Dr Phillips O’Brien: Ridding Scotland of nukes might take longer than expected

An INDEPENDENT Scotland would have no need for its own nuclear deterrent, though it might find it considerably more time-consuming than it expects to move the present nuclear weapons now in Scotland out of the country.

To begin with, Trident cannot be seen as an issue alone.

It will be part of a larger set of issues which would have to be negotiated, some of which Scotland would have more leverage about and some of which the rest of the UK would have the upper hand.

For instance, there is the question of whether Scotland would get “successor state” status in the European Union, which is considered crucial to allow Scotland to remain in the EU without a negotiation setting out the terms of its accession.

This is an issue that the UK government could use to pressure Scotland into keeping Trident submarines on the Clyde until equivalent facilities are constructed in the UK.

Right now, the government of Spain – which has a similar issue to Scotland in its Catalan region – seems hostile to the notion that areas which decide to secede from their nation state’s and become independent can have an easy entrance into the EU.

One presumes that the French government, which has significant Basque and Catalan minorities, would share this view. If the UK took a hard-line on denying Scotland successor state status, it would receive support of other large nations in the EU, which would be problematic for Scotland.

Then there is the question of Nato membership, which the SNP has now said would continue in an independent Scotland.

It is entirely possible for an independent Scotland to be in Nato and be non-nuclear, in
 that it would not possess, provide a base for nor develop nuclear weapons.

This is the policy of the vast majority of Nato member countries. On the other hand, the Nato alliance, as it is a nuclear alliance, would want to allow the UK to have enough time to safely and sensibly rebase Trident outside of Scotland.

This could take many years, and Scotland, as one of the smaller Nato countries, would find it hard to quicken the pace.

l Dr Phillips O’Brien is director of the Scottish Centre for War Studies at the University of Glasgow.