Scottish independence: A progressive nation has no place in Nato

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy demands that Nato powers use their air forces to create a “no fly zone” for Russian planes in Ukraine. However, that would entail direct conflict between Nato and Russia, leading, inevitably, to World War III and bringing humanity to the precipice of nuclear Armageddon.

For us in the Scottish independence movement, this crisis throws an unresolved debate into stark relief. Ever since the historic decision taken by the SNP conference in 2012, the party has been committed to an independent Scotland being a member of Nato, on condition “that Scotland will not host nuclear weapons”.

That position may have become the settled policy of the SNP, but there are many thousands, both within the party and in the wider indy movement, for whom it is anathema. For those of us who have spent most of our lives campaigning against the horror of nuclear weapons, the current SNP policy is an absurdity.

SNP leaders point out that there are many Nato member states that do not have nuclear weapons. What they ignore, of course, is that none of them had to argue with the UK and US governments for the removal of an existing nuclear base from their territory.

The Faslane base – which is a mere 25 miles from Glasgow as the crow flies – is a massive barrier to the SNP’s contradictory vision of an independent Scotland that is, at once, in Nato but out of the disreputable club of nuclear-armed states. Does anyone seriously believe that, following a popular vote for independence, Nato membership would not be dependent on the Scottish Government accepting a never-ending series of “temporary” extensions to the existence of the base at Faslane?

Not only that, but the very fact that Faslane is a prime target in any future nuclear war exposes the ludicrousness of the notion that Nato provides its members with “protection” under its much-vaunted “nuclear umbrella”.

The attempts by Nato leaders, such as US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, to pose as humanitarian supporters of Ukraine should be taken with a grain of salt.

When Putin’s victims were the predominantly Muslim inhabitants of Chechnya, there were no massive economic sanctions against Moscow. Chechen flags were not flown from public buildings in London and Edinburgh.

In fact, in 2000, while many of us in the anti-war movement were condemning the brutality of Putin’s second war in Chechnya, one of Nato’s most senior leaders, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, was in St Petersburg, joining Putin for a night at the opera.

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Nothing can justify Putin’s outrageous invasion of Ukraine, but Nato has played its own dangerous and dishonourable role in the tensions that led to the war. It is a matter of record that, in 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker gave then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev a solemn promise that, if the USSR did not stand in the way of German reunification, Nato would not expand eastwards towards Russia’s borders.

The fact that it did precisely that – recruiting not only the nations of the old Warsaw Pact, but also the Baltic republics that were previously part of the Soviet Union – is, surely, one of the most dangerous acts of geopolitical duplicity in modern history.

Add to that the US-led disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Western powers’ support for dubious allies like Saudi Arabia (which is still pouring destruction on the heads of beleaguered people of Yemen) and Israel (whose oppression of the Palestinians led to its recent, and correct, designation as an apartheid state by Amnesty International). It is clear that the West and Nato are very far from being paragons of peace and democracy.

If we want an independent Scotland to be a force for progress, membership of Nato cannot be part of that project.

Mark Brown is a freelance writer and a political activist. He contributes regularly to the Sunday National