Russia is coming at Europe with a baseball bat. What is Britain is going to do?

Brexit is the answer to only one foreign policy question: How can we help Vladimir Putin?

This fact is brought home to me every time Outers talk about the world. Yesterday, Boris Johnson — the new figurehead of the Leave campaign — praised Russia’s intervention to bolster the al-Assad regime. Two years ago, UKIP’s Nigel Farage — who admires Mr. Putin — accused the European Union of provoking the Ukraine crisis. A couple of weeks ago, he warned that our women might be ‘molested’ like women in Cologne if we remain members of the organisation. ‘What I’m going to say upsets some of you, [but] I’m sorry, it’s true.’ The refugee rape stories were actually a lie fabricated by Russian TV…

It is reinforced even further whenever the referendum is mugged by the realities of international politics. Both NATO’s Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, and the U.S. commander in Europe, Lt. General Hodges, say that Brexit would weaken the transatlantic alliance vis-a-vis Russia. General Breedlove, the outgoing Supreme Allied Commander, warns that the country is exacerbating the Syrian refugee crisis — which Leave is exploiting — in order to ‘break European resolve’. Carl Bildt, the widely-respected former Swedish foreign minister, argues that the renegotiation of our membership has kept us from engaging in the Ukraine crisis — and leaving the EU would remove us from the scene completely. Given these realities, it’s not surprising that ‘Kremlin propaganda is actively pushing Brexit’.

Why should we care about this? Here is how I see the issue.

Mr. Putin is making an ultimately futile, but nonetheless dangerous bid for European mastery. The EU underwrites democracy, fairness, and the rule of law across an ever-expanding area of the continent — and for forty years, Britain has been a leader of this great project because we are building a rules-based world order. Yet Russia attacked that order when it invaded Ukraine and redrew the country’s borders because it made the sort of trade deal with Brussels that Mr. Johnson & Co. want us to negotiate if we leave. Unfortunately for Mr. Putin, democracy, fairness, and the rule of law undermine the autocracy, inequality, and illegality on which Russian influence depends — so he invaded. Since then, he has tested European unity by exacerbating the refugee crisis, spreading scare stories about ethnic ‘strangers’ raping white women, and funding far-right parties like France’s Front Nationale. Tim Snyder, the eminent historian, argues that Russia is practising what he calls ‘strategic relativity’. Although it can’t compete with a solid bloc of European countries, it can compete with them individually, which is why he wants to break up the EU.

Given this challenge, how important is absolute control of our sovereignty when the trade-off is a demoralised and weakened West?

Leave exists in a foreign policy vacuum, which has always been my problem with it. Like almost all Conservatives, I’m Eurosceptic: I want to keep the pound and stop those bloody Brussellcrats straightening my bananas! In school, I ran an underground newspaper and once photoshopped Tony Blair’s face onto Louis XIV to illustrate a story about the dangers of a European superstate. The national sovereignty vs. supranational governance debate is important, but it’s not the only one we need to have in this referendum — especially when a Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council is violently redrawing its neighbours’ borders. Brexit will have a big, negative impact on British foreign policy and we need to discuss the opportunity costs.

Yet whenever I try to talk to Outers about this, I usually receive one of either two unsatisfactory answers. Those who acknowledge the Russian bid for mastery assure me that NATO is sufficient to meet the challenge. As Mr. Stoltenberg said last month, however, the organisations reinforce one another. ‘For NATO, it is important to have a strong Europe’. Brexit would severely weaken the EU — the Front Nationale have said that they would use it to push for ‘Frexit’ — and European security would be weakened, too. Alternatively, I’m told that our friends can go fuck themselves. President Obama wants Britain to stay in. Yeah, well, he can go fuck himself. President Hollande says that the Anglo-French relationship would come under terrific strain if we left. Yeah, well, he can go fuck himself too. And you know what Carl Bildt, and Generals Breedlove and Hodges, and Jens Stoltenberg can all go do…?

Essentially, we have a situation where Russia is coming at us with a baseball bat, our friends are asking us to stick with them, but Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are suggesting that we pick Mr. Putin over France and Germany and the United States. I refuse to believe that a truly great Britain would make this horrendous choice, which is why I can’t back Brexit. Anyone else who thinks we’re a force for good in the world shouldn’t back it either.