No need for Brexit 'hysteria,' Obama says

Corrections & clarifications: An earlier story version misstated the year Scotland held a referendum whether to leave the U.K.

WASHINGTON — President Obama cautioned against "hysteria" over the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union last week, saying all of Europe needs to take a breath and reassess how to preserve national identity while taking advantage of political and economic integration.

"I think that the best way to think about this is, a pause button has been pressed on the project of full European integration," Obama told National Public Radio in an interview broadcast Tuesday. "I don't anticipate that there's going to be major cataclysmic changes as a result of this."

Obama's remarks on the so-called Brexit were his extensive since Britons voted last Thursday to leave the union of 28 countries that it joined in 1973. The resulting financial uncertainty shaved more than $1 trillion out of stock markets and sent the British pound plummeting against the dollar.

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But Obama noted that the the U.K. long ago opted out of the Euro, the common currency that forms the basis of the monetary union, and will remain a member of NATO. In that way, he said, the U.K. will become more like Norway — still very involved in Europe and the world, but not through the EU.

"I would not overstate it. There's been a little bit of hysteria post-Brexit vote, as if somehow NATO's gone, and the trans-Atlantic alliance is dissolving, and every country is rushing off to its own corner. And that's not what's happening," Obama said. "What's happening is you had a European project that was probably moving faster and without as much consensus as it should have," he said.

The White House is not calling for a do-over on the referendum, nor is it encouraging Scotland to leave the United Kingdom in an effort to keep its ties to the EU. When Scotland held a referendum on whether to leave the U.K. in 2014, Obama lobbied for it to stay.

"The United States view was then, and continues to be, that a united U.K. is in the best interests of the United States," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday. "It makes them a better partner, and allows them to make a better contribution to the NATO alliance that is the bedrock of our national security."

While the White House tried to keep the economic and security impacts of European unity separate, Earnest said the issue would be a major topic of discussion when Obama meets with EU leaders next month for the previously scheduled NATO summit in Warsaw.

And in the NPR interview, Obama warned that "Europe can't afford to turn inward," noting crises to the south in the north Africa and the Middle East and to the east in Ukraine.

Still, Obama tried to acknowledge the voter discontent about globalization in both domestically and abroad. The European Union often seems "bureaucratic and deadlocked," he said, and the vote "speaks to the ongoing changes and challenges that are raised by globalization."

But he rebuffed the notion that the result validates the campaign of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, whose campaign has had tones of economic and social isolationism.

"First of all, I think it's important to remember that Mr. Trump embodies global elites and has taken full advantage of it his entire life, so he's hardly a spokesperson — a legitimate spokesperson — for a populist surge of working-class people on either side of the Atlantic," Obama said.

The White House said it would maintain a trade relationship with the U.K., but reiterated Obama's position that Britain would be at the "back of the queue" for trade negotiations.

"It’s too early to say" when those talks would begin, Earnest said.

"We’re four or five days out of this decision being made by British voters," he said. "I think what is true is that the U.K. would not benefit from the years of progress we've made in negotiating a trade agreement with the EU."