Whose enemy?

Regrettably, neither has been able to identify an enemy with the urge to attack this country in the foreseeable future.

Canards have been raised about nuclear, something I never mentioned, and wild men from the East have also been mentioned.

Are the wild men from the East going to have the weapons, the logistics or indeed the urge to mount a land sea and air attack upon Scotland?

Why would they wish to unless we had set out to offend them?

Alexander McKay’s equation of some wild-eyed Ayatollah to either Hitler or the Soviet Union is merely puerile.

Wild men from the East have targets of much more interest to them than Scotland.

I wonder if my opponents equate me to a neutral pacifist. I am not. Scotland must have a military commensurate with its size and needs. In my view, its current needs are fairly modest.

Scotland is part of Europe; if Scotland is attacked Europe is attacked and vice versa. No state which has any national interest in a direct military attack on any European country has either the weaponry, the resources or the logistics to do so.

I do not by any means preclude terrorist attack and that is a matter for special forces and a well-trained police force combined with shared intelligence with whatever allies an independent Scotland may have.

To quote the corporal in Dad’s Army, don’t panic.

R Mill Irving

Station Road

Gifford, East Lothian

Is it really that important for us to define a potential enemy before deciding upon a defence strategy for an independent Scotland?

Surely the one thing most of us can agree on is that we genuinely don’t know how the future will look, and that we need to spend more on education than weapons of mass destruction?

Emily McBay

Whitehouse Loan

Edinburgh