Scotland independence movement sends dangerous message

As they make their case for independence, SNP leaders have found themselves in the difficult position of talking up the importance of a referendum while also downplaying the significance of the result they hope to attain. Salmond has repeatedly affirmed the right of the people of Scotland to determine their own fate. But he has insisted that the social union between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom – ties of history, language, and culture – would endure long after the political union vanishes. Moreover, with a sovereign Scotland still firmly planted in the European Union and presumably NATO, he argues, the costs of splitting off from the United Kingdom would be small.

Building what the SNP calls “a culture of independence” has defined its behavior as a governing party, and the next two years will be spent in permanent campaign mode. Such determined advocacy will cloud the ability of Scots to make a clear-eyed assessment of the costs and benefits of leaving the union.

The SNP paints a vision of an independent Scotland that would be fairer, greener, and more progressive, yet still integrated with its neighbors, with Scots sharing the crown, a currency, and a common defense with the rump union of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. But this outcome is still more fantasy than assured reality.

Much depends on the complex negotiations that would follow a successful referendum. The disposition of North Sea oil reserves, for example, would be one of the bargaining points, as would the apportionment of the British national debt. The status of British nuclear weapons currently stationed in Scotland would also come into question, given the SNP's desire for a nuclear-free country.

Scotland's independence bid, like all nationalist movements, is the product of calculated moves by political elites within existing institutions. Independence movements come about not because every member of an ethnic minority wakes up one day and decides to wave a flag or, worse, shoulder a rifle.

Instead, they usually begin with the simple assertion that local laws should take precedence over those devised by distant legislators. They progress toward more radical demands for control over local natural resources or an end to military service beyond one’s own frontiers. Their culmination is marked not by the roar of celebration, but by the whimpering realization in the capital that the benefits of staying together are just no longer worth the costs.

A nationalist movement seeks its own country. A nationalist party seeks a country that will keep electing it. The SNP has structured the debate over Scottish independence in ways that make it difficult for voters to distinguish these two demands. The SNP’s nationalism is certainly more palatable than the blood-and-soil variety. But its example is politically self-serving and ultimately harmful to Scotland's – and even Europe’s – long-term well-being.

To restive regionalists, the SNP provides a tutorial in how a secessionist party can win ground by understanding existing institutions better than the people who should have been most committed to preserving them. The SNP has astutely transformed the policy of devolution – a set of concessions designed to empower local government while strengthening the sense of common cause between Scots and other Britons – into a prelude to possible independence.

To the rest of Europe and the world, Scotland once embodied the belief that local distinctiveness, united governance, and democratic practice were mutually reinforcing. It would be a shame if the Scottish model became something else: a handbook for transforming muscular regionalism into territorial separatism.

Charles King is professor of international affairs and government at Georgetown University and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center. His essay “The Scottish Play,” from which this article is adapted, appears in the Sept-Oct issue of Foreign Affairs.

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