“Scottish independence is scary because it would mean an end to the UK’s nuclear deterrent” has been a long-running Unionist trope. It even became the plot engine of a US Netflix series called The Diplomat, where the US ambassador to London gets involved in a bizarre attempt to undermine Scottish independence in order to save Trident. and with it, the US’s geopolitical hegemony
(Series four just launched and I have started watching it, though it’s quite incredible. They expect us to believe that the UK has had the same Boris-Johnson-esque PM for three years.)
So it is not surprising that UK Defence Secretary Wes Streeting on a visit to Scotland last week, accused the SNP of waving a white flag at Russia with its opposition to Trident. He is not the only one. The Unionist press here in Scotland is always full of lazy, phoned-in comment pieces making the same point.
They may not have noticed that nuclear deterrence is no longer a thing. It is not working for Putin, is it? Russia is bristling with nuclear weapons but that is not stopping Ukraine from attacking its oil refineries.
Gideon Rachman wrote in the FT recently: “On October 1, Vladimir Putin weighed in personally, stating that if Kaliningrad was attacked, Russia would use “all the weapons” that it has. The Russian leader acknowledged that France and the UK also have nuclear weapons but boasted “in terms of weapons we have, we are unparalleled”. There was a time when threats like this would have made global headlines. But in Britain, the travails of Manchester City football club were bigger news, while France was preoccupied by rioting schoolchildren.
Have the MAD men had their day?
Has the world moved beyond MAD (mutually assured destruction)? This was the theory (parodied in a 1960s satirical movie called Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) that the more nuclear weapons everyone had, the safer we all were because nobody would dare to start any trouble.
We are now in a different era, not the Cold War but the Grey War, an era of hybrid warfare, false-flag operations, and plausible deniability. The Russians are masters of he dark arts of misinformation – read The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov for an absurdist take on Stalin’s Russia.
In an era of social media, it is easier and more effective to destabilise democracies and attack the EU with bot farms and covert assassinations, like the Novichok poisoning on UK soil. There is also the fast-developing role of satellites, drones and possible bioweapons.
Attacks like these cannot, of course, be dealt with by nuclear weapons so Trident is literally useless.
Is it in Russia’s interests that the UK continues to pour so much of its defence budget into Trident?
The UK is increasing its defence spending but at least a quarter of that is going into replacing the four nuclear submarines. Two are in production and the hefty costs are escalating.
Ex-leader of Joint Forces Command General Sir Richard Barrons told the FT last month that the nuclear defence programme was like “a tapeworm”. It is now swallowing so much of the budget that the UK can no longer afford a usable conventional force, he said.
Does Trident even work?
Does the thing even still work? The base is poorly maintained with old pipes and radioactive leaks, and the subs are undergoing longer and longer missions, doubling the time at sea, according to The Ferret.
I wrote recently about how the backup comms for Trident – a blimpish balloon that looks like something out of a 1960s movie – blew up on a training exercise, and veteran security reporter Duncan Campbell’s assessment is that it was destroyed by a drone. The first line of Trident comms, two masts in Cumbria, is also pretty vulnerable. If these were taken out, the UK government has no secure way of contacting the nuclear commanders at sea. They would have to wait for a sub to surface and ring in – or perhaps they could smuggle a code for ‘Nuke Moscow’ into a plot of The Archers or something?
The UK’s nuclear deterrent is also completely dependent on the US, which makes and maintains the warheads. How much of a problem is that in an era of the US as an unreliable ally?
An independent Scotland will be a partner in UK defence
Scottish independence is no longer unthinkable. Either half or a slight majority of the population want it. It is time to start planning. An independent Scotland will still be part of UK defence, clearly, but as a partner with a seat at the table and a say in decision-making.
The Scottish government will likely want to scale back Trident and refocus spending. One option might be for the UK to stop at building two new nuclear submarines – that is not enough to have one out at sea permanently but enough to retain a scaled-back nuclear capability for the next 30 or 40 years.
Could this even be an opportunity for the UK to rethink its defence strategy – instead of an Empire trying to do everything everywhere all at once, it could consider trying to do less better.
Exploring the sub-Arctic backyard
Sometimes in this game you get contacted by a diligent student. Recently I have had a couple of conversations with Joaquim Gaignard, who is working on a PHD in Scotland’s relationship with the Arctic. (Presumably he contacted me in part because there is not a lot happening currently about Scotland and the Arctic but that could change.)
I learned from Joaquim that Scotland is part of the “Sub-Arctic backyard”, it is not on the Arctic Circle but a near neighbour of countries that are. This region is becoming more strategically important in part because of climate change with the prospect of more routes opening up; and partly because of the energy and communications infrastructure that is there. An independent Scotland could join NORDEFCO, a regional alliance of Nordic countries. It could build vessels for patrolling the regional waters.
We have a strategically placed spaceport at Unst. An independent Scotland back in the EU could be part of building the European alternative to Starlink, IRIS. That could lead to confrontation with Elon Musk, who seems like a great model for a villainous fictional counterpart. Could there be something in there for scriptwriters to play with?
I attach Joaquim’s background reading list.
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Bailes, A. (2014) ‘The Arctic’s Nearest Neighbour?’, _Arctic Yearbook_, pp. 380–398.
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Bailes, A.J. (2014) ‘The Small Nations Οf Τhe Wider Arctic Space: Security Challenges, Policy Options’, _The Yearbook of Polar Law Online_, 6(1), pp. 598–628. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1163/1876-8814_021.
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Bailes, A.J.K., Þórhallsson, B. and Johnstone, R.L. (2013) ‘Scotland as an Independent Small State: Where would it seek shelter?’, _Icelandic Review of Politics & Administration_, 9(1), pp. 1–20. Available at: https://doi.org/10.13177/irpa.a.2013.9.1.1.
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Depledge, D. and Østhagen, A. (2022) ‘Scotland: A Touchstone for Security in the High North?’, _The RUSI Journal_, 166(6–7), pp. 46–62. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03071847.2022.2036229.
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Fleming, C.M. and Gebhard, C. (2014) ‘Scotland, NATO, and transatlantic security’, _European Security_, 23(3), pp. 307–325. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2014.903926.
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Hosa, J. (2021) ‘Scotland’s Arctic dream of independence – European Council on Foreign Relations’, _ECFR_, 8 November. Available at: https://ecfr.eu/article/scotlands-arctic-dream-of-independence/ (Accessed: 11 November 2021).
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MacDonald, J. (2018) ‘Scotland & the Changing Arctic’, _JONAA, Journal of the North Atlantic & Arctic_, 30 January. Available at: https://www.jonaa.org/content/2018/1/22/scotland-and-the-changing-arctic (Accessed: 31 March 2024).
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Walling, J. (2026) _Scotland and the Arctic_. Policy Brief. North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network (NAADSN), pp. 1–7. Available at: https://www.naadsn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/26jan-Scotland-Arctic-NAADSN-Policy-Brief-Walling.pdf (Accessed: 9 March 2026).
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Powell, R.C. (2013) ‘Subarctic Backyards? Britain, Scotland, and the Paradoxical Politics of the European High North’, Northern Review, (37), pp. 87–100.