Scotland in NATO: the SNP glosses over reality

The Scottish Government's policy would be to seek membership of NATO for an independent Scotland, but it is dishonest on the UK's nuclear deterrent

The Scottish Government published a paper this week entitled Building a New Scotland: an independent Scotland’s place in the world. I wrote for The Spectator that the paper is fundamentally dishonest on the idea of an independent Scotland joining NATO, ignoring the extraordinary demand it would make of the United Kingdom in removing its nuclear deterrent from its base on the Clyde. It may be useful for those who are curious to dig into the background of this a little further, and to understand why the idea of membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is so contentious an issue for the Scottish National Party and the wider nationalist movement.

An independent Scotland’s place in the world, available translated into 16 other languages, is the 11th volume in a series of official documents produced under the aegis of the Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture, Angus Robertson, one of whose main responsibilities is preparations for the eventuality of Scotland becoming independent. Critics have noted, and I have been among them, that “the constitution” and “external affairs” are two areas of policy specifically reserved to Westminster by the Scotland Act 1998, and therefore not within the competence of the Scottish Government.

I mean this kindly when I say that Angus is one of the more internationally minded and cosmopolitan figures at the top of the Scottish National Party: he is half-German and speaks the language fluently, and worked as a foreign correspondent for the BBC World Service in central Europe in the 1990s. He was Member of Parliament for Moray from 2001 to 2017 and focused much of his attention on international relations: he was the SNP’s spokesman on foreign affairs and defence, sat on the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee 2001-10 and Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee 2015-17, and was a member of the UK delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (which was where I dealt with him directly). He lost his seat at Westminster in the 2017 general election to current Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross, and, after setting up a pro-independence think tank, was elected to the Scottish Parliament for Edinburgh Central in May 2021. Regarded as a heavyweight figure, he was an obvious choice for inclusion in Nicola Sturgeon’s reshuffled cabinet.

The SNP have long been criticised for a lack of clarity on how an independent Scotland would actually work. This is both fair and unfair: they have exploited a vague sense of optimism and have often implied or explicitly said that any part of Scottish life would be better if Scotland were independent, often without any evidence to support the argument, an argument often characterised as “jam tomorrow” (as offered to Alice by the White Queen in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There). On the other hand, when a country becomes independent, there will always be uncertainties and contingent outcomes, and the number of moving parts involved means that no-one can say for sure what will happen. Nevertheless, doubt played a part in the “Yes” defeat in 2014’s referendum—Alex Salmond dubbed the Better Together campaign “Project Fear” during a television debate, which shows that he knew it was a challenge—and the SNP have tried over the last 10 years to fill in some of the gaps.

These arguments are not new, therefore, but they were not settled during the referendum campaign a decade ago. One which is peculiarly persistent and impenetrable, because it depends to such a degree on the attitudes of other parties, is what relationships a newly separate Scotland would have with various international organisations. There is enormous controversy over potential membership of the European Union, especially because Scotland voted 62 per cent to 38 per cent to remain in the EU, and a slew of claims and counter-claims which are unprovable until tested.

The Scottish National Party has a long and complicated history when it comes to defence in general and NATO in particular. As far back at the 1980s, the party opposed membership, but that was not unusual on the Left. A resolution calling for the UK’s withdrawal from NATO was proposed at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Brighton in 1981 and, although it was rejected, it attracted twice as many votes as a similar motion had the year before. Labour went into the 1983 general election promising a “non-nuclear defence policy” to be achieved “in the lifetime of the next parliament”, and although it implicitly accepted the status quo in the immediate future, its aspirations were spelled out. A Labour government would:

maintain its support for NATO, as an instrument of détente no less than of defence. We wish to see NATO itself develop a non-nuclear strategy. We will work towards the establishment of a new security system in Europe based on mutual trust and confidence, and knowledge of the objectives and capabilities of all sides. The ultimate objective of a satisfactory relationship in Europe is the mutual and concurrent phasing out of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

The issue of nuclear weapons was a major one for the SNP too. It had developed a policy of disarmament from the late 1960s, partly taking advantage of the pacifist movement in Scotland. In 1969, in a debate in the House of Commons on the Estimate for the Royal Navy, Winifred Ewing, elected in 1967 as the party’s first ever MP, set out its policy on nuclear weapons as it stood.

The Polaris programme and the expenditure on it are a misuse of Government funds. It defends no one from anything. It is immoral in its intrinsic nature, because, apart from the risk that it brings to everyone living around the boundaries of Holy Loch from various types of accident, it is asking mankind to risk world suicide. It should never be in any part of the United Kingdom, but I wonder why it was sited opposite the dense population belt of Scotland. Two million people live within a comfortable radius. They believe that it would never have been sited on the River Thames. These nuclear armed vessels, described in the country of their origin as “city killers”, can kill many millions of people and could possibly destroy a considerable part of an enemy’s nuclear armament.

This highlighted the dual nature of SNP policy: nuclear weapons were immoral, but their deployment in the UK was anti-Scottish, since, from 1961 to 1992, Submarine Squadron 14 of the US Navy, equipped with boats carrying Polaris nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, was based at Holy Loch in the Firth of Clyde. In May 1968, the Royal Navy began operating from HM Naval Base Clyde at Faslane on Gare Loch a few miles away, using it for its four Resolution-class ballistic missile submarines. After April 1969, these were Britain’s only nuclear weapons, putting all of the independent deterrent in Scotland.

In the early 1980s, Gordon Wilson, SNP leader from 1979 to 1990, tried to persuade his party to change its stance on NATO. But the alliance’s commitment to nuclear deterrence met an impassable obstacle in the SNP’s condemnation of nuclear weapons, and it still characterised NATO as a “first strike” organisation; it has never been easy to imagine the circumstances under which the alliance would be the first participant in a conflict to breach the nuclear threshold, but it is, equally, easy to see why NATO has never been willing to rule it out. That’s how ambiguity works. After Wilson’s failure the matter was left alone, more or less. It was never at the top of an election agenda or the deciding issue for any voters.

When the SNP became the party of (devolved) government in 2007, however, questions about the practicalities of an independent Scotland gained a new urgency. Defence policy was not the most keenly examined of these, but by 2012 NATO membership had to be tackled. In 2012, a poll of SNP members, conducted by the University of Strathclyde in 2007/08, was published and showed that 52.7 per cent “believed NATO membership was in Scotland’s strategic interests”, with only 22 per cent in favour of leaving. At the party’s annual conference in Perth on October, Angus Robertson tabled a resolution which dropped opposition to NATO in the context of a broader defence policy. In particular it stated:

An SNP Government will maintain NATO membership subject to an agreement that Scotland will not host nuclear weapons and NATO continues to respect the right of members to only take part in UN sanctioned operations.

There remained passionate opposition, and the resolution was carried by a relatively small margin of 426 to 332. MSPs John Finnie and Jean Urquhart resigned from the party, and its young wing, Young Scots for Independence, declared its opposition. But the deed was done, and the heavens did not fall. Salmond, marking five years as first minister, could count that as a win, and it removed one accusation that the SNP was “soft on defence” or had no plans for the future of an independent Scotland.

The issue featured in the 2014 referendum but was not in the harshest glow of scrutiny. The SNP’s policy, set out in Scotland’s Future, was positive.

Scotland will also join NATO, which is the basis of security for the North Atlantic area. NATO membership is in Scotland’s interests, and the interests of our neighbours, because it underpins effective conventional defence and security co‑operation.

However, qualifications were tacitly attached to potential Scottish membership. An independent Scotland would be “a non-nuclear member of NATO… contributing excellent conventional capabilities to the alliance”. It emphasised that the alliance would welcome Scottish contributions in air defence and maritime security, as well as the potential use of training areas and ranges, and pointed out that many NATO members did not host nuclear weapons.

An independent Scotland can follow the path of similar independent nations and make our own contribution to collective defence arrangements which, as part of NATO, far surpass any security that is offered by Britain alone.

The document also suggested that NATO would have an incentive to reach a swift agreement to avoid any gaps in geographical coverage.

Most importantly for Scotland and our neighbours, failure to reach an agreement would leave a gap in existing NATO security arrangements in north west Europe.

Like many parts of the SNP’s plans for independence, the policy for NATO membership was theoretically coherent but relied on the most positive assumption of goodwill from all other parties. It was established after much debate that Scotland would not inherit any membership “right” to the alliance but would be a candidate country. A NATO official told journalists:

it appears widely agreed that, as a matter of law, a Scotland which has declared its independence and thereby established its separate statehood would be viewed as a new state. A new state would not be a party to the North Atlantic Treaty, and thus not a member of NATO. If it were to choose to apply for NATO membership, its application would be subject to the normal procedure.

There was optimism from Dame Mariot Leslie, who had recently retired as the UK permanent representative to NATO. In a letter to The Scotsman, she argued:

I am also in no doubt that the other 28 Nato allies would see it in their interests to welcome an independent Scotland into Nato. No ally would wish to interrupt the integrated Nato defence arrangements in the North Sea and North Atlantic—least of all at a time of heightened tension with Russia.

As I explained in The Spectator, the new document does not represent a significant change of policy. Understandably, the Scottish Government tries to set a tone of understatement and normality. “An independent Scotland would have its own armed forces, supported by a modern contract for personnel and strong support for veterans.” It talks about “building a collaborative, mutually beneficial defence and security relationship with the UK as well as other key strategic partners”. It sets out its aim of membership of the alliance as follows:

This Scottish Government proposes that an independent Scotland would apply to join NATO and would seek discussions with NATO leaders at the earliest opportunity following a vote for independence. It would commit to defence spending of 2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), recognising NATO’s enduring commitment to invest in defence capabilities.

Nuclear weapons are still a red line for the SNP: “nuclear weapons should be removed from Scotland in the safest and most expeditious manner possible following independence”. But the Scottish Government does not see this as a stumbling block to NATO membership. It argues:

Only a minority of Nato members host nuclear weapons. An independent Scotland’s position would therefore be similar to the approach of most Nato member countries, which neither possess nor host nuclear weapons. Finland’s accession to Nato in April 2023 highlighted that hosting nuclear weapons is not a pre-condition for membership.

This is fundamentally disingenuous, and goes to the heart of the debate. The SNP wants voters to think there is nothing to see here, no issue of policy, no incompatibility between aspiration and reality. But it is mendacious in the extreme to argue that many NATO members do not possess or play host to nuclear weapons and that Scotland would simply be another of those.

There is an enormous difference between a NATO member state (or candidate) which states that it will not in the future host nuclear weapons, and one which is demanding a non-negotiable principle that another member removes its nuclear capability. That is the situation an independent Scotland would create: the UK would need to relocate its nuclear deterrent, provided by the four Vanguard-class submarines, to another base.

This is a demand which has no precedent in NATO history. The US Air Force deployed nuclear weapons to Greece during the Cold War but removed the final 20 B61 bombs from Araxos Air Base in the spring of 2001; the reasons are not fully known but may have involved the decision of the Hellenic Air Force not to modernise its aircraft and maintain a capacity to deliver the bombs. America also withdrew nuclear weapons from the UK in 2008, when it removed an unknown number of B61 bombs from Lakenheath, though it has been rumoured that the US Air Force might be planning to resume storage of nuclear weapons at the base.

In both cases, the removal was discreet and relatively small-scale, applying to tactical weapons only. It involved only air-dropped nuclear bombs, which could be moved to one of six remaining storage sites in Europe. What the Scottish Government is planning represents the relocation of the UK’s entire independent strategic nuclear deterrent, with nowhere for it to go. This cannot be emphasised enough. The UK had operated continuous at sea deterrence through ballistic missile submarines since April 1969: that means that for 55 years, there has always been a submarine somewhere in the world, ready to launch weapons. If the Vanguard-class boats were no longer able to use HMNB Clyde, they would effectively be removed from service, and continuous at sea deterrence would end.

It is not simply a case of the submarines being tied up in Portsmouth or elsewhere. Faslane was chosen in the 1960s for a number of very specific qualities, including its ready access to deep water and considerable space to build the base. The House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee examined the prospect of removing the nuclear deterrent from Faslane before the 2014 referendum and the conclusions were stark. Absent Faslane, there are perhaps three other potential sites in the UK, at Barrow-in-Furness, Milford Haven and Devonport, but none is a like-for-like replacement. Barrow’s dock cannot accommodate more than two submarines at once; Milford Haven, considered but rejected in the 1960s, now has substantial industrial development which would impede the building of a naval facility; while Devonport, where the existing submarines are often maintained, likewise does not have room to build the supporting facilities a ‘new Faslane’ would require. In addition, relocating the deterrent would likely cost billions of pounds and could take something like 20 years.

This is central to the Scottish Government’s case. As we have seen recently with Finland and, especially, Sweden, new members of NATO require the unanimous agreement of the existing members. Sweden submitted its application in May 2022, received a formal invitation the following month and the accession protocol was signed in July 2022. Ratification by other states has been held up by Hungary, however, as the two countries have clashed in a European Union context over the Hungarian government’s supposed infringements of democratic norms. However, at the end of February, an arms deal was agreed for Hungary to purchase four Swedish-built Saab JAS 39 Gripen combat aircraft an expand a logistics contract for the 14 Gripens it already operates. In addition, Saab signed a memorandum of understanding with Hungary’s Ministry of Defence to create high-tech industrial areas and establish a centre of excellence for virtual reality technologies in Hungary. Following the defence agreement, the National Assembly in Budapest approved Sweden’s accession to NATO. The acting speaker, Sándor Lezsák, signed off the process as did the new president of Hungary, Tamás Sulyok, and Sweden formally joined NATO on 7 March.

Sweden’s application, therefore, took 22 months, with the pressure of the war in Ukraine on everyone’s mind. What incentive would the United Kingdom have to expedite the membership of a newly independent Scotland, if that applicant were insisting that the UK move its fleet of ballistic missile submarines from Faslane as a matter of urgency? The UK would not be the only problem: in 2022, defence analyst and former Royal Tank Regiment officer Stuart Crawford reported that a senior US diplomat had said America would veto Scotland’s NATO membership if it insisted on nuclear weapons being removed from Faslane. If the United States and the United Kingdom are determined that Scotland should not be admitted to NATO while it demanded the closure of Faslane as a nuclear base, Scotland’s application is dead.

Robertson simply refuses to engage on this matter. When he introduced the policy document and was questioned by reporters, he conceded that the UK would “clearly rather not” find a replacement base for the Vanguard-class submarines, but was confident that “in these circumstances, it will”. But there is no evidence for this at all, merely magical thinking of the highest order and blind assertion.

It is also important to understand that the Scottish Government’s disavowal of nuclear weapons is problematic to its very membership of NATO. The alliance is committed to nuclear deterrent; its current Strategic Concept, the document which sets out NATO’s values, priorities and tasks, makes the centrality of that capability abundantly clear:

The strategic nuclear forces of the Alliance, particularly those of the United States, are the supreme guarantee of the security of the Alliance… NATO will take all necessary steps to ensure the credibility, effectiveness, safety and security of the nuclear deterrent mission… NATO will continue to maintain credible deterrence, strengthen its strategic communications, enhance the effectiveness of its exercises and reduce strategic risks.

This is the context in which we have to view the SNP’s insistence that it would seek the removal of the UK’s nuclear deterrent, and there is another very public statement in the policy paper that it would be “a cornerstone of defence policy that an independent Scotland would only participate in overseas military operations that are lawful, approved by Scottish Ministers, and authorised by the Scottish Parliament”. In short, an independent Scotland, while seeking NATO membership, would be setting a lot of conditions and setting some high ethical bars.

There are a number of possible outcomes to negotiations over Faslane, and it is not clear who would feel in the stronger position: Scotland might the location of the nuclear deterrent as a very strong card, being prepared to offer either a delay in its removal or, as some have suggested, leasing Faslane and its associated sites to the UK as sovereign bases (this was raised five years ago with a suggestion that an independent Scotland might raise £1 billion a year in lease payments). However, Martin Docherty-Hughes, an SNP defence spokesman, comprehensively rejected the proposal in The National in October 2020. Equally, the UK might think that NATO membership and its ability to veto a Scottish application was a powerful advantage on its side, as might co-operation on a wide range of other issues.

No-one knows how this would play out or what kinds of deals would be on the table—and that’s why the Scottish Government’s position, and its stonewalling when challenged, is so dishonest. Only the most Braveheart-blinded nationalist thinks the negotiations to separate Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom would be easy or swift. Really, we have no idea how long the process would be. The implementation of the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which created Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State, was introduced into the House of Commons on 25 February 1920 and had a commencement date of 3 May 1921, but the negotiations which produced it can be dated almost to whenever one chooses: the cabinet committee planning its provisions began work in September 1919 under Walter Long, first lord of the Admiralty; but a lot of activity and thought was represented by the Government of Ireland Act 1914, the Government of Ireland Bill 1893 (defeated in the House of Lords) and the Government of Ireland Bill 1886 (defeated in the Commons). On the other hand, the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992 took five months.

Perhaps NATO membership would not be a pressing priority for an independent Scotland. It is easy to see that a fledgling nation would prioritise United Nations recognition and then an application to join the European Union (a separate paper on the EU was published last November; while it asserts that Scotland would be “well placed to move quickly through this accession process”, it wisely does not specify a timetable). But many SNP supporters, at any rate, would regard to removal of nuclear weapons as a moral imperative, and the party is already under pressure as Robertson yesterday refused to confirm that an independent Scottish government would sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, an international agreement for the comprehensive elimination of such weapons which currently has 93 signatories.

My sense is that we will not see another referendum for some time. The SNP is struggling politically, and is now regularly neck-and-neck in the polls for the forthcoming general election with Scottish Labour. When asked what issues were most important to them, respondents to a recent poll put independence a distant fourth, far behind the economy, the NHS and immigration. It was only ranked third even by those who voted SNP in 2019. The same poll put independence behind the status quo at 43 per cent for Yes and 47 per cent for no, and the overwhelming preponderance of polls in the past six months have given some kind of lead to No.

Nevertheless, the elections for the Scottish Parliament in May 2026 will be a more definitive test. If we do face another national conversation over the prospect of an independent Scotland, I don’t imagine potential membership of NATO will be a major factor in the debates. But it is a microcosm. Those who want to see an independent Scotland have to be honest about what that would look like. They cannot be expected to have all the answers, but they are obliged, when necessary, to say they don’t know. If it happens, it will be the biggest decision taken in centuries. That cannot be done on a false prospectus.