Good Thought Experiment, Bad Politics

Today, the Scottish people will decide once and for all whether their homeland and the rest of the United Kingdom will be sundered. At stake is the future of one of the world’s most iconic states; without Scotland, the U.K. would be left much diminished and not particularly united. A victory for the Scottish Nationalist Party would also raise further questions about the viability of other composite nations, and threaten to trigger a cascade of independence referendums everywhere from Belgium to Spain.

We feel that independence would represent an impractical and economically imprudent step for Scotland. Serious questions remain unanswered: Just how much oil remains beneath Scotland’s territorial waters in the North Sea? What currency would an independent Scotland use? How realistic are aspirations to join the European Union? In light of this uncertainty, retaining membership in the U.K. on the condition that additional powers be devolved to the Scottish parliament seems like a far wiser course of action.

At the same time, however, there is something undeniably seductive about forging a brand-new country with a social contract tailored to the sentiments of its people. Scots as a whole are more liberal and more pro-EU than their countrymen to the south, and independence would grant them a far greater say in everything from the design of the welfare state to oil and gas revenues.

Indeed, the Scottish independence referendum poses deep questions about something most take for granted: the modern nation-state. England and Scotland were only united under one monarch in 1603 and as one state by the Acts of Union in 1707. Many supposedly “established” European nations were formed still more recently: Italy was unified in the mid-19th century, as were Switzerland’s cantons. That nation-states should form a bloc as tightly integrated as the European Union is an even more recent notion; the Maastricht Treaty was not signed until 1992, 47 years after the conclusion of the Second World War. While it is easy to dismiss the possibility of independence as foolhardy, we must remember Europe was once far more atomized than it is today.

That being said, independence for Scotland would mean a step in the opposite direction and the ebbing of a tide of unification that has crept across Europe for the past several centuries. A completely new borderline would be added to maps of Western Europe for the first time in nearly seventy years; what this would mean for the current European project is anyone’s guess.

The philosophical underpinnings of Scotland’s desire for autonomy, however, are compelling and thought-provoking. Self-determination is an understandable rallying cry, and it is only proper that Scots be given the opportunity to shape their own national destiny. It seems a shame, however, to embark on an ill-considered effort to achieve full independence when much the same end could be achieved while leaving the United Kingdom intact.