At long last, rationality has become a feature of the discourse relating to the defence dimension of the independence referendum debate.

On Monday we had the First Minister's address, and more importantly, an hour-long question and answer session in front of an audience of diplomats and foreign affairs analysts at the Brookings Institute in Washington. While yesterday your sister newspaper the Sunday Herald carried a credible discussion around Scotland's future force structure and alliance framework.

The First Minister's comments at the beginning of last week were much more than a mere rehash of the outcome of the NATO debate that took place at the SNP annual conference last October. During the very extensive and, for a politician, almost unprecedentedly detailed Brookings Q&A session, Alex Salmond made three crucial points in relation to the defence debate. Firstly, for the first time I believe, he publicly stated the debate was triggered by a request by some existing NATO members, in particular, I am led to believe, Norway, Denmark and the United States.

Needless to say all three countries will probably deny this, though I doubt if they would endorse former NATO General Secretary George Robertson's comment that Scottish membership of NATO will be actively blocked.

Secondly, the First Minster made much more explicit what he has hinted at for some time now, that membership of NATO is not the be-all and end-all that was claimed in October. He actually said in the Brookings discussions that the SNP's former position of being part of the looser diplomatic framework like Finland and Sweden was a perfectly rational and acceptable position but that on balance he felt NATO membership was better. This becomes very important when you consider the actual force structure options and deployment decisions as outlined by Dorcha Lee and Dr Colin Fleming in their respective Sunday Herald articles.

Thirdly, there is what Mr Salmond had to say in his Brooking discussions about how all of this will play out politically on the day of the referendum, September 18, 2014. It seems the First Minister is now of the view held by those of us who argued against membership of NATO. We argued that the electoral salience of NATO membership is at best marginal, that it was not nor will be in the forefront of the minds of the vast majority of the Scottish people when they come to cast their vote.

This is of course entirely rational. It is true that the world can be unstable and dangerous in some places, but as Dr Fleming implies, Scotland's global position, sandwiched between the north-west coast of the European mainland and Ireland, is not one of those dangerous places. Like Ireland itself, indeed like New Zealand, Scotland presents a threat to nobody and nobody presents a threat to Scotland.

Although NATO membership will be a given, all of these points and more must be taken account of as the defence dimension of the Independence White Paper is formulated. To that end, the formulation of this aspect of the white paper needs to be inclusive and open, which would contrast starkly with the usual closed-door processes of foreign and defence policy formulation beloved of the British state.

Bill Ramsay,

SNP CND organiser,

84 Albert Avenue,

Glasgow.