Defence in an Independent Scotland

The Scottish Government has published the latest policy paper in its Building a New Scotland series, An Independent Scotland’s Place in the World. This paper sets out its vision for an independent Scotland's foreign, defence, and security policy. If you don’t fancy reading the whole paper, SPICe has done a good job of summarising the key points.

In the defence section defence, the key proposals include:

• Joining NATO and keeping defence spending at 2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
• Working with neighbouring members in defence of the North Atlantic and High North region, with a likely focus on the strategically important Greenland–Iceland–UK (GIUK) Gap.
• Provide conventional forces to NATO operations in support of Treaty objectives and participate in joint exercises. However, these would need to be in accordance with the United Nations Charter.
• Scotland’s Joint Forces Headquarters would be based at Faslane. 
• Working with the UK for a transitional period and a timetable for UK forces to gradually draw down their presence in Scotland.
• Nuclear weapons should be removed from Scotland in the safest and most expeditious manner possible following independence.

The media headlines predictably focused on removing nuclear weapons and the impact this might have on joining NATO. The Scottish Government reasonably points out that “only a minority of NATO members host nuclear weapons.” I doubt the so-called British independent deterrent worries Putin much, given that it relies on US missiles and has anyway failed its last two tests. However, the timetable for removing nuclear weapons looks optimistic. NATO partners must cooperate, and there is some evidence that the US, in particular, might veto Scotland's application if we disagreed on a reasonable timetable. NATO is, after all, a nuclear alliance, and even non-nuclear armed states can carry battlefield nuclear weapons. 

While I think NATO would eventually welcome Scotland, the idea that we would be essential to protecting the northern flank is fanciful. NATO can do everything from bases in Norway and Iceland. Scotland would add to that, but it's not vital.

My problem with the paper is more with the conventional defence plans, or the lack of them, and the absence of any costings. The paper ignores the practical challenges Scotland would face when establishing a conventional army, navy and air force. These challenges include:

• I have previously highlighted the absence of any recognition of the defence industry in the First Minister's speech on industrial policy. UK ships and other defence equipment will be built in UK sites (the paper is frankly delusional to argue otherwise), and Scotland cannot provide a similar pipeline of work. There is also the issue of access to sensitive electronic equipment, which is crucial to modern armed forces. Some people, opposed to the defence industry in principle, may not regard the loss of a defence industry as a big loss. However, it certainly will be to the 33,500 workers and their families at a time when the post-Indy Scottish economy will face many other challenges. The defence sector contributes £3.2 billion to the Scottish economy.
• The infrastructure and support contracts that keep defence equipment running are linked to the defence sector. Ships need regular refits, aircraft need specialists to keep them running, and a substantial Ministry of Defence to pull all of this together. Scotland will also need munitions stores and specialists to maintain them.
• Ensuring Scotland retains the skilled personnel required to run modern defence forces. At best, Scotland will inherit a random collection of transferring service personnel rather than a coherent military force. 
• Those gaps would need to be filled by a training programme. That would be a long and complex process with new officer and technical training establishments to be established with none of the economies of scale the UK brings.
• The UK will be unlikely to share intelligence with an independent Scotland. Given the approvals required for the most sensitive equipment and software, it will take many years to build up the necessary systems, if at all.  

None of the above are impossible to deliver, albeit with costly investment. My concern is that there is no evidence from this paper that any serious thought has been given to the detail. As others have pointed out, it reads like “some of the pro-Brexit material at the time of the referendum – trying to reassure people that nothing will really change, all will be well and frankly we’re better off without that lot anyway.”

This paper is a political gloss that has rightly not impressed those who understand the defence sector. If the Scottish Government is serious about defending an independent Scotland, it needs to get serious about planning for it.