A Scottish Yes to independence will mean an exit, at least for now, from the EU and NATO
BRUSSELS, Belgium If Scottish voters this week say Yes to independence, not only will they tear up the map of Great Britain, theyll shake the twin pillars of Western Europes postwar prosperity and security the European Union and the U.S.-led NATO defence alliance.
In breaking away from the rest of the United Kingdom, Scotland would automatically find itself outside both the EU and NATO, and have to reapply to join both, officials from those Brussels-based organizations have stressed.
For the EU especially, Scottish re-entry could be a long and arduous process, with other countries dead set against letting the Scots retain the privileges awarded Britain: the so-called opt-outs from being required to use the euro single currency and to join the multination Schengen zone where internal border controls have been scrapped.
For NATOs admirals and generals, the current Scottish governments insistence on a sovereign Scotland becoming free of nuclear weapons would pose enormous strategic and operational headaches, even if a transitional grace period were agreed on. A new home port would have to be found for the Royal Navys four Trident missile-carrying submarines and their thermonuclear warheads, currently based on the Clyde.
This risks undermining the collective defence and deterrence of NATO allies, Britains Ministry of Defence has said. In what might be read as a warning to the Scots, the ministry has said a nuclear-free stance could constitute a significant hurdle to Scotland being allowed back into NATO.
Until Scotland rejoined the alliance, to which its belonged with the rest of Britain for 65 years, new arrangements would also need to be found to patrol vital shipping routes in the North Atlantic and North Sea. If Scotland were to choose not to rejoin, it would pose a conundrum for NATO for which there is no real precedent: what to do following the loss of a developed, democratically governed part of alliance territory that has opted for neutrality, said Daniel Troup, research analyst at the NATO Council of Canada.
Emergence of a new Western European country of 5 million inhabitants with roughly the land area of the Czech Republic or the U.S. state of Maine or would also set in motion political and social forces whose effects are impossible to predict. Because of British voting patterns, the political groups in England, Wales and Northern Ireland that are seeking Britains exit from the European Union would become proportionately stronger in Parliament.
Meanwhile, on the continent, from Catalonia in Spain to the Dutch-speaking Flemish areas of Belgium, other European peoples that do not have their own states would likely be emboldened to follow the Scots example.
Loss of Scotland would also weaken the influence of Britain inside the 28-nation European Union. For the moment, the British, along with the Germans and French, constitute the trade blocs Big Three. Without Scotlands population, Britain would drop to No. 4, behind Italy.
That would mean fewer British members of the European Parliament, as well as a reduced say in population-weighted decision-making in the EUs executive.
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A Scottish Yes to independence will mean an exit, at least for now, from the EU and NATO