I don't think this is truly relevant to the intent of the question but I think it should be stated as it is relevant to the essence of the question.
There is an effect of an:
if(variable);
if the variable is volatile. It''s effect is to cause a memory barrier to be honoured between the current thread and any other threads accessing the variable.
public volatile variable;
....
if(variable);
See here for a more detailed discussion.
I cannot imagine any real value to putting this kind of statement in your code but I felt it important to note that there is a real effect to this statement in this very specific situation.
