, the so-called Brexit referendum demonstrated this when a majority of 51.9 percent of British voters chose to leave the European Union. “For the first time, we are trying to figure out how to disintegrate rather than how to integrate,” Erik Jones, Director of the Europe program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told The Cipher Brief.

“Great Britain has decided, by a narrow margin, to question the last 70 years of European history […] The concept and rationale behind the whole European structure has been disturbed,” commented Albania’s former Defense Minister Fatmir Mediu. Bulgarian political scientist and Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Ivan Krastev, put it bluntly: “I have the feeling a period in European history that started in 1945 has ended.”