STAYING in Nato could increase the risk of a terror attack against an independent Scotland, according to the first expert assessment of the likely security threats following separation.

Titled No Need To Be Afraid, and published by the left-wing Jimmy Reid Foundation, it weighs the risks from terrorism, cyberwar, climate change, social unrest and attacks on Scottish sovereignty over 30 years, and concludes there is little to fear in security terms from leaving the UK.

The only serious threat outside Scotland's control is climate change and its attendant economic and social problems, it says.

Independence could even improve security if it led to the removal of nuclear weapons from the Clyde – which could suffer accidents or attacks from terrorists – and Scotland was more distant from controversial UK foreign policies.

However, the report also warns "membership of military alliances with policies of aggression or retaliation, such as Nato" could increase the threat to Scottish security.

It cites the 2004 al-Qaeda attacks on trains in Madrid that killed 200 people as an example of a junior Nato member being targeted in order to try to create splits in Nato over Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report is based on questionnaires completed by Dr Rebecca Johnson of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy; Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University; William Walker, Professor of International Relations at St Andrews University; and Dr Bill Patterson of Stirling University's politics department.

On the eve of a key debate on defence at the SNP conference this week, it argues that to date the discussion around the defence of an independent Scotland has been fundamentally flawed.

It says there has been no credible assessment of the most pressing security threats and no consideration of non-military responses.

"Realistically, Scotland does not face any direct territorial threats," except as a result of collateral damage in the event of conflict between the US and Russian and China, it says.

"As long as Russia and Nato remain wedded to 20th-century military attitudes ... there remain not insignificant risks that panic, miscalculation, inadvertence or military decisions may precipitate nuclear conflict, with or without other military engagement.

"If that were to happen, Scotland could be particularly vulnerable because of the nuclear warhead store at RNAD Coulport and the Trident homeport at Faslane."

Reid Foundation director Robin McAlpine said: "What this report shows is that nothing could be more irrelevant to modern Scotland than this incessant chatter about Nato. Environmental change and austerity are a much bigger threat to the way of life of ordinary Scots than imaginary armies out to get us.

"It's time there was a more serious debate about what security really means for the Scottish people."