With Brexit, the United Kingdom, Europe and the world have entered uncharted territory, proving that history is jagged, not linear. No one really knows where to next, let alone the final destination. It will take up to two years for all the ramifications to filter through.
The first requirement is to understand the reasons for Brexit. The British are famously insular and proud of it, as captured in the old joke about the newspaper headline: "Fog over the Channel — continent isolated."
The economic wreckage of globalization has generated a massive backlash and claimed its first casualty. Those who felt left behind by globalization have decided to leave globalization behind and re-erect political-economic frontiers that were steadily dismantled over decades. The vote validates Harvard University's Dani Rodrick's thesis that we can only have two of the three among democracy, sovereignty and globalization. The Brits have rejected the third in reasserting the first two.