here: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/why-brexit-happ...
Cowen is a conservative (maybe libertarian?) economist who opposed Brexit. He nonetheless makes the interesting point, quoting Francis Fukyama, that Engand, Denmark and Japan were the only mature, developed nations prior to the industrial revolution and one trait they all shared was very low immigration. This contributes to a fixed sense of what the place is and makes change that much harder to accomodate. I know Japan much better than England and this is overwhelingly the situation there still.
That said, the principal driver, sometimes only, of globalization is economic. And there is very little argument that this has not increased prosperity for the majority of people affecetd by it. Not to deny the truly devestating effect globalization can have on individuals or individual industries; the improvements from globablization are broad and sometimes hard to appreciate; the injuries are sharp, narrow and impossible to miss. There's a secondary, nontrivial geopolitical effect of increased global trade - trading partners in the modern world find is very hard to go to war with one another.
What the EU discovered was that it is very hard to form an economic union without agreement on non-economic policies. So you get the disputes on immigration, etc., which really can't be divorced from economic policy if the policy is going to be meaningful. What to do? I think the world is going to compell almost all nations into trade zones, agreements, etc., and they are always messy, but to isolate yourself is a mistake. It's throwing out the baby with the bath water.
And what was the point about China supposed to mean? And Obama's plan for one world? Where does that come from? And how many NYT writers have you talked to, Jeff. I know a couple dozen and I've never heard any of them say anything close to what you suppose of them. I thought we told you to quit practicing ESP - it ruins the fantasy leagues.