There is a big danger lurking in Scottish foreign policy.

And that big danger is that we don't realise we have such a thing.

Scotland, after all, last year became one of the very few places on the planet - along with the likes of Quebec, Bermuda and Montenegro - to ever have voted against its own independence.

And that - at least according to some unionists - means First Minister Nicola Sturgeon shouldn't be strutting her stuff on the international stage. Except she does. Except, I would argue, she ought to.

Because it isn't just sovereign states which have foreign interests and foreign policies. So too do "regions" or stateless nations like our own.

Take China. Ms Sturgeon is right now on a five-day trip to the world's biggest country. In doing so she follows her predecessors Alex Salmond of her own party and Jack McConnell of Labour.

Her remit here is clear. She is overseas pursuing policy objectives in devolved areas: business and trade development, education and culture. But Ms Sturgeon didn't just talk about devolved matters. "We are promoting a very distinctive approach to creating a more competitive economy," she said before leaving, "one that is based on a fair society."

So Ms Sturgeon is raising women's rights when meeting officials.

That's a pretty significant foreign policy move for a place the Chinese don't even think is a country (they find the concept of a "country" or "nation" that isn't a sovereign "state" almost impossible to express linguistically).

Her domestic opponents will hate it, but Ms Sturgeon really is a player on the world stage. When in America early last month, for example, she was profiled in the New York Times.

She was introduced as "Scotland’s feminist first minister". Note: not "nationalist first minister"; her views on the constitution did not need explaining.

Raising women's rights fits that feminist billing perfectly.

But the big international story about Scotland isn't that Ms Sturgeon is a feminist; it is that we have what most of the world regards as a "separatist" administration.

That is why world media are today headlining Mr Salmond's view - expressed on Sunday - that a second independence referendum is "inevitable". That is why Nicola Sturgeon is a well-kent face.

Scotland is now one of the world's great rolling news events. Our story, moreover, has inspired many other stateless nations, not least in China. And here is where Scottish foreign policy gets real: the impact we have on separatism, independence - call it what you want - in dozens of different places.

So what does Ms Sturgeon's separatist government do to support other separatist causes? Well, nothing.

Her predecessor, Mr Salmond, shunned Quebec sovereigntists and distanced himself from independence-minded Catalans, in public at least.

The SNP, insiders explain, doesn't want to be seen as some kind of separatist version of Comintern, the Moscow body set up in the early days of Soviet Russia to provoke socialist revolution across the world.

What is the result of such a stance? Well, in China this weekend, it brought another deal that encourages Chinese soft power through Confucius Institutes and Classrooms in Scottish schools and universities. Was this foreign policy? Yes, even if this was unacknowledged. How do those supporting Chinese human rights, not least in occupied Tibet, feel about this? Answer: betrayed.