‘Bigger is better’ or ‘small is beautiful’?

In many ways, it is the key to the debate around Scottish independence, with a voter’s visceral reaction to this simple poser being a greater predictor of where they would cast their vote than anything around actual policy debate.

At least it was in 2014, with Brexit giving those on my side of the debate the opportunity to say that Scotland could now have both, with the UK withdrawing from the world’s largest single market. 

As I pointed out in my previous article, in the security sphere, I broke this down to the ‘carrier conundrum’, whereby some would focus on Scotland’s loss of these hulls would not only provide a metaphor for our lack of global ambition but literally make us less safe – although like much of the case for the Union in 2014, it can be argued that time has not been kind to the argument about carrier strike being the supreme demonstration of ‘Global Britain’ and its status as a UN P5 member. 

Written by Martin Docherty-Hughes MP, Member of Parliament for West Dunbartonshire since 2015 and SNP Defence Spokesperson since 2023, this article is part of our series exploring diverse perspectives on defence and security issues. While the opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the stance of the UK Defence Journal, we believe in the importance of presenting a variety of viewpoints. Understanding different perspectives is essential for a comprehensive grasp of complex subjects. For more articles in this series, please click here.

I’ve never taken it personally: it’s a simple fact that the history of international relations is almost entirely written from the perspective of ‘great powers’ or larger states despite the fact that non-large – or as my former SNP MP colleague Stephen Gethins always says, ‘normal’ – states make up the overwhelming majority of UN member states. It was, in many ways, ever thus – “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must” is one of the most-quoted lines from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War.

Where Scotland would sit among the ‘normal’ states is also subject to some conjecture, with the country rejoining the international community from towards the middle of the pack in population terms but towards the top in per-capita economic terms, with a developed market economy, high level of education and a strong international brand. 

While even the strongest of independence’s critics would agree that Scotland is certainly not a ‘micro-state’, where it lies on that spectrum towards more established middle powers like the Netherlands, Sweden or Switzerland is open to debate: with even that accepted cohort of middle states being replaced by a growing list of larger, middle-income states that nonetheless exert a strong regional or sectoral pull. 

The prominent scholar of the Liberal approach to International Relations, Robert Keohane defined two types of states: ‘system effective’ and ‘system ineffective’, something that worked nicely during the Cold War and through its immediate aftermath – but you’d need to have been living in a cave for the last decade to have missed that these assumptions are now under massive strain. Whether it be in the form of the ‘poly-crisis’ attacking many of the institutions of modernity and globalisation or the shift to what I like to call a ‘polycentric’ global order (after a wise Professor once pointed out to me that ‘multipolar’ doesn’t work given an object can only have two poles), mean that being ‘system effective’ can’t be taken for granted anymore.

Given that we are most often hearing about this in the context of the United States as it moves on from the comfort of its unipolar moment in the post-Cold War era, it almost goes without saying that this applies even more so to the UK if there was indeed anyone who believes that the UK has proven itself to be consistently ‘system effective’ in the last two decades as it has battled the reality of an acceleration in the comparative decline it has faced since the end of WW2. 

Strangely enough, I think the recent history of smaller states may provide a handy road map not only for Scotland but for the UK, with or without us. While the asymmetry of international relations means small states can’t rely on getting their way in a straight scrap, that does not mean that many have not developed a sophisticated and sustained strategy of international institutional engagement, which has led to concrete successes.

Indeed, the Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, Christine Ingebritsen, coined the phrase ‘norm entrepreneurship’ in a 2002 paper describing how “a group of militarily weak, economically dependent small states pursues ‘social power’ by acting as a norm entrepreneur in the international community”, citing the creation of a common security institution (OSCE), modern ideas of ‘sustainable development’, and encouragement of cooperation in institutions as the legacy of the Scandinavian states’ foreign policy in the modern era: to which a more up-to-date example must surely added with the Baltic and Nordic states’ strong stances against Russian expansionism that will surely embarrass many more ‘system effective’ states when histories of this period are written. 

As I wrote in my last article, an independent Scotland’s core Foreign and Security Policy interests will be clear and understood by both practitioners and the public they will serve, much in the same way we see in the Scandinavian states cited by Ingebritsen: something almost certainly aided by the removal of any need to play a global or ‘system effective’ role and maintain this narrow focus. 

And while on all areas of independence policy, opponents have tried to emphasise the uncertainty and risk the enterprise might involve, Scotland is, in fact, lucky to be surrounded by so many states which serve as a vital comparator to the status quo and to hark back to the link between economic and military security highlighted in my first article, these are states which we know unquestionably to be wealthier, more equal, less corrupt and more democratic than the United Kingdom. 

Because while a ‘bigger is better’ answer to the question I posed at the start might lead one to recoil from the idea of Scotland ‘going it alone’, there are enough general systemic and country-specific examples pointing towards the opposite being true: in an increasingly anarchic global system, small states have been showing they have what it takes to not only survive but prosper for some time. 

In specific terms, it could have been said until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that there were broadly three models for small states in Scotland’s neighbourhood: Ireland, Sweden / Finland, and Denmark / Norway, with all of these states having their own historical experiences that shaped current policy. 

Ireland’s rebirth against the background of the wars of Independence and a bitter Civil War in 1922 with the UK supporting one side meant that NATO membership was always going to be a non-starter, even if, as I previously stated, it has a close but completely opaque security relationship with London today. The Scandinavian states’ experience of wartime defined what they thought about the Washington Treaty: Denmark and Norway, with bitter experiences of invasion, were for it for the same reasons that Sweden’s avoidance of occupation pushed it to stick to its history of neutrality. 

The idea of ‘neutrality’ should also be addressed with regard to Scotland. While a state like Ireland officially proclaims its neutrality, no serious scholar of International Relations (including those I’ve met in Ireland) would take that seriously, especially considering Dublin is officially bound by Article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty to the military defence of EU allies in a far more stringent manner than NATO’s more famous Article V. 

Similarly, while states like Sweden and Finland sought to tread an updated, ‘non-aligned’ path through the Cold War, recent developments have brought this hokey-cokey to a necessary conclusion, and I hope for the better. As a Danish security expert remarked to me once, while Denmark had been officially neutral before the German invasion in 1940, Danes understood that no serious examination of the close cultural and economic ties it had with Allied states meant that Berlin knew this was a convenient fiction. 

Similarly, today, a modern Ireland that can boast not only EU membership, a guaranteed annual Oval Office appointment for the Taoiseach and massive flows of US inward investment is in no way neutral or non-aligned: an independent Scotland will not have the historical baggage that leads to this ambiguous reality in Irish security. 

In academic parlance, the post-war proliferation of international organisations and institutions has allowed smaller states to seek ‘shelter’ in a more durable manner than had been available to them previously. As a concept, it has come under increasing scrutiny as domestic critics of Pax Americana, in particular, have sought to draw attention to the weak defence spending of European allies, with the related concept of ‘free-riding’ emerging.

And while recent events have combined, through initiatives like NATO’s 2% target, to provide upward pressure on European defence budgets, there was a previously noted trend whereby some states had been motivated by the possibility of the rewards that a more ‘active internationalist’ policy could bring.

This was the choice that Denmark made: a state that had been known for a policy more similar to that of its non-aligned neighbour to Sweden through a series of ‘footnotes’ it made in official NATO communiques to state its opposition to certain positions. The end of the Cold War saw an opportunity for a state like Denmark to pivot towards more robust engagement within both UN and NATO frameworks: not only were Danish forces engaged in one of the few tank battles of the Balkans conflict, it lost more lives per capita in Afghanistan than any other NATO state: an engagement immortalised in Janus Metz’s 2010 documentary Armadillo. 

This is a change of perception towards the capabilities and willingness of Northern European states to strengthen Euro-Atlantic security rather than free ride, which culminated in Finland and Sweden’s (almost) simultaneous NATO accession: despite it opening up a 1,340 km border with Russia, there were few serious objections to it, based principally a recent history of close cooperation on a military level, along with the strong and consistent messages both had given around Russian aggression, in contrast to more established NATO states. And, from Scotland’s perspective, it certainly hasn’t hurt to have such avowedly anti-nuclear weapons states – particularly so in the context of Sweden – being welcomed into NATO.

Recent news that Finland had quietly activated procedures to replenish materiel and bring logistics preparedness to an effective ‘pre-war’ stance brought renewed exposure to Finnish concepts of ‘total defence’ which it has developed since its independence in 1919, bringing together all elements of government, industry and society into alignment in a way which many in the UK would be uncomfortable with – along with an incredibly well-developed sense of its own national interest that will be familiar to anyone who has seen the historical drama Shadow Lines, portraying Finnish intelligence agents caught between Moscow and Washington in the post-WW2 period. 

The evident examples of states cultivating their own defensive strategies in a way which reflects their interests, both domestically and within the context of wider global security, goes to the heart of the fact that Scotland is an outlier in not having a say in our defence or future. Despite the fact that there are examples within geographical, and ideological, touching distance of states similar to Scotland forging their own interpretation of what a successful defensive strategy looks like, has placed myself, my party and wider independence movement in a frustrating position.

In this climate of geopolitical fragility, we must look not to the states who claim to be front runners in defence but to those who have successfully utilised their resources to contribute to the defensive community. Meanwhile, we must watch while those who still see themselves as the biggest bullies in the playground run around in circles trying to ‘out-defend’ each other, a process we used to call militarism.

Click here to explore the ‘Scotland’s Defence: Perspectives and Possibilities’ series, an exclusive UK Defence Journal series by Martin Docherty-Hughes MP, SNP Defence Spokesperson.

At the heart of the UK Defence Journal’s mission is our commitment to journalistic integrity. Our role is not to dictate opinions but to present information in a fair and balanced manner, allowing our readers to form their own informed views. This series exemplifies our dedication to offering diverse perspectives in the realm of defence and security. Our aim is to ignite discussions and deepen understanding among its readers, irrespective of their stance on Scottish independence. The importance of exploring varied viewpoints in shaping an informed public discourse cannot be overstated.

You can read the rest of the series here.

Scotland’s Defence: Perspectives and Possibilities