What Scotland can do to uphold the international order; to protect ourselves and to set an example to others?
We no longer live in the world where we can depend on ‘the good guys’ for our security because we can see both how fast they can turn on us and how good they never were in the first place.
Common Weal has long advocated for an independent Scotland to take a ‘non-aligned’ stance to foreign affairs. Not necessarily demilitarised and pacifistic – though that’s the goal I personally aspire to – but one where strategic alliances against threats are built based on the merits of their case rather than blind allegiance to a ‘special relationship’ that now offers no protection from our own allies.
Scotland can be a force for justice in the world. Not force in the ‘my might alone makes right’ sense of the bullying superpowers, but by joining with other nations to uphold the rule of law wherever it is breached. Indeed, it’s that rule of law that is the only thing that has ever created some semblance of peace in the world. We give it up at our peril.