Analysis: Defence in an independent Scotland

The big number grabbed the headlines. But pollster Ipsos Mori tried to get behind the swing to Yes. So it asked questions Scots rarely ask themselves. One of them was largely overlooked but could not be more significant.

In a test of potential arguments for the Union, those surveyed were asked whether independence “would leave Scotland isolated and weaker on the international stage”. 

Only 43% said this proposition was “convincing”, including 25% – a figure which coincides with an estimated measure of Scotland’s most passionate unionist base – who thought it was “very convincing”.

It is just one poll, just one set of numbers. But the Ipsos Mori survey backs up what a lot of quieter Scotland watchers have long suspected: that one of the main pillars of the union – defence and security – is crumbling. Why? Because of Brexit.

The UK, for so long seen as a bastion of global rules-based diplomacy, of multilateral defence and foreign policy, has left the security of European Union. 

It remains in Nato. But, for now at least, for some it is Britain which looks isolated and weak, especially as Brexit supporter Donald Trump exits the White House.

Next week, in this context, the SNP will effectively publish the defence and foreign policy doctrine of an independent Scotland.

Ostensibly a submission to Britain’s delayed integrated review, the 12-page, 70-point document sets out the stall for a Scotland firmly embedded in the multilateral culture of most other small and medium-sized European states. 

That means being in the EU, whose Lisbon Treaty has substantial security guarantees, and Nato, which adds Canada and the United States to the alliance.

The new doctrine mentions Trident – once the wedge issue of foreign affairs and defence politics in Scotland – but only in passing. The position? That nukes will go, but in a safe, slow way that reassures allies and gives any rump UK a chance to consider whether it really needs them or not.

The SNP, in its document, bluntly asserts that Scotland – and especially the country’s northern flank – is exposed in current British conventional arrangements for so-called “kinetic defence”, by the army, navy and air force. (It sets out a strategic role for Scotland securing part of the so-called Scotland-Iceland gap in the North Atlantic). 

And, more crucially, in an era of “hybrid warfare” when disinformation campaigns from hostile authoritarian states can be as lethal as missiles, the document warns that the UK needs to steel its democratic institutions from being undermined from within. 

Both these claims are rejected by Tories in London, who insist they are aware of these threats. But both charges, post-Brexit, cut through, reckon the SNP.

Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at St Andrews University, agrees.

For him, the document has two audiences. Overseas governments and the Scottish political centre now swinging to independence. “This is a Nato document,” he said of the SNP’s integrated review submission. “It is far more mature than anything we have seen before. It is aimed at those who want Scotland to be a mainstream European small nation. They are making a play for Denmark and Norway.”

SNP politicians have been quietly courting Nato and EU rulers for some time – though critics have suggested such para-diplomatic efforts remain naive and sporadic.

Their aim, O’Brien, an American, said, is not to win over allies to the nationalist cause, it is to neutralise the kind of hostility which saw voices from off-stage urging support for the Union before the 2014 vote.

“The United States has not been wild about independence in the past,” he said. “This document will not make them love it, but it is going to make them feel less sceptical.”

But what of Scottish voters? “What has happened,” said O’Brien, “is that there has been a big switch by people who did not vote for independence last time but now support it. And those are people who are mostly concerned by EU membership. 

“They are not excited one way or another by Trident. They have switched because of Brexit. So we are seeing a document from the SNP that is all about Scotland being a good ally and getting back in to the EU.”

Defence may now be in play as an issue for the next referendum but unionists are not ready to leave the battlefield. 

Last week, in this newspaper, Sir David Omand, a widely respected former head of GCHQ, rehearsed arguments which O’Brien thinks reflect old certainties, not new realities, about nuclear weapons and Britain’s place in the world.

Omand told The Herald on Sunday: “You have to keep asking, ‘are we going to be better off in defence and security terms as a result of independence’ and the answer to that is no, I can’t see how you can be better off.”

Speaking before the SNP’s new doctrine emerged, Omand claimed the party was guilty of “magical thinking” on security. He said the SNP policy on Trident made Nato membership “problematic”.

O’Brien was not impressed. The SNP, he countered, has been pro-Nato since a year before the last referendum and ever since has signalled it is prepared to have a safe transition for Trident. 

Of Omand, O’Brien said: “He is operating under a pre-2013 idea and does not fully realise what is going on.”

The SNP’s pro-Nato, pro-EU stance has a political cost. O’Brien acknowledged that the SNP’s emerging and evolving positions might alienate some on the pro-Brexit left and far left, and the CND. However, he took the view that giving the UK time to think about what to do with Trident was the best way to get rid of the nuclear weapons system. Ordering the subs out of the Clyde may be counterproductive, he said. 

“You are more likely to make the rUK panic and have them rebase Trident, because they won’t accept the reality of what has happened right away,” he explained. “If you give rUK time to deal with a leaving Scotland my guess is that on its own volition it will ‘get’ that the game’s up and that it’s not going to be one of the world’s nuclear powers.”

Experts, however, still think there are strong unionist arguments to be made on defence and foreign affairs. But more because in order to have robust defence – including against non-military threats – Scotland would need a strong economy.

And so pro-UK campaigners can stress that the fiscal uncertainty of independence also means security uncertainty. 

Like O’Brien, Peter Jackson, professor of global security at Glasgow University, also thinks Trident issues can be resolved and that Brexit changes the maths on defence and diplomacy. However, Scotland, he said, may face a financially straitened few years after independence. 

“If that happens you wonder what kind of defence policy they could really have; we are still not entirely clear what the currency situation would be,” he stressed. “So some kind of defence modus vivendi with the UK would be essential.”