EU’s task No. 1: Stop further unraveling in other EU nations

BRUSSELS — Effective immediately, leaders of the European Union face one pressing, daunting challenge: how to keep the vision of a united continent from unraveling further, or even self-destructing, after the British people voted to quit.

The damning verdict of British voters was the worst setback to the EU since the germ of a more integrated Europe first took shape in the ruins left by World War II.

[...] it threatened to be wildly contagious — before the ballots were all tallied, populist leaders in some of the EU’s founding nations were already clamoring for a vote on EU membership in their own countries.

With Britain’s departure, the 28-nation EU will have to do without the fifth economy in the world, Western Europe’s No. 1 military power, a diplomatic juggernaut and a reliable bridge to the United States and the rest of the global Anglosphere.

EU Council President Donald Tusk warned that British withdrawal “could in fact be the start of the process of destruction of not only the EU, but also of the Western political civilization.”

In retrospect, European leaders for too long didn’t take the groundswell of British discontent seriously enough, equating it only with the sometimes farcical oratorical performances of U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage.