Nuclear Weapons on the Clyde An American View
Hi Everyone. I’ve been following the Scottish Independence referendum campaigning for some time. Most of the fallacious arguments I’ve seen have been pretty well knocked down, but there’s one in particular that keeps cropping up which is absolutely ridiculous and needs to be dealt with.
I live in Washington DC and I do policy work. Since no other foreign policy and government policy geeks have knocked down the NATO argument and the defense spending argument, I’ve decided to throw my hat into the ring. Just so you know where I’m coming from, I’m a supporter of Scottish Independence.
My main reasons to hoping you go for independence have a lot to do with the military issues I’m about to discuss. Scotland didn’t want to go to war in Bosnia or against Iraq and Afghanistan, but your soldiers ended up in the desert with ours anyway.
Scotland didn’t want nukes in the Clyde, but because of decisions made in London, ended up with them anyway, including the hosting and maintenance of visiting American nuclear subs.
These sorts of events create a lot of distrust, and a lot of friction that just doesn’t need to be there between Scots and Americans.
If we had a direct relationship with the Scottish people through Edinburgh instead of a second hand relationship through London, none of the foregoing would have occurred.
I guaran-damn-tee you that even though Americans are fighting hard to bring an end to the aggression there will soon be another warmongering President sitting in the White House. So if you elect to remain in the UK, I can’t guarantee you that something like Iraq or Afghanistan will never happen again. Sometimes my country just loses its damned mind.
But enough of that. The main thing I wanted to dispel was this myth that somehow if you don’t want Nuclear Weapons in the Clyde, NATO and the US will have a tantrum, and then will decide to punish Scotland somehow. Let me say that this is complete and utter bullshit.
First off, the only NATO program that obligates a country to store nukes is what’s called Nuclear Sharing, which is a fun way of saying America gets to park our nuclear weapons in your country. The current NATO policies that exist in the UK exist ONLY because the UK already has Nukes.
Most NATO Members do not participate in nuclear weapons sharing. The ones that do are Germany, Turkey, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy. The rest of the 28 nations don’t have any American nukes sitting in their territory or their ports.
Comment
Thanks for your informed contribution. With Westminster and the UK media, who are supposed to be ‘leaving the decision to those living in Scotland’, resorting to subterfuge and lies against the case for independence, it raises the spirits to read an honest, intelligent opinion.
caltonjock 
An interesting contribution from an American friend.
Was it as own wish, Jock, to remain anonymous?
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He was taking a bit of stick from some US commentators and deleted the post and his name
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Why the hell haven’t we, long since, established powerful relations with our Scottish diaspora in America, who could lobby over there on our behalf? There must be just as many Scots as Irish in the States, yet we never try to establish good relations with them at the political level. I must admit that I did vote for staying in NATO after the Germans were forced to retain nuclear weapons on their soil – as the sole means to keep America off our backs. My position since then has changed totally, and although I have always been opposed to nuclear weapons per se, and particularly on Scottish soil as the very reluctant hosts of the UK’s arsenal, it seemed to be a reasonable stance at the time. I’m not sure I agree with the anonymous contributor about America not intervening, but we won’t be sure till we try to dispense with them, and the times have moved on when the UKG is even more determined to keep them – and us – in perpetuity.
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