I find of think the desire to join NATO at the same they want to move Trident out of Scotland is having their cake and eating it too. Obviously, there are non-nuclear members of NATO but those non-nuclear members are protected by the nuclear umbrella provided by U.K., France and America. What’s more all members are committed to helping maintain and deploy that nuclear capability if needed although only the United States makes use of that at the moment in countries like Germany.
It’s hypocritical in my view to oppose nuclear weapons and join NATO. An incompatible position to hold. An attempt by the SNP to appeal to both sides of the coin.
In the event that Scotland leaves and wants to join NATO I would imagine they would be very welcome given their geographic position but Faslane would be an issue. It’s going to be awkward if one of your first actions as you’re applying to NATO is to give the alliance the almighty headache of moving the nuclear deterrent of one of it’s senior members.
Totally agree, we’d be more Denmark than Ireland in terms of defence
Scotland needs to be part of NATO as it is a tactical location and cannot defend itself. There’s no reason for Scotland not to be part of NATO either; it would be foolish for them to not seek membership.
Nuclear hypocrisy doesn’t matter, their inevitable struggle to meet NATO spending won’t matter. What matters is they don’t entirely isolate themselves further than necessary as it would be a risk for nothing but spite.
Why have British troops stationed in a country when we could have American instead 😀
Fuckin morons
Pro-independence Scot here, strongly disagree with McDonald’s position. As others in the thread have rightly pointed out, NATO is a military alliance with a nuclear deterrent – it’s not just diplomacy and it’s not compatible with any meaningfully principled position against nuclear weapons. To me, independence could be a chance to carve our own path in terms of foreign policy, but McDonald’s political imagination only stretches as far as returning us to an Anglo-American military orbit. There’s also the issue of new NATO members having a mandatory 2% minimum defence budget, which further constricts a post-indy defence policy.
Reading the Scottish and UK press, one would think that not joining NATO was some kind of fantasy, but we have the example of our Irish neighbours. Ireland has a constitutional neutrality policy, is not part of NATO, maintains a minimal standing force of around 3000 armed personnel, and can only deploy troops abroad as part of UN Peacekeeping missions. The country is a similar size to Scotland in terms of area and population, and is also strategically located. Admittedly Ireland’s neutrality policy hasn’t been perfect in recent years – the Shannon Airport issue is a good example of this – but it’s a model that simply doesn’t seem to register on the radar of NATO membership advocates.
There’s also the elephant in the room that being part of NATO creates the reasons for being part of NATO in the first place, i.e. a defence threat from foreign powers. The phrase “putting a target on our backs” can be emotive, but there’s some truth to it. Russia flies long range bombers over Scottish airspace precisely because it’s a way of testing UK and NATO reaction times. Stewart McDonald doesn’t seem to realise this at all.
I strongly recommend reading the 2012 report “A’ the Blue Bonnets” by the Royal United Services Institute on a hypothetical Scotland-in-NATO defence policy: https://issuu.com/openbriefing/docs/defending-an-independent-scotland
The report shows that in order to defend Scotland from existential threats – threats which would almost certainly target Scotland because of her NATO membership – Scotland would have to exceed the 2% minimum defence spending, maintain a larger standing force than comparably sized NATO states like Norway, and even then would still rely heavily on English and American personnel stationed in-country. This would in fact be a greater proportionate spending on defence than Scotland currently contributes to the UK’s conventional defence policy. Stewart McDonald’s vision of independence seems to rely on very little changing defence-wise: Scotland would be spending an awful lot on the military with very little sovereign control to show for it.
Tl;dr: Scotland joining NATO doesn’t make sense from a pro-indy political perspective, a budgeting perspective, or a progressive defence perspective. A more positive model to consider would be Ireland’s approach of armed neutrality.
Scotland’s GDP 211b haha 😆 one tank one plane half a ship stop getting above you pay scale !!!!!!
I think Scotland should make sure it’s ok with Putin before trying to join NATO
The main threat to an independent Scotland would be a revanchist Britain. Scotland should join the CSTO to defend against this. The SNP don’t want independence, they want British Overseas Territory status without the sea. Keeping Britains currency and monetary policy, Britain’s head of state, Britain’s military and foreign policy is not independence.
As long as Russia is a threat joining NATO is just common sense.
Scotland on its own would be pretty useless it would struggle to have a sizable army, navy and air force it would be reliant on the uk for defence like Ireland is ide say there is no point in it joining nato unless the uk refuses to defend scotland
NATO’s a fucking relic, and is way too keen on involvement with extreme right types (going right back to GLADIO, but still continuing in the present day).
11 comments
I find of think the desire to join NATO at the same they want to move Trident out of Scotland is having their cake and eating it too. Obviously, there are non-nuclear members of NATO but those non-nuclear members are protected by the nuclear umbrella provided by U.K., France and America. What’s more all members are committed to helping maintain and deploy that nuclear capability if needed although only the United States makes use of that at the moment in countries like Germany.
It’s hypocritical in my view to oppose nuclear weapons and join NATO. An incompatible position to hold. An attempt by the SNP to appeal to both sides of the coin.
In the event that Scotland leaves and wants to join NATO I would imagine they would be very welcome given their geographic position but Faslane would be an issue. It’s going to be awkward if one of your first actions as you’re applying to NATO is to give the alliance the almighty headache of moving the nuclear deterrent of one of it’s senior members.
Totally agree, we’d be more Denmark than Ireland in terms of defence
Scotland needs to be part of NATO as it is a tactical location and cannot defend itself. There’s no reason for Scotland not to be part of NATO either; it would be foolish for them to not seek membership.
Nuclear hypocrisy doesn’t matter, their inevitable struggle to meet NATO spending won’t matter. What matters is they don’t entirely isolate themselves further than necessary as it would be a risk for nothing but spite.
Why have British troops stationed in a country when we could have American instead 😀
Fuckin morons
Pro-independence Scot here, strongly disagree with McDonald’s position. As others in the thread have rightly pointed out, NATO is a military alliance with a nuclear deterrent – it’s not just diplomacy and it’s not compatible with any meaningfully principled position against nuclear weapons. To me, independence could be a chance to carve our own path in terms of foreign policy, but McDonald’s political imagination only stretches as far as returning us to an Anglo-American military orbit. There’s also the issue of new NATO members having a mandatory 2% minimum defence budget, which further constricts a post-indy defence policy.
Reading the Scottish and UK press, one would think that not joining NATO was some kind of fantasy, but we have the example of our Irish neighbours. Ireland has a constitutional neutrality policy, is not part of NATO, maintains a minimal standing force of around 3000 armed personnel, and can only deploy troops abroad as part of UN Peacekeeping missions. The country is a similar size to Scotland in terms of area and population, and is also strategically located. Admittedly Ireland’s neutrality policy hasn’t been perfect in recent years – the Shannon Airport issue is a good example of this – but it’s a model that simply doesn’t seem to register on the radar of NATO membership advocates.
There’s also the elephant in the room that being part of NATO creates the reasons for being part of NATO in the first place, i.e. a defence threat from foreign powers. The phrase “putting a target on our backs” can be emotive, but there’s some truth to it. Russia flies long range bombers over Scottish airspace precisely because it’s a way of testing UK and NATO reaction times. Stewart McDonald doesn’t seem to realise this at all.
I strongly recommend reading the 2012 report “A’ the Blue Bonnets” by the Royal United Services Institute on a hypothetical Scotland-in-NATO defence policy: https://issuu.com/openbriefing/docs/defending-an-independent-scotland
The report shows that in order to defend Scotland from existential threats – threats which would almost certainly target Scotland because of her NATO membership – Scotland would have to exceed the 2% minimum defence spending, maintain a larger standing force than comparably sized NATO states like Norway, and even then would still rely heavily on English and American personnel stationed in-country. This would in fact be a greater proportionate spending on defence than Scotland currently contributes to the UK’s conventional defence policy. Stewart McDonald’s vision of independence seems to rely on very little changing defence-wise: Scotland would be spending an awful lot on the military with very little sovereign control to show for it.
Tl;dr: Scotland joining NATO doesn’t make sense from a pro-indy political perspective, a budgeting perspective, or a progressive defence perspective. A more positive model to consider would be Ireland’s approach of armed neutrality.
Scotland’s GDP 211b haha 😆 one tank one plane half a ship stop getting above you pay scale !!!!!!
I think Scotland should make sure it’s ok with Putin before trying to join NATO
The main threat to an independent Scotland would be a revanchist Britain. Scotland should join the CSTO to defend against this. The SNP don’t want independence, they want British Overseas Territory status without the sea. Keeping Britains currency and monetary policy, Britain’s head of state, Britain’s military and foreign policy is not independence.
As long as Russia is a threat joining NATO is just common sense.
Scotland on its own would be pretty useless it would struggle to have a sizable army, navy and air force it would be reliant on the uk for defence like Ireland is ide say there is no point in it joining nato unless the uk refuses to defend scotland
NATO’s a fucking relic, and is way too keen on involvement with extreme right types (going right back to GLADIO, but still continuing in the present day).