Should an Independent Scotland Join NATO?
On her recent visit to the United States, Nicola Sturgeon reaffirmed her party’s desire for an independent Scotland to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
Speaking at an event at the Brookings Institution, an American think-tank, the First Minster said: “The party I lead, the Scottish National Party (SNP), determined back in 2012 – at that time, a reversal of a long standing tradition – that should Scotland become independent, it should seek membership of NATO.
"There is no doubt the events of the last three months have strengthened my conviction that this position is absolutely the right and essential one.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine had many consequences beyond Ukraine’s borders: energy prices are skyrocketing given European dependence on Russian oil, the blockade on Ukrainian grain could spark mass famine and migration and previously NATO agnostic nations are scrambling to join the alliance out of fear of Russian aggression.
The ongoing war has upended old geopolitical certainties, with previously reluctant Scandinavian nations such as Finland and Sweden formally applying to join the military alliance, each ending their long-standing policies of neutrality.
For the Russian president Vladimir Putin, his war in Ukraine – ostensibly to prevent his fear of further NATO expansion towards the Russian Federation’s borders – has badly backfired, given that Finland’s accession to the alliance would increase the Russian border with NATO allied nations by 830 miles.
A gruelling war of attrition beckons, requiring massive commitments of military manpower and material. A war that Putin (and indeed many Western analysts) thought would last days rather than months when the invasion was launched on February 24, shows no obvious signs of ending soon.
The failure to capture the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv exposed weaknesses in Russian military tactics as well as a fundamentally flawed strategy that vastly underestimated the preparedness and willingness to fight of a Ukrainian military backed by weapons shipments from NATO-aligned nations.
However, NATO’s unwillingness to countenance direct conflict with Russia - Ukraine is not a NATO member - has led to something of a stalemate as Russian forces refocus their efforts in the eastern Donbas region. Indeed, this desire to not to get directly involved out of fear of a catastrophic escalation against the largest nuclear-armed power in the world is what many opponents of NATO membership cite.
Scotland, as part of the United Kingdom, is a member of NATO (indeed technically a joint founding member) and is home to the UK’s nuclear warhead carrying submarines at Faslane. For many years, SNP policy was anti-NATO and anti-nuclear, with a common refrain being that the placing of the UK’s nuclear weapons a mere 40 miles from Scotland’s largest city represented an unacceptable threat should the worst happen. Not to mention the inherent ethical considerations that surround the very fact of nuclear proliferation.
Since defence policy is explicitly a reserved matter for the UK Government, the Scottish Parliament has never had the power to challenge this. The SNP’s policy had been to remove the Trident nuclear weapons system from Scottish borders as soon as practicably possible after independence.
The SNP also previously opposed NATO membership – former leader Alex Salmond was heavily critical of NATO bombing campaigns in Serbia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. However, as the SNP began to experience electoral success, opposition to NATO began to wane with the policy formally overturned at the party’s conference in Perth ten years ago.
The SNP also possibly realised that there are many in Scotland who revere the nation’s military heritage (ironically, mostly undertaken as part of the British Empire) and alienating them ahead of the independence referendum in 2014 would not be a vote winner. Despite claims of Scottish exceptionalism from a significant portion in the independence movement, Scotland does have its own jingoist fringe that vaunts historic military might.
More recently, the youth wing of the SNP – Young Scots for Independence – backed NATO membership, representing a major shift in attitudes and in-line with Nicola Sturgeon’s stated desire to join the alliance as an independent country. Both cited the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the compelling argument for NATO membership.
The fact that the youth wing of a party that otherwise positions (or at least portrays) itself as politically progressive is curious, leading many to accuse the SNP of being more concerned with power than principles. There is a sense of the SNP trying to have its cake and eat it by declaring itself “anti” nuclear while also publicly declaring its goal of joining NATO as an independent nation – if the party is truly anti-nuclear weapons, then joining a nuclear armed military alliance is an obvious contradiction.
This has led to much bickering not only within the party itself, but also with the SNP’s partners in government - the Scottish Greens, who are staunchly opposed to both NATO membership and nuclear weapons. However, this was pointedly left out of the cooperation agreement the parties struck, with the Greens free to oppose without collapsing the government.
It could be argued that there is a model of a non-NATO aligned member that is nevertheless in a “Partnership for Peace”(PnP) with NATO right on our doorstep – Ireland.
The PnP allows non members to cooperate with the alliance by choosing “individual activities according to their ambitions and abilities” with no obligation to fully join.
Indeed, while the Republic of Ireland condemned Russia’s actions in Ukraine, there has not been a similar clamour to join NATO as there has been in sections of the Scottish political establishment, with Irish commentators citing the expensive costs of maintaining a military as well as long standing opposition to nuclear weapons. Sound familiar?
In 2015, Ireland reaffirmed its commitment to neutrality as a central tenet of its foreign policy, saying that NATO membership would undermine this. Could an independent Scotland pursue this rather than full membership?
Committing a newly independent Scotland to a full military alliance would require the country to not only to meet commitments to democracy (a given despite what more extreme opponents of the SNP might think) but also funding too, a tough sell as the cost-of-living crisis engulfs many Scots. Many will question the SNP’s priorities.
It also places the SNP in the curious position of arguing for the status quo – as part of the UK we are already NATO members so how would leaving then re-joining materially change the threat Russia already poses to Scotland, if at all?
There are also the practical issues surrounding it: military hardware is already in Scotland and even independence would not change this overnight. There is even the possibility that a UK minus an independent Scotland could veto membership, leaving the SNP out in the cold with many supporters annoyed at the ditching of long-standing principles.
This is perhaps the realisation Nicola Sturgeon has arrived at as she rubs shoulders with fellow world leaders hence the commitment to remaining anti-nuclear while still being a member of NATO.
It’s questionable that the presence of nuclear weapons on Scottish soil makes us any safer, not to mention the moral considerations. Whether Scotland can afford to be left out of the architecture of European security in the face of Russian aggression is a major issue the SNP will have to wrestle with ahead of a proposed independence referendum in 2023.