As the campaign for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union gathers steam, Remain supporters, along with an expanding assembly of the global commentariat, have voiced increasingly alarmist claims about the economic and political consequences of Brexit both for Europe and the UK.

Prime Minister David Cameron contends that Brexit is "a threat not only to British economic and national security" but will potentially "divide the West".

In a similar vein, former Conservative MP and journalist Matthew Parris believes "there is such a thing as the West", and Britain’s exit "would wreck it" and seriously "wound" the "clout that the continent of Europe carries".

And former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans predicts that "if Britain steps away from Europe… it will find itself very lonely indeed".

The view from the Beltway

American commentators have also weighed in. Eight former US treasury secretaries thought Brexit could open a Pandora’s Box of repressed nationalism.

Strobe Talbott, former deputy secretary of state, cautioned Brexit could be "contagious for the European project as a whole", whilst Harvard University’s Joseph Nye claimed that the United States would need to "double down on its own big bet on European unity as a vital national interest".

Channelling this Beltway orthodoxy, President Barack Obama, in a visit reminiscent of a Roman Emperor attending to a recalcitrant province, warned the United Kingdom of its irrelevance to the US vision of Western security if the Brexiters get their way.